Felix Read online

  “Winslow sexually abused me,” Felix said quietly, staring out at the waves with a blank look on his face that she hadn’t seen before. “From the time I was very young. My parents were always traveling on business, and they put me in his care to learn to use my abilities. He… taught me things I shouldn’t have known.”

  Her throat was tight. “I’m sorry that happened, but—”

  He put his head in his hands. “I guess it is my fault Winslow found you. Because after being with you, I made an attempt at leaving the Tribunal.”

  Her heart stuttered. “You did? But you told me you just meant to check on me at some later point—”

  “That’s not the whole truth. There was one moment when I thought differently. Right when I got back to the Tribunal. For one brief moment, I got it in my head that I actually had some choices about things.” He shook his head. “That was a mistake.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at her, and his beautiful eyes were pained. “My sister was young then. She’d been sent to a foster family because part of me staying with them had been about her getting away from the Tribunal.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, I thought maybe I could go to you, then to her, and we would be able to escape somehow. Like I could protect all three of us.”

  She felt numb inside as she listened, knowing that the end of the story wouldn’t go well for either of them. “What happened?”

  Felix sighed, his tall shoulders straightening as he looked out at the waves like the answer to all his problems was there. “Winslow caught me. I hadn’t even left. I was just thinking about it. Making plans. I’m not sure how he figured it out. Perhaps because he could always read me. But the night I was going to leave, he showed up in my room.”

  She felt her heart in her throat, pounding so loudly. “And?”

  “And he told me they had people stationed not far from my sister, and should I ever disappear, he would make sure they grabbed her before I could.” Felix swallowed, throat tight. “He told me that… if… that he could always use a replacement.”

  She gasped. “And he meant…”

  Felix nodded at her, looking haunted. “That he would hurt her like he hurt me. He was obsessed with me. It didn’t stop when I got older. I just got more numb.”

  “So you stayed?”

  Felix picked up a pebble from the sand and tossed it out into the waves. “I stayed. I realized that love and a happy ending weren’t meant for someone like me, as much as I had liked spending time with you. I realized that the Tribunal was a machine and that I might be one of their strongest, but there would always be more to hunt me down. That I could never be strong enough to protect both of you.”

  “So you made your choice.”

  “I did,” he said, voice breaking. “But I swear to you, Diana, if I had known he was going to hurt you, I would have died trying to get back to your side. Sister or not. I thought you would be safe. I reported on the situation as usual and turned in several jobs at the same time. I don’t know how Winslow knew you even existed since I never mentioned you in my report.” He ruffled his hair. “I don’t know at all.”

  She scooted a little closer. “So you never told him?”

  He looked at her with wide, panicked eyes. “Never. I could never, Diana. Don’t you remember what happened between us? You were the first person to give me a home.”

  “I wondered if it didn’t mean anything to you. You were this big, famous Tribunal wolf. When Winslow came for me, I figured you had tricked me like you tricked everyone else.”

  He shook his head. “Never. You were the one I didn’t want to trick. Perhaps I was naive, thinking that Winslow bought my story of just being sick of the Tribunal. I even made sure not to come back and check on you right away because I didn’t want to tip him off that you were the reason I almost left. But given what he did, he must have realized it.” He rubbed his forehead. “God, I was young and stupid. And you paid for it.”

  “You did too,” she said, leaning in against him. She thought about the child he must have been. Terrified. Used. About the fear he must have had over his sister.

  Somehow, it was easy to forgive him. She knew his pain didn’t override hers, but it did make it hard to keep her walls up against him.

  “I… I wish I had known more about you,” she said softly. “I wish I had understood why.”

  “I know,” Felix said. “Believe me, I wish I had gotten the chance to tell you.”

  “We didn’t know each other that long, did we?” She slumped slightly.

  He shook his head. “It didn’t change that it had an impact on us both.”

  “Yeah.” She looked out at the ocean. She and Felix were from different worlds. They’d come together for a moment, and then everything had been ruined.

  And now they were together with nothing between them except the bitter past, yet it still felt like they were stuck.

  And she was still a wyvern.

  He could probably move on like nothing had happened. That option wasn’t available for her.

  “I wish things were different,” she said.

  “They’re different now,” he retorted, putting a hand over hers. “We don’t have to remember all of it. We don’t have to let it decide where we go.”

  “I’m a wyvern,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees as she leaned into him. “I’m not… I don’t even know if I could mate you. Not that I know if I want to. You don’t understand. So many years blaming you. It’s hard to just undo.”

  “I do understand,” Felix said, staring at the moon over the ocean. “I understand if you hate me. I’m filthy. I was from very young, and—”

  She grabbed his face with both hands and made him face her. “I don’t see you any different because of what you told me. If anything, it helps me understand who you are.”

  He blinked slowly. “And who am I?”

  “You’re brave,” she said. “You care about those around you, despite being broken from a very young age. You’re strong because you’ve always had to be. You’re alone because you’ve had no one to help carry your burden. You’re loyal to those around you, and you protect who you can.” She closed her eyes slowly against a rush of pain. “But I still don’t know if things can work out between us.”

  He nodded, resting his cheek against her hand. “I’m willing to work all my life if I could make you love me again.”

  “I told you,” she said, keeping hold of his face. “I don’t think I ever stopped loving you. If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to hate you so deeply.”

  “And you still hate me now?”

  She shook her head. Even with the cool breeze, the crash of the waves, her body was aware of him. Of his cool lavender scent, the perfect form of his body, the beautiful arrangement of his features.

  The vulnerability that he never showed anyone that he had somehow allowed her to see.

  “I want to be with you,” she said. “I don’t know for how long or what will happen. When I was in that lab, I never thought I could be happy again. But I am, somehow, when I’m with you. Even after all this time. And if I deprive myself of being with you simply because I’m mad about not having you in the past, I think I would be angry with myself down the line.”

  He watched her avidly, and the gleam in his purple eyes turned dark with lust. “I will take any moment with you I can get. Any minute is precious.” His hand covered hers against his face. “Thinking you were dead, I threw myself into my work completely. But I longed for you. I was tortured by the dream of seeing you just once more. Touching you again.” He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “Sometimes I still think I’m trapped in a dream.”

  “It’s no dream,” she said. “By the time our story is done, you might think it’s a nightmare.”

  He shook his head. “No, because I’ve never felt as happy as I do when I’m with you. So even a few more stolen moments are a dream, even if you end up leaving me.”

  “We’ll see, I gue
ss,” she said softly, unable to pull away. His touch felt so good.

  His hand dropped and his thumb brushed over her lips, warm and reassuring and stimulating all at the same time. “But if you do leave me, I hope you know I’ll be coming to get you. No matter what happens, until I die, I’m not letting you go again.”

  “Even if I don’t want you?”

  His thumb pressed the center of her lips. “No. But I know now you will always want me. Just like I will always want you.”

  She felt the truth of what he said hit her like a current too strong for her to fight. He was right. Her heart had always known it. It was why she could blame him. Hate him. Want him. Not be able to stop chasing him.

  She hated that he was right.

  “I will always want you,” she said. “That doesn’t mean things can still work out.”

  “I’m tired of leaving things up to destiny,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to wait and see how things go. I’m just promising you now that as long as even a part of you wants me, I’ll never stop fighting for you.”

  “You might have to,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he said, leaving them at an impasse.

  When he leaned in to take her mouth, she didn’t pull back.

  When his tongue pushed gently at the seam of her lips, she opened, tilting her head back as his hand came around to support her neck.

  Her whole body warmed as he kissed her, stroking and caressing softly as his thumb rubbed the base of her neck.

  She felt so free then, with their mouths intertwined and the cool ocean breeze washing over them, that she could almost forget everything in their past.

  And as he laid her gently back down on the blanket, kissing her deeper, his body covering hers completely, she knew she couldn’t deny the connection between them.

  The stars would fall into the ocean first.

  Chapter 19

  Felix couldn’t believe he’d opened up to Diana.

  He’d never told anyone about Winslow. Had convinced himself that he was over it and no one needed to know.

  But there was an emptiness inside him sometimes that scared him. That made him feel like he would never be able to connect.

  When he was with Diana, he didn’t feel that emptiness. He felt like he was where he was supposed to be. And he felt whole.

  But since he was positive now that she was his mate, he thought she deserved to know that about him. To know he’d been sullied. To know why he’d been controlled.

  He still had to fight back rage at the thought of Winslow. But when he looked at Diana watching him with utter trust and more love than he deserved as she lay beneath him, the rage just faded away.

  Anything he had gone through, anything he had done, faded in his sheer need to give this woman everything he could for the rest of their lives.

  He’d known in some way that she was his when he’d learned of her death. When he hadn’t been able to stop searching for her in every face around him.

  But he’d denied it because the thought was too dire.

  Having her here with him, finally open to him, finally looking at him with something other than rage or lust, made it impossible to deny anymore.

  They were made to be together like the shore and the tide, crashing against one another in a dance of cosmic destiny.

  And though their pasts had been tragic, he knew the future was still long and stretching before them if they could both take it in their hands.

  He braced a hand on either side of her head and kissed her, listening to the waves rushing behind them.

  As their lips melded, feelings crashed through him. Warmth, longing, love, family. All the things he’d held back in his assassin mind. All things that had no place in the world before.

  Diana.

  Her name was like a song inside him as he kissed her, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and back and mewled against his lips.

  He pulled back to look down at her, at her dark skin glowing in the moonlight. Her dark eyes, always so honest and beautiful. Long lashes that fluttered on her cheek whenever she closed her eyes.

  And that body.

  More curvaceous than when he’d known her but stronger too. He palmed a hand over her side and then squeezed her hip possessively.

  “I’m older now,” she said, looking nervous.

  “I am too,” he said. “But personally, I think you’re the most beautiful every time I see you. I’m sure that will continue with age.”

  She let out a little sigh. “Sometimes you make me think all of this is possible. That we can just rewrite things and be together like we were never apart.”

  He leaned down to kiss her neck gently, enjoying her sigh as he worked his way up to her earlobe and then sucked it into his mouth. “No, not like we were never apart. Like we know what it’s like to lose each other and can’t let it happen again.”

  Her hands twisted in his hair. “We don’t know what will happen.”

  He pulled back to glare at her fiercely. “We will make what we want to happen.”

  “I wish I was as strong as you,” she said, brushing her hair back. “But they broke me.”

  “They didn’t break you,” he said, taking her earlobe in his lips again. “Nothing could break you, Diana. Am I broken?”

  “No.” She gasped, pulling her ear away so she could focus on him. “Never.”

  “Then you aren’t broken either,” he said, kissing the side of her jaw. When she twitched, he smiled and kissed her there again, sucking lightly on the sensitive area as she squirmed.

  He moved back to her earlobe, loving her little moan as he grazed his teeth over it. He kept himself up on one hand and used the other to nibble down her neck, making her shiver.

  God, he loved how sensitive she was.

  “You’re so perfect,” he said, tracing down her arm as his lips pushed her shirt aside and found her shoulder. “I want to worship you. Every part of you. Will you let me?”

  She stared up at him in shock. “What do you mean?”

  He sat back on his knees, straddling her, and motioned to her body. “To see everything. To kiss everything.”

  She swallowed, then let out a sigh. And Felix knew by the lust in the air what her answer would be.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I want you naked.” He looked down the beach. “We’re all alone, and I want you naked, every curve kissed by moonlight.”

  She reached for the hem of her shirt and tugged it over her head, tossing it to the side, letting it fall on the sand.

  Then she reached for her bra, looking up at him, unafraid as she bared herself to his eyes.

  His mouth watered as he gazed upon the two most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen. Soft. Glowing. The perfect, dark nipples already pointed and waiting for his kisses.

  Her soft waist that rose and fell softly with her breath, flexing suddenly any time he touched a sensitive area like the side of her neck.

  He moved back so she could sit up and push her pants off. Then she gave him a look so coy he could have passed out right there and took her panties off, tossing them to the side with the others.

  He stared down at her, wondering at the beauty in front of him.

  He’d always joked with others that he was obsessed with beauty, and he was. The beauty of the planet he was on and the beauty found inside people sometimes.

  But no beauty had ever compared to hers.

  It was so much it overwhelmed him, made him feel like he was caught in a riptide, waves crashing over him, never able to reach the shore.

  Until this moment.

  He reached down to cup a breast tentatively, stroking his thumb over the nipple as she arched. He watched every move of her body as he lowered his head and suckled, feeling the nipple tighten in his mouth as she let out a curse.

  “You said everywhere,” she said breathlessly. “If you start there, I—”

  “Patience,” he said softly, twirling his tongue around her nipple. “We have al
l night.”

  She gripped his shirt at the shoulders as he suckled and laved, and when her body was tight and tense from it, he moved to her waist, kissing and licking his way down to her belly button as she jerked and let out little moans.

  He kissed her hip, her side, down to the crease between her thighs and her mound, then over her soft curls, then to the other thigh.

  He kissed the top of it, then worked his way down, kissing every bit of soft skin he could find, marking all of it as his.

  He kissed down to her knee, lifted it gently, kissed behind it, savoring her gasp. Then he moved down her calf, kissing and licking, and found her ankle.

  He kissed the sensitive area, meeting her eyes as he flicked out his tongue, and she arched, leaving her foot in his reach.

  He kissed the top of it, the tips of her toes, and then reached for her other ankle, kissing that as well. She was moaning now, trembling with need as he worked his way up her calf and knee to the inside of her thigh, kissing his way to the place that she was most sensitive.

  But even though she held her breath as he lingered over her curls, teasing her, he knew he hadn’t explored everywhere yet.

  She groaned in frustration as he moved on to her other arm, kissing each of her fingertips, but her eyes were filled with lust.

  She liked what he was doing to her. He could feel it in every touch.

  He kissed her elbow, the back of her arm, up her sensitive bicep to her shoulder.

  Then the breast that hadn’t yet been paid attention, he kissed that deeply, swirling his tongue, flicking the hard nipple as her moans grew even more frantic.

  Her nails were digging into his back now, and her scent was mingling with the fresh ocean air in a beautiful way.

  He kissed down her side to her other hip and reached up to grasp both hands in one of his and pin them up by her head.

  Then he straddled her, wanting to take in every bit of her expression as she stared up at him, glazed from being touched everywhere.