Page 121 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

Pressing up against him, she tried to align her body with his, but the chains she was bound in—and that he was bound in—got in the way.

An involuntary sound escaped her when the urge to merge their bodies—to merge their souls—overtook all other thoughts, and she struggled against the restraints with everything in her.

“My little fighter,” Merrick whispered, a low laugh rumbling through him as she let out another unbidden moan when his lips left hers.

“Stay still,” he ordered quietly. “I’m going to get this off you.”

His mouth whispered across her cheek, leaving jolting kisses in its wake as it traveled upward toward the fabric covering her eyes.

After kissing her temple, he spoke again. “I’m sorry. This might hurt.”

Lessia nodded, and she dug her nails into her palms when Merrick’s canines scraped her skin, ripping into the blindfold.

With a sharp jerk, the fabric tore, and low light reached her eyes.

As she glanced upward, Merrick’s eyes were the first thing she focused on.

And that sense of falling gripped her again.

But it wasn’t frightening,

No, it was a fall she wanted.

A choice.

A decision.

A surrender.

A movement in the corner of her eye had her snap her head to the side, and she couldn’t stop the blush burning up her neck when she met Raine’s and Kerym’s eyes from where the males rested against the wall opposite her and Merrick.

The wall that was perhaps a few feet away…

She quickly moved her gaze back to Merrick.

The half smile that had pulled at his lips fell when her wide eyes flitted between him and the other two, and something cold twisted in her gut when uncertainty glimmered in his night-sky ones.

Pushing down the embarrassment, Lessia leaned forward and pressed another kiss against his mouth, that all-consuming need flickering to life once more.

“Thank you,” she said shakily as she sat back down again.

Merrick’s eyes flashed. “Anytime.”

“I’m sure,” Kerym muttered. “Now that that’s done, how are we getting out of this place?”

Lessia let her eyes travel around the small cell for the first time.

The space couldn’t be more than eight feet square, the three large Fae males taking up most of it, and the only light filling the room trickled in from a thin gap beneath the thick stone door Kerym leaned against.

Her eyes moved to Merrick as he sat down next to her, and as she drew a deep breath to calm whatever he’d awoken within her from that kiss, a metallic scent joined the musty smell of cellar and sweat that hung heavy in the air.

Lessia stiffened.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, eyeing his constrained movements as he tried to fold his tall body comfortably in the small space.

It wasn’t the chains that had that muscle in his jaw flex, his shoulders rising an inch as he stared back at her.

“Merrick,” she demanded quietly when he dismissively jerked his head.

---