Page 74 of Marked for Extinction
“Get over here and sit on my lap, like a good girl.”
I slowly made my way in his direction and sat down on his lap, wrapping my arm around his shoulder. His leg was healing well, according to him, the pain having subsided tremendously with me playing nurse to his wounds.
Payment was made in sex of course.
“Do I make you happy, Inés?”
I was taken aback by his sudden question. “Of course, you do. Why would you ask that?”
He leaned in and kissed the crook of my neck, teasing and nibbling against my skin.
“The shadows that follow me, don't leave me in the daylight,” he admitted.
We both occasionally had our nightmares, jerking awake in a sweat thinking we were still back in the underground dungeons. We would automatically reach out to make sure the other was there. Sometimes our hands would be intertwined until our minds allowed us back to sleep again, knowing we were always connected.
Whatever Otis injected him with hasn’t fully manifested itself. But there were changes happening within Vik. Changes I couldn’t explain. Sometimes in the middle of the night, his body temperature would fall so low, I thought he was dead until he took his next breath and turned over. And his wounds began to heal faster than they should be, at least in my mind.
“It isn’t only your shadows that follow you, Vik. You have my heart. I’m always there with you, beside you.” I grabbed one of his hands and laced our fingers together, bringing it up for both of us to see.
“You are the other half of me…” I told him.
He nuzzled against my neck and whispered, “You are the other half of me.”
When I lowered our hands, I placed it on my stomach and kissed his forehead. “I love all the shattered pieces of you because they fit perfectly against the shattered pieces of mine.” Tears burned in my eyes as I finally told him the secret I had been keeping for the past month. “And now, we have the glue that makes us whole.”
“What? What are you—” he pulled back and looked at me, then looked at my stomach. Emotions of fear morphed into incredulousness and then uncertainty.
“Inés,” he choked out, and the tears in my eyes fell. “I don’t deserve you. I bring nothing but—”
I kissed him to shut him up. His lips trembled against mine, true fear running through him.
“You bring me nothing but what I never thought possible, Vik. You gave us a future. I love you more than anything in this world and now, our love is manifested in the flesh.”
He let out a stuttering breath, as he hid his face against the crook of my neck.
“I vow to you, with everything I have in me, that this world would be brought to its knees before I let anything happen to you two.”
My heart skipped a beat. Because with Vik, it wasn’t just words. I only prayed that nothing would push him to that brink again because the world wasn’t ready for a man like the Reaper.
