Bound to the Warrior King by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE REST OF the reception passed in a fog for Tarek. He had not intended to speak to Olivia with such honesty. He saw no point in infecting her with the darkness that lingered in his past. He scarcely saw the point of infecting himself with it. However, the longer he stayed here in the palace, the more he remembered. The more often he woke, naked and reaching for his sword, his entire body burning with memories of what it had been like to be subjected to the physical and emotional torture visited upon him by his own brother after the death of their parents. It had all been under the guise of strengthening him, but he saw it now for what it was.

The only thing that had gotten him through had been the vision of his people swimming before him. The idea that he might be the perfect weapon raised up to protect them. To prevent what had happened to his parents from ever happening again. It had not then occurred to him that the threat had come from within the palace. That it had been his own brother who had orchestrated their demise. He had only the scribbles of a prince in a private journal, and shattered pieces of memory that sometimes pushed to the fore, piercing his brain with painful, vivid replays of conversations he’d heard. As a boy? During his torture, he couldn’t be sure. They were too broken.

And they were not what he intended to focus on now. But Olivia had shared pieces of herself with him, and he had felt obliged to do the same. Now, though, it was time for them to return to their chamber. It was time for them to become husband and wife in every sense of the word.

A sense he feared he still did not fully understand.

I am what I was made to be. I doubt I will ever be anything else.

His own words, the truth in them, reverberated through him as he and Olivia left the hall to raucous applause and cheers from the guests in attendance.

His body did not know how to feel pleasure. His hands did not know how to give it.

He thought back to the fantasy he’d had a week before, looking down at the book that had held so many secrets to sexual gratification. The fantasy of placing his hands on Olivia’s breasts. Her skin was so soft, perfection, unmarred by the things of the world. His were scarred. His entire body was scarred. Rough. More weapon than man. How could he begin to touch her in a way that would bring her pleasure?

He would have to trust the mechanics. What he had learned in his study. Just as he had learned to trust that drills would suffice when wartime came. That some part of him, instinct, would rise up and take over, join in with what he had learned.

And yet, it seemed rather a large chance to take on such a delicate, easily crushed creature.

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