Authors: Cyndy Aleo
He looks at her to see her eyes wide and bright.
“What is it?” he asks, trying valiantly to still his movements.
“I feel everything,” she breathes.
He groans and buries his face in her hair, powerless to stop moving inside her now that he knows everything he feels is spilling out so she can feel it.
He doesn’t even try to stop it, and in the back of his mind, he’s aware that the sisters are fleeing, only this time it’s from his pleasure, not his pain. Donovan closes her eyes and arches beneath him, wrapping her arms tight around his back, and her legs over his ass.
“You love me. You love me. You love me,” she chants.
He can’t believe she ever doubted that, even in his cruelty, but he lacks the ability to form words. Right now, there is nothing but the slick sweat between them, the warmth of being inside her, the feelings he senses from her: joy, relief… and her impending climax.
He thrusts harder, chasing that feeling for both of them, hers driving his and his driving hers in return until he’s no longer sure which of them will get there first.
And when she cries out, it’s the same for both of them, one climax they share that devours them both. He collapses on top of her, using the last of his energy to turn so he’s not crushing her beneath him as he tries to catch his breath.
There’s no way he can give this up again. Not now that he knows what it can be like with her. Not when he’s realized that his strange power will lead to making love to her like that for hundreds of years.
But he has to try one last time. To make sure she knows what she’s agreeing to. Because if he lets himself have this and she decides a year from now that she can’t live like this, there’s no way he’ll survive. He doesn’t think he was surviving before she came back to him.
“Just to remind you: There’s no college here. No electricity,” he says.
She rolls her eyes.“You have a house, they tell me. With Internet, even.”
“They still haven’t made a decision on boy children.”
“So you'll help them with that.”
“I don’
t
—”
“Jakub, I love you, and I love this forest, and I love these women, even if they are naked every single second. I want to live here, with them and with you. Will you let me?”
He answers her in Polish, in the language of his mother, his birth, and what will now be hers as well.
“Tak.”
Then again in English, to remind her of beginnings.
“Yes. Forever.”
Acknowledgments
No book is created without tons of help, and that goes triple for this one.
Many thanks go to:
Lela Gwenn, who spent hours on line with me looking at antique weapons and evaluating all the gory details of the fight scene, including anatomical plausibility and bleed-out times;
Christina and Lo of Christina Lauren, who read countless versions of “the rock scene” and tolerated my repeated emails with minute changes;
Special thanks to Lauren, who patiently evaluated my drug questions, including “which one is most likely to be available on the street?” which is definitely not what she signed up for getting that doctorate;
Eden Barber, not only for the gorgeous cover, but for extraordinary patience when I kept changing things;
Stacy Person, for texting me constantly with typos I introduced after the fact so I could clean up the final;
The incredibly patient folks on the Polish boards at WordReference, who cleaned up my incredibly rusty grammar;
SlevinAaron, for his beautiful photography that gave me the opportunity to highlight a Polish artist with Polish models — exactly what I wanted;
All Purgies, past and present, for general handholding and patience; and
My family, for their unwavering support. Sorry I made you read the word “cock” as written by my hand.
Notes & Translations
Having never been to Poland, some things in this book are the product of my imagination, some of research, and some a combination of the two.
The forests of Niepołomice really do exist, and are home to the Żubr, cousins to the American bison. The
Zamek Królewski w Niepołomicach
is a real place (in English, the Castle of Polish Kings) although I relocated it a bit closer to the forest than it actually is.
Polish to English:
Jakub, nie masz czasu na dojście do siebie. Musisz zapomnieć
. (English approximation: Jakub, you do
n’
t have time to get yourself together. You have to forget.)
Angielski
: English
śliwa tarnina:
a pricker bush
Chodź tu
: Come here (which I grew up pronouncing “Hutch to”)
Puszcza Niepołomicka
: Niepołomice Forest
Matka
: mother
Dziękuje bardzo
: thank you very much
Syn diabła
: son of the devil (colloquial epithet)
Kolęda
: technically, these are what you’d call carols or Christmas hymns in English, but there’s a lullaby to the Baby Jesus I sang to my own kids when they were babies called
Lulajże Jesu
Kocham cię
: I love you
Przepraszam
: I’m sorry.
Proszę
: Please
Dom
: home
Tak
: yes