Read Online The Kraken King, Part 7 by Meljean Brook - Free Book Online

women were better off without husbands. Considering the story she’d just told him, she had good
reason to believe it, and distance might give her time to believe that she would be, too.
    But he couldn’t let those doubts touch him. Even if she did fly off with her brother,
his wife was telling him that she would come.
Maybe she would have reason for that, too, no matter how high she built her walls—and she’d told Ariq in other ways how much she wanted to stay with him. She’d accepted his seed. Given all that had happened to her mother, and the fears that had driven Helene, she must have trusted him to have taken that risk.
    Possessively, he flattened his palm over her stomach. “You might already be carrying our child.”
    Her quick smile eased some of the weight closing around his heart. “Yes,” she said softly. “I should know soon whether I am.”
    Then he could reassure her on one point. “You feared being in the same circumstances that trapped your mother. I swear to you now, you never will be.”
    â€œOf course I won’t. You’re nothing like him.” She caught his jaw between her hands, emerald eyes bright. “But even if you were, I wouldn’t be trapped in the same way. I have money. I have protection. I have options. And I never would have been with any man if I didn’t.”
    â€œA man you didn’t trust?”
    She suddenly grinned. “Trust was an option. So was pure carnal gratification. I would have been with you in Krakentown and I didn’t trust you then. Yet it would have been the same risk.”
    Now he remembered her telling him this before, when they’d been in the lantern fish. “Because I’d have been your adventure.”
    â€œYes. But the risk of a child, too. I knew that then.”
    â€œI wouldn’t have spent my seed within you.” Not then, when she’d only been a visitor to his town.
    She scoffed. “There would still be a chance. But I wouldn’t have taken that risk if I didn’t have the same options then as I do now. If I’d chosen to leave, if I’d chosen to raise a child alone . . . I
could
have.”
    So accepting his seed hadn’t been a sign of anything. Not of her hope to stay. Not of her trust. He’d read too much into it. What he’d assumed was a crumbling wall was actually just another, stronger defense.
    And he couldn’t be on both sides of the continent fighting two different wars at once. But here, now—he was on this side, and his calm slipped over the burning, ragged edge of the pain building in his chest. Maybe he hadn’t yet won his wife’s heart. But he could make sure that leaving was an option she never considered.
    â€œAriq?” Her wary gaze was searching his face. “That’s the expression you get when you break people in half. Is everything all right?”
    Yes. He just had a battle to fight.
    Without warning, he swept her up against his chest, hooking his arm beneath her knees and pivoting toward their chambers. She gasped her surprise, then looped her arms around his neck.
    Urgently she kissed his throat, then his jaw. “How much time?”
    â€œTwo and a half hours.”
    Time that he’d use like a sword, cleaving away the needs she didn’t have. She didn’t need his money. She didn’t need his protection. But he gave her adventure. He gave her carnal gratification. She needed him for those, if nothing else, and he intended to make sure she wouldn’t forget that while he was gone.
    And his body had been made for war, but he’d never fought one like this before. He could crush a man with his arms, but he cradled his wife in them and carried her to the bed, instead. He could command armies, yet a kiss was a better use for his mouth now. He demanded her surrender with each long, sweet taste of her lips, and by teasing her nipples to succulent points.
    But his