Mercy (11 page)
Authors: Eleri Stone
She growled. “I want your heart out of your chest, husband, but I don’t think we speak of the same thing.”
His laugh was shaky but he dropped a kiss to her forehead before pulling her fully into his arms. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “You already had your chance to kill me. Please, Iada, forgive me. Come home.”
She let him hold her for a moment and then said, “Vin and Arturo were wrong about the mutants. My life was so focused on winning that stupid tournament. I never realized…” Her voice faded away and then she pushed against his chest hard enough to make him grunt. She glared up at him. “You believed I would kill our child.”
He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “All this time I thought your opinion of my kind was too rigid ever to be changed when I was the one being inflexible. I misjudged you.”
“And?”
His eyes narrowed. “I already apologized.”
“I liked the sound of it,” she said. “Grovel for me, husband.”
She was teasing him. His held breath let out on a chuckle. “You don’t want a man who would grovel. I know you well enough to know that.”
She smiled at him, one of those rare, beautiful things that made his heart stutter, and he felt a wash of relief flood through his body. She was softening. He felt her cool fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt and begin to slide up the long muscles of his back. When she looked up at him, the panic that had shadowed her expression was gone. Her soft skin was flushed and her full lips parted. His cock stirred at the promise of that look.
Her gaze angled to meet his, dark and sly. “And what do you think I want, Gabriel?”
He bent his head again and whispered against her lips, “Let me show you.”
Eleri Stone is a lifelong book addict who starts to feel a little twitchy when there’s not a good book within arm’s reach. Although she’ll read just about anything, her favorites are romance and fantasy, and she likes it best when the two are combined. Since she can’t read all of the time, she also makes up stories in her head, and when they’re good she writes them down to share. Born and raised in New Jersey, she now makes her home in Iowa with her husband and their three children.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9055-0
Copyright © 2010 by Eleri Stone
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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