Mirror of My Soul by Joey Hill (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

her his pain when it became too much to bear. Would she have gone to get Natalie if she’d understood how it would impact him? Yes, she had to, and Tyler had known that. But, oh, how sorry she was. How she wished she could have done something differently.

Her heart broke anew, yet it was a clean break, pouring out a wealth of poison and fear on the ground, giving it to the earth to absorb and cleanse as she held him to her.

Held on as he did the one thing an intensely strong alpha man could do to bind a woman to him forever. Weep in her arms.

Her own tears bathed his temple. “Tyler.” She whispered his name, whispered it to him as a promise. “Tyler Winterman, I am going to love you forever, I promise. I will never turn away from you again, not when I’m afraid or even angry. I’m yours and you’re mine.” Her arm tightened over his shoulders as she absorbed the amazing truth of that. This incredibly interesting, handsome, exciting and loving man was hers. All hers.

Brendan was coming across the lawn and she discreetly gestured with her hand,

holding him off, not wanting to interrupt Tyler or embarrass him. Brendan assessed the situation, nodded and placed the towel on a bench before retracing his steps back to the 209

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house. Another good man. Also hers, in a way Tyler miraculously accepted and

appreciated.

Despite the darkness, she’d always been surrounded by gentle flames, like candles in a room. Brendan, Natalie, Chloe, Gen… Tyler, coming in to bring more than light—

heat, nourishment, warmth. She had been blessed, in so many ways.

“Please, Master.” She held him close. “Let me have all of it. Let me take care of you.

I’m not afraid of your pain. I love you. Nothing will make me stop.”

Jesus wept. Those powerful two words from the Bible. How odd it was that chauvinistic, old-school men like Tyler and likely Violet’s Mac thought it was shameful to cry in moments like this. When prophets could not help but weep at the folly and evil of men, knights of the round table wept at the loss of their king. Even Little John, a man as broad and strong as an oak, had wept when his great friend Robin had died in his arms. So the legend went. She thought the rare tears of a strong man might be a gift to angels and Divinity, proof that there was compassion and love in a world long ago gone mad and beyond repair.

At length he was still, just holding her. She rubbed him, rocked with him, silently gazed out at the water. She reflected she would have been content if Josh had come out and poured clay on them, forever immortalizing them here, a sculpture she would have chosen to call No Matter What.

“Tyler,” she said at length.

“Angel.”

She lifted her head and put her hand to his chin, brought his face up when he didn’t want her to see the evidence of his tears. She leaned forward, kissed one eye, then the other, leaned back.

“What can I do to make you happy?”

Tyler’s gaze coursed over her collarbone area, the bruising that had developed a greenish-black coloring this week. “Maybe punch me in the face. I was an animal.”

“Don’t apologize for it.” She said it fiercely, surprising him with her passion. “We both know it’s not needed. I want to make you happy. I want to love you. Tell me how to start, how to put my feet on the right road.”

Despite the strength of her words, her voice was weak. Tyler knew she had to be fatigued in every limb. She was trembling as much from pain and exhaustion as from the late afternoon breeze coming in against her wet body and hair. His Ice Queen who always felt the cold. “Brendan’s dragging his ass with those towels.”

“No, he’s not.” She nodded. Holding on to her waist to keep her comfortably

astride him, he turned to look toward the bench at the edge of the garden. There was a pile of terrycloth. “See? He even brought me one of your robes. He and Sarah both knew I’d want nothing clothing me but something of yours.”

The simple assertion gripped his heart. “He came back a few moments ago,” she

continued. “He left them there to respect your privacy.”

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Tyler grimaced and she smiled. It entranced him, because for the first time since he’d known her, it came easily. It was not a broad grin but a serene curving of her lips, as if she’d given herself permission to use the gesture when she liked and was testing it out.

“I’m sure he’s run off to tell everyone he knows that Master Tyler cried in the arms of a woman,” she teased gently.

“Damn. I hate to have to hide another body on this property. I just buried the last person who aggravated me past endurance.”

She tightened her hand in his hair, tugged. Catching her forearms, his smile became something else. “Marry me, angel. That’s all I’ll ever need. Your promise in front of God and everyone to be mine forever.”

“And if I’m a terrible wife?”

“I won’t complain a bit. After all, I did beg for the privilege.”

She swept her lashes down, casting a glance at him from beneath them in a way

that made him want to fuck her all over again, this time with passion and laughter in the mix.

“You know a Mistress can’t resist a man who begs.”

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Chapter Twenty

“In sickness and in health…”

Marguerite wondered if brides and grooms ever listened to their ceremony while it was happening. That magical moment of joining when the words held so much power.

A power to last a lifetime, if the heart was open to claim their truth forever.

She understood now why knights did an overnight vigil on a stone chapel floor

before taking an oath of fealty. She had, in