Page 201 of Mama Si's Paradise

I had no idea, but drowning this urge to see him, to talk to him, was getting harder by the minute.

And then I saw it.

The Whispering Wood was so dark that I sometimes couldn’t tell where the trees surrounding the castle ended and those angry clouds began.

But even in that darkness I saw the shape of him, holding onto the tip of a large tree, his wings spread wide to the sides.

He was watching me. I felt it in my bones that he was watching me, those grey eyes on my face, even though we were too far apart for me to see him with any clarity. I could barely make out the shape of him, and I stopped breathing altogether.

“Grey,” I whispered into the night, as if his name was going to be my salvation.

He moved.

Those large black wings on his back were beating fast, and Grey was flying in the soft rain toward me. Forget breathing—I couldn’t even move a single inch if I tried while I watched him come closer.

He wore nothing but a pair of sweatpants, barefoot, hischest naked, the wings on his back something out of a fantasy—membranous, black, and with big, curved claws all around them. I was tempted to think he was just a figment of my imagination, but my imagination could never come up with such perfection, so he had to be real.

He was flying right in front of me now, in front of my open window, face and body and wings wet with the rain, his hair standing in all directions.

I couldn’t care less that my heart was about to beat right out of my chest or that he could hear it. Grey was here, and right now, everything—everythingelse vanished in the dark clouds over us.

I reached out my hand to touch his face and he flew closer instantly, the rain coming off his wings spraying me a little, but I didn’t mind.

“Come here,” I whispered, completely hypnotized by that face, those eyes, those wings.

Grey stopped on the stone ledge outside my window, and like that, he was just a bit lower than me. He grabbed my hand and put it on his cheek, and he looked up at me like he had no clue what to expect.

Silly, silly Grey…

“Where were you?” I asked, and my whisper was almost lost with the sound of the rain.

“Out there, learning to use these wings.” He moved them a bit as they folded behind his back, so naturally, like they really, truly belonged to him. Like to be a man with a pair of wings attached to his back was a very natural thing.

“Why didn’t you come find me?” I’d been waiting all day, damn it. And I hadn’t planned to even ask him that, hadn’t wanted to sound so pathetic, but he was here now, looking at me like that, and within seconds, my resolve was washed away by the soft rain.

“I didn’t want to bother you.”Bother you,he said. “I know you were regretful this morning. You needed time to?—”

“You’re fuckingcrazy.” The words slipped from me before I could bite my tongue. Grey clamped his mouth shut, shocked, but I didn’t care. I raised my other hand to his face, too.

“I wasnotregretful. I do not regret choosing you. I do not regret anything that has to do with you—did you not feel me last night? Did you not feel me this morning?”

His thick brows narrowed. “I did.”

“So why would you think Iregretyou?!” It seemed so absurd to me.

“Because I saw your eyes,” he said, rising on his tiptoes to get closer. “I thought you’d changed your mind.”

And he’d still threatened his brothers on my behalf.

I shook my head with a deep sigh, and when he touched my face with those wet hands, I breathed a bit easier.

“I didn’t. Iwon’t,” I said, the words loaded, coming straight from my soul. “I don’t even want to change my mind. I don’t want anyone else, you fool.” And just the fact that he thought that made me furious.

He looked so confused it was almost funny. “But you said you needed a moment.”

“Yes—because I was sad, Grey. Being sad is not the same as being regretful.”

Slowly, his brows rose a little, and the corners of his lips turned upward, transforming his beautiful face.

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