Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 150(@200wpm)___ 120(@250wpm)___ 100(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 150(@200wpm)___ 120(@250wpm)___ 100(@300wpm)
As Bannin held her in his strong arms, and the healer pressed a cloth to slow the bleeding, Sarya abruptly remembered the other reason she’d intended to visit this hut.
“Do you have prevention powders on hand?”
The wise woman looked up from the gaping wound on her side. “That is not the hole you ought to be worrying about at this moment, Captain Sarya.”
Perhaps it was the concoction she’d drunk, but that was quite the most diverting thing Sarya had ever heard, until her laughter ripped at her side and left her lightheaded on a wave of pain.
She clutched Bannin’s hand. “Don’t leave me.”
“Never,” he vowed gruffly.
“Unless you’re warded against spells, young Bannin, you’ll be leaving quite soon.”
Oh. Sarya met Bannin’s tortured gaze. A spell always had a mirrored reaction, though on what scale that reaction would be was impossible to guess. Healing the hole in her side would put a hole in something else—and if Bannin was within the hut instead of outside its warded walls, he could suffer either a pinprick…or a wound too big for even magic to heal.
He said hoarsely, “I’d risk it for you, Sarya.”
“But I will not risk you.” She drew a deep breath. “Before the demon came, when I called to you, it was because I had something to say. I wanted to end our courtship.”
Anguish filled his expression. “Sarya, whatever you need that I’m not giving—”
Her heart twisting at the bleakness in his voice, Sarya stopped him with her hand over his mouth. Softly she said, “We’ll end the courtship, and begin a marriage.”
“Ah.” His wide smile spread beneath her palm, his green eyes alight. Without warning, his mouth was on hers, and she could not stop her happy laugh as she returned his kiss.
“Well, that’s lovely, isn’t it?” the old healer grumbled. “She’ll bleed to death before you can marry, but yes, yes, carry on.”
Bannin broke the kiss but didn’t go far, his forehead pressed to hers and her face cradled in his hands. “I’ll be right outside that door, waiting for you.”
Sarya had not a single doubt.
A full harvest moon was rising overhead when Sarya came out of the hut. Instantly a wild-looking Bannin was there, falling to his knees and dragging aside the hem of her torn and bloodied tunic. In the soft yellow moonlight, he examined at her perfectly smooth skin, turning her this way and that as if to make certain it had healed all the way through. Then he pressed his face into her bare stomach, his breathing ragged.
Once again, she marveled at how this warrior made her feel so utterly cherished—and as utterly necessary to him as he had become to her.
Tenderly she combed her fingers through his hair, then gently tugged until he looked up at her. Softly she said, “I am completely healed.” The wounds that were visible, and the ones that were not. “But I hope you understand that, since I’m in love with you, you are one of the few people in the world who could truly hurt me again.”
“Never,” Bannin growled, then surged to his feet, catching Sarya up in his arms as he did, cradling her against his broad chest.
She laughed. “I can walk!”
“But I can kiss you better like this,” he said, and his demonstration left her breathless, and so weak in the knees that she might not have been able to walk anyway.
His destination soon became clear as he struck away from the village on the path to her cottage. Taking her to bed, Sarya realized with a thrill. Eagerly she clung to him, and returned his every kiss.
Only once did Bannin falter in his step—as they passed the Widow Elphin’s field, where the slain demon stood like a tree with a burned out hollow, the twisted limbs still smoking. Bannin’s arms stiffened, and his kisses deepened, roughened, and she knew he was recalling the demon’s attack and her injury, and thinking of how he might have lost her. Overwhelmed by the same fears, Sarya returned each caress with the same desperate need.
By the time they entered the forest, no longer was Bannin cradling her against his chest. Instead Sarya had turned in his embrace, her thighs clamped around his hips, her arms wreathing his neck—all but riding him in her frantic desire to have the big warrior as close to her as a man could be.
Groaning against her lips, he staggered. “We will not make it to the cottage.”
Sarya panted, “I cannot care.”
Apparently neither could Bannin. He strode off the path and Sarya found herself pressed back against a tree, his mouth devouring hers. His big hand shoved between them and she cried out when a stroke of his thick fingers found her slick with her arousal and aching to be filled.
“So wet, woman,” he rasped against her mouth, then dipped his head to lick her throat, her jaw, before moving back up to her ear. “Can you take my cock? Or do you want to wait?”