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)
That wasn’t hiding. It was healing.
And yet, perhaps Bannin wasn’t completely wrong. Oh, not the hiding part. Sarya didn’t hide from anyone…except maybe herself. Because licking wounds was all well and good while they were healing, but after an injury had scarred over, continuing to lick didn’t make it better. Instead it rubbed over that spot until the surrounding flesh was bloodied and raw.
She rolled onto her back and sighed, staring up into the dark. She’d known it was time to stop, hadn’t she? Despite the lingering bitterness, her heart had healed. Some of her wounds were still tender, but they’d scarred over. This past year, she’d been so much better.
But she hadn’t known what to do next. She couldn’t go back to being who she was before the stone sickness, yet her eagerness to pick up her sword and hunt this demon spoke of her need to move forward. She also wasn’t meant to live in solitude, though she’d enjoyed these years at the cottage—farm work was often more exhausting than fighting monsters had ever been. And it had kept her active, had fulfilled her need to do something.
Yet now it wasn’t enough.
And— What was that sound?
She sat up, reaching for the sword she’d left beside her bed. Listening. The crickets and frogs were chirping and croaking, so not all was silent. But she thought she’d heard a noise coming from her small barn, where Foggy was in his stall and her chickens and goats were bedded down for the night.
There it was again. A goat, bleating. Not in terror, but they usually made little noise at all after dark. Something must have disturbed it.
Sword in hand, Sarya leapt from her bed and hurried down the stairs, skipping over the creaking step. Outside, crisp air nipped at her face and clouded her breath. Though the afternoons were almost as warm as in summer, the recent nights had a chilly bite, as if autumn crept in after dark to nibble at the sunlit edges of the day.
Only the stars above threw faint light into the glade. Waiting for her eyes to adjust, again she listened. Just the crickets and the frogs—and a quiet breeze whispering through the changing leaves.
Maybe the disturbance had been nothing. But better to be certain.
On bare feet, she silently made her way to the barn. She frowned to see the latch on the broad door was lifted out of its slot; she’d made a point to secure it that evening.
Barely breathing, she eased the door open a crack and slipped through. The chill of the night was not so biting inside, the air warmed by the animals’ body heat. A quiet shuffling came from deeper within the barn. Likely one of the goats, but her instincts screamed that she wasn’t alone. Straining to hear, she turned her head in that direction when a sudden movement within the shadows pivoted her around, her blade slicing through the air.
“Oick!” An implacable grip snagged her wrist, halting her sword even as a steely forearm wrapped around her waist and yanked her up against a solid wall of hot flesh. “Peace, woman! Peace!”
Bannin. Sarya’s heart thundered in her chest as she reoriented herself to his presence, acutely aware of the shocking warmth of his bare skin through her thin nightshirt and the crush of her breasts against his massive chest.
Acutely aware that his heart was pounding, too.
In the dark, her every breath seemed full of him. In the way her chest heaved against his. In the way his scent, of harsh soap and warm leather, made her almost dizzy and desperate to press her face against his throat and take more of him into herself.
Then Bannin stole her very breath as his arm flexed, lifting her bodily against him. His mouth found hers, softly at first, stroking featherlight kisses over her lips as if seeking permission to deepen the kiss.
Sarya should have pushed him away. Instead she buried her fingers in his hair and dragged him closer.
He made a sound deep in his throat that reverberated through his chest and made her shiver from head to toe. His tongue slicked over hers, hot and wet. Everything inside her drew up into a taut spiral of want, from the hollow ache at her core to the tips of her breasts. Oh, she needed this. This sweetness, this heat. Bannin angled his head and licked into her mouth again before teasing her with suckling kisses against her lips. His grip eased upon her wrist. She began to pull back her hand so that she could touch him, to revel in the thick strength bound up in his muscle and skin, but she was still holding—
Her sword.
Sarya froze, remembering where she was. Where they were. No need to question what had disturbed the animals—Bannin must have. But she didn’t know why.