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The horny woman inside of me questioned what else he would be good at. I knew what he tasted like and how each touch tortured me. What would it be like to have him inside—
“Dear God, Josephine,” Kellan said, slinging his sword around and killing the second hound. “Stop it.”
Dang it. I forgot. Keeping my mind as blank as I could, I watched one of the hounds grab Kellan’s forearm. Blood squirted around him while Ernest finished him off.
The third one went limp, and it tore Kellan’s arm. He dropped his sword and wrapped his palm around it.
Ernest motioned him toward the house. His eyes, despite fighting hounds with sweat on his brow and blood dripping down his forearm, there was so much lust on his face that it embarrassed me.
“I forgot,” I said when he took two steps to stand in front of me. “The mind thing. I forgot.”
Kellan mumbled under his breath. “You’re awfully distracting,” he whispered, bending down to add, “I’m beginning to think you want me to say screw my morals and screw you into the side of the house.”
A feverish blush traveled along my skin. I eyed him playfully. “Now who is putting words in whose mouth?”
“Kellan,” Ernest said hurriedly. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
Kellan’s dark gaze smiled for him. He hurried off the back porch, leaving me hot and on the verge of a no-contact orgasm.
Fern sat at the table, holding the supplies for Ernest while they cleaned his wound.
“—I don’t know, Ernest. I encountered a hound the second I was transported into this realm," Kellan said.
Ernest shrugged. “I think that Deidamia sent them. She’s going to tear us down one peg at a time, or she’s trying to see how much we can handle.”
I sat beside Fern. “Wouldn’t she just send an entire pack of hounds to off us? Why send three? Or do you think she likes the chase?”
Ernest gestured toward the small scissors, and Fern handed them over. “Deidamia is playing the water. She doesn’t know me and doesn’t know why you all are here.”
Ernest tied the last part of Kellan’s makeshift stitches. “We need to do what we can to protect this place. I have a few things that ward off evil but nothing that can keep her out forever. She’ll be here for Josephine. If the spindle does what the elf says it does, then she’ll be back. Let’s get breakfast finished before I make my protection spell.”
He scratched his head, frustration lurking on his face, while Fern ran to help him finish the breakfast they’d started.
Kellan stepped in front of my line of sight, gesturing toward the living room. I followed him toward the front door and then the steps. He stopped on the bottom one, while I stayed on the tallest one, coming face to face with him.
“I want to be honest with you,” he said, his voice softer than before. It still gave me goosebumps but in different ways. “There have been so many times that I wanted to die over the years. The dread of living forever is as bad as it sounds. I won’t die. Ever. Unless it’s reversed–and I doubt our friend will do that–I’ll always be here.” He stepped forward, forcing me back a step toward the side of the house. “Before now, I’ve wanted to die. I wanted to be reunited with my family. I wanted to ... well, it doesn’t matter because I don’t feel that way anymore,” he said.
“What changed?” I challenged.
Kellan took another step, trapping me between his chest and the outside of the cabin. “You,” Kellan said in a gravelly voice. “For the first time in what feels like forever, I look forward to something other than killing her. I look forward to being alone with you. To getting to know you. To ... touching you.” He went to touch my face but dropped his hand. “I want nothing more than to consume you, Josephine. Do you understand? I need you.”
“I do,” I said.
“Do you understand that I’m broken?” he asked. “That I’m not whole in here?” he asked, picking up my hand and placing it on his chest. “I don’t expect you to understand it all, but I do hope you’ll be easy with me.”
This man asking me to be gentle with his heart nearly broke mine. A blanket of warmth seeped over me, burying me in the feeling of his needs. “You deserve to be happy, Kellan,” I said. “I hope that you know that.”
Kellan leaned in and pressed a hot kiss to my mouth.
The dominance of his kiss was a stark contrast to the man he hid inside. The man that was broken yearned to be touched, to be loved, and the man protecting him was a shell of muscle.
I planned to strip him down of all of it and put him back together again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kellan
“I need some things from the forest,” Ernest said.
