Page 162 of A Courage of the Chosen

“Keep that to yourself for a while. I’m sore,” I grouse when he repositions himself to slide against me.

“Good thing you’re Seelie and you heal quickly.” He kisses down the back of my neck and pushes his hips into me more firmly.

My stomach grumbles again, eliciting a laugh from both of us.

“Maybe after we’ve had some food, then,” Callahan says, banding me closer and nuzzling my neck.

I fiddle with the sheets pooled around us as I broach the next topic, one that I should’ve mentioned to him a while ago but has always got lost in the face of everything else. “Erm, so this is a bit awkward, since we’ve fucked a lot, and now we’re married, but what are we doing about contraception?”

Callahan rolls me onto my back and runs his nose along the length of mine. “I regularly take the suppression herb. Have done for years. I’d never come inside you the way I have so carelessly without discussing children with you first,” he assures me.

“Do you even want kids?”

How stupid is it that I’m married to him and I don’t even know the answer to that?

“Aye,” he smiles. “One day. But not yet.”

“Not yet,” I echo.

When that day comes, Callahan will make a wonderful father, and the little girl with his eyes and my hair, or the boy with his jawline and green irises, that I told myself not to hope for, don’t seem like such a distant dream anymore.

We’ve got a war to survive first.

I can always count on my subconscious to bring me back to reality. That future, though, is one worth fighting for, and only makes me more determined to survive so that I can really start living the life I’ve begun to carve out for myself.

“Nope. We’re not doing that today,” Callahan says.

“Doing what?”

“You were nibbling on the corner of your lip. You do that when you’re overthinking.”

The soft side of him, the one that only emerges when it’s just us or he’s with Erin, is out in full force. It only makes me love him more.

“I do not,” I reply.

He kisses me then clambers from the bed, offering the perfect view of every hard line of him.

His ass really is sensational.

As he disappears into the bathroom he says, “You do.”

While he’s seeing to his needs, I enter the closet and snag one of his cotton T-shirts, holding the fabric against my nose, and drawing in the mix of Callahan and whatever detergent is used in Elfayne. Spoiler alert, it’s wonderful, and far better than anything I’ve used in the human world.

We enter the bedroom at the same time, eyeing each other as we swap rooms, me into the bathroom and him into the closet.

Callahan has made the bed by the time I come back out, and thrown the curtains open to a bright late-fall day.

“You are a hazard to my health.” I point at the sweatpants he’s thrown on, that sit dangerously low on his hips.

Minus underwear.

He may as well be naked. The neutral fabric hides nothing, and deepens the olive tone of his skin while showcasing exactly what he used to make me see stars last night . . . and the early hours of this morning.

“This is what you get when you strut around in my clothes and nothing else,” he bats back.

Callahan takes my hand as we head into the living area, my dress still lying by the door where he tore it from me, and my ruined underwear in ribbons on the table.

Swiping them from where we’re about to eat, I throw them onto the fire as Callahan adds logs to get warmth circulating through the chilled room.