Page 48

It reverberated in my soul, the truth of it ringing bells in my head. If it was within my power, if I still had air in my lungs and life in my body, nothing would hurt Owain.

I might as well have gotten down on one knee and sworn fealty, but I couldn’t deny the feelings that were coursing through my body. Owain touched something in me that only one other person had been able to evoke. The desire to protect at all costs. The urge to go to battle over any perceived injustice to them.

My mother was the only person I’d ever felt so strongly about, and I didn’t even know this man in front of me. But the feeling was the same, its hooks digging deep and refusing to be pulled out without leaving their scars.

Owain was serene as I stared at him without talking, perfectly content to have a staring match because he was Owain and everything strange was normal.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before,” I whispered.

And not just because he was apparently some mythical creature with some sort of power previously unknown to me.

“I might be one of a kind,” Owain said, a little shy, a little unintentionally flirty again.

I let go of one of his hips to adjust his slightly crooked glasses. “You definitely are.”

He gave a muted gasp at my touch, and my libido immediately reminded me that we were all alone in this weird place, and unlike the market tent, I could make him scream here. There was nobody to hear us. Nobody to interrupt. I could spread him open. I could taste him everywhere. I could dive between those arse cheeks and eat him out until he fainted.

He was so close, so warm, and he smelled so good I wanted to drown in it. With my hand still on his cheek, I gently moved his head up until he was looking at me and started closing the distance between my lips and his.

I could already taste him when he moved away.

“Come on. I want to show you something,” Owain whispered, the words vibrating with excitement.

“I want to show you something too,” I said, grabbing his hand and placing it on my hard cock.

“And I want to see it, but…me first…”

He grasped my hand again, linking our fingers this time as he led me toward the cliff face a little further down from the B&B, where a broken gate was lying on the ground, a warning sign next to it.

“Owain—”

“It’s fine. It’s a suggestion.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s an omen. We’re going to die.”

“I’ve done this a hundred times.”

“That’s what all the news articles will say after they find our bodies washed up on some shore.”

He turned those eyes on me again. “Don’t you trust me?”

“That’s unfair.”

“What is?”

The worst part about it was it seemed entirely natural. He wasn’t intentionally pulling on my heartstrings; his whole being just seemed designed to tug them.

I sighed, accepting my fate and girding my loins. “Lead the way.”

His ecstasy nearly made the terror worth it. Nearly.

I was on the edge of screaming as soon as Owain began the trek down the irregular stairs. Some had crumbled away long ago, leaving only jagged bits of cliff. Owain skipped down like a mountain goat while I slunk along with my back to the wall, free hand scrabbling for anything I could find to hold on to while the other wouldn’t let go of its death grip on Owain’s.

The wind whipped at me, the waves thundering underneath us. “Don’t look down. Just don’t look down,” I coached myself.

Eventually we drew to a stop on a small outcropping. We hadn’t reached the bottom of the cliff by any means, and from a look back up we seemed to have hit a little over halfway.

“Look.” Owain gestured out.