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She trailed off, but Bannin could finish that for her, because it came back around to her simple answer. “The coward was there.” When she nodded, he asked, “Do you wish that you’d stayed?”
Relief slipped through him when she shook her head. “I don’t think I’d have healed as easily if I had.” She chewed on her kiss-swollen upper lip for a moment before she said, “I have been thinking lately of going to see my parents.”
“Will that mean seeing the coward?”
“Probably.” She shrugged as if to say it hardly mattered. “But I’ve been thinking that if I just consider him as a sort of brother instead of someone I wanted to marry, it’ll be easier to get along.”
Bannin could not imagine loving her and then thinking of her as a sister. But he could easily imagine having a worthless brother. “It won’t hurt to see him?”
“I don’t think so.” Her expression scrunched and then smoothed, as if she’d given a rueful shrug with her face. “Though I just realized that only yesterday.”
The moment when she’d dropped her spoon, as if thunderstruck. Her mentioning it now made things easy for him, because that was something he’d planned to ask about next. “What realization was that?”
“I used to blame myself for not being enough—”
“WHAT?”
She grinned up at him, as if entertained by his bellowing. “Then I realized he wasn’t enough.”
Bannin had already known that, but he only said, “You are enough. Any man would be fortunate to have you…but you should know that I will kill any man who isn’t me.”
That made her laugh. “You once called it a lucky escape. And I’ve begun thinking that might be true. He’s a fine Guard, don’t mistake me. I wouldn’t hesitate to fight beside him. But in other ways—as a man who’d said he loved me—I’ve come to realize he was more shine than steel.” Her honey-brown eyes met his, held steady. “Especially now that I’ve got something more solid to compare him to.”
Bannin’s heart swelled up so big and so fast, he didn’t know how his chest didn’t explode. Wordlessly he hauled her closer, and ended the finest night of his life—so far—by using his mouth in far more satisfying ways than talking.
Chapter 7
Sarya the Mighty
Only the faintest light peeked through the shutters when Sarya awakened in the same manner that she had every morning for almost a week now—with Bannin’s large hand cupping her breast, his solid chest warming the full length of her spine, and his engorged cock nestled along the split of her ass.
She hadn’t yet felt that thick shaft inside her. With every daylight moment spent hunting the demon, there’d been no chance to visit the village’s wise woman and secure the powders to prevent pregnancy. She’d fallen into bed each night so exhausted that much of Bannin’s particular brand of courting happened near dawn instead. More than once she’d awoken cradled against him as she was now, only to immediately find herself on her back and Bannin’s mouth upon her cunt, bringing her to orgasm before the lightening sky announced the new day.
Only one time had Sarya managed to turn the tables, because she could not easily move without waking him first. Yet now, as she remembered the hot, salty taste of his pulsating length, as she recalled the gasping, tortured groans he’d made each time she’d sucked him to the back of her throat, as she pictured the shaking tension of his body and his fists dragging at the bedcovers in his desperate attempt to maintain control—then the explosive violence of his release upon her tongue—her own arousal bloomed deep, and she needed to take him in that way again. Needed to watch him come undone.
Slowly she inched her body downward, her hand reaching behind to grasp his morning-hardened erection. Yet no sooner had her fingers skimmed past her own hip did she find her wrist caught in an implacable grip. His sleep-roughened voice was hot against her ear.
“What are you about, woman?”
“I was looking for my sword,” she whispered, “so when I felt something long and hard behind me, I wondered if it had slipped between us whilst we slept.”
“And why would you reach for a sword so early in the morn?” Humor filled his reply, yet Sarya’s every response was lost to her shuddering gasp when his fingers slipped into the sultry wetness between her thighs. “Do you intend to fight me?”
“I intended only to teach you.”
His teasing fingers paused. “Teach me?”
“How to wield a sword,” she said with a grin.
“You think I don’t know? I’ve wielded a sword my entire life.”
She lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “I’ve seen no evidence that you can do more than wrap the hilt in your fist and thrust your blade once or twice. Whereas I am a swordmaster. I even have a parchment from the Horse Guards, proclaiming me such.”
