Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
“Give me your hand.”
His voice is a low command in my ear, and before I can think why I shouldn’t, I give him what he wants. The contact is gentle, and the calluses from his sword grip rasp against my skin as he guides my palm downward. I don’t understand what he’s doing—
My hand is turned around and pressed in between his legs … onto the very large, very hard ridge that fills out the front of his leather britches.
Instantly, he releases his hold of me, his arms raising up as though I’m trying to rob him with a musket.
As my palm stays right where it is, he growls, “There are many things you can question about me. Morals, scruples, the very air in my lungs. But never doubt that I want you.”
“How?” I whisper. “Why…”
His fingers return to the ends of my pale hair, and I marvel at how his hands of war can be so careful with me. Then his touch travels upward. He brushes my cheek with his knuckles and concludes with a pass of his thumb over my lower lip.
“How can I not?” He smiles, just a little. “I’ve never seen anybody like you before—and I knew that before I ever saw your face.”
On some level, I can’t believe I’m standing here with him like this, and I sternly order my hand to remove itself and go elsewhere. Anywhere. Unfortunately, my palm does not find this order commanding in the slightest. Instead, I press into him, exploring the contours of his arousal, the length and thickness of his shaft, the blunt head of him, the—
The hiss is such a surprise, I nearly meet Merc’s eyes, but as my gaze stops at his mouth, I see what I’m doing to him. His teeth are gritted, the front ones so white and straight, his canines prominent with their points. The grimace on his face suggests that I’m hurting him.
The throb of his arousal tells me I’m not.
After all, I may be a virgin, but some things are self-explanatory, even for the uninitiated—
Merc steps back sharply. Turns away. Cocks one leg out to the side and sinks down, while both his arms disappear in front of his hips. There are a couple of grunts as he rearranges things, and all I want, all I care about—Badlands, and the Lake of Lost Souls be damned—is to race around and watch him.
Is that callused hand inside the britches? Or is he attempting to relieve a very critical constriction from an external approach—
Merc curses under his breath and starts to walk off, that broadsword returning to the palm that put my mine where it … went.
“You’re not leaving me then?” I say.
He glances over his shoulder, and I swear he’s rolling his eyes at me. “What do you think.”
With casual, brutal grace, he begins to flip the broadsword in the air, the honed blade spinning in the sunlight before the hilt is caught. I’m momentarily distracted by the show of coordination and strength—as well as the very real possibility that if he misjudges the re-grip, he’s going to hack off his forearm.
“Well, you could be running off,” I remark.
“Oh, yes. That’ll happen, sure.” He tosses the broadsword behind his back and over his shoulder, catching it with both hands this time. Then he weaves the blade through the hot air in front of him, as if he’s parrying and jousting with an invisible foe. “At least you don’t have to worry about me taking that horse. If I try and get up into the saddle now, I’ll be a gelding.”
I wince as he throws the blade behind and over his shoulder again. “Isn’t that more an issue with the testicles?”
“Oh, I’ve got one there, too. Trust me.”
“You sure are walking funny.”
Another glare comes lancing in my direction, and to back it up, he points the broadsword’s tip at me. “You try to sit astride with a log shoved in your pants. Then you can talk to me about—”
We both see the attack at the same time. An enormous black bird of prey, the size of one of the trestle tables from the pub, has come out of nowhere, and is shooting down toward us from the brilliant blue sky like a tear in the fabric of space and time itself. Its wingspan is easily twice as long as I am tall, and with a black beak sharp as a—
“Get in the saddle,” Merc barks. “Now!”
I don’t think twice. I leap up onto the horse and gather the reins, pulling the gelding around.
“Go! You go!”
“What? No, come with—”
“I’m too heavy!” Merc cuts me off with a slash of that sword. “He needs to run like your lives depend on it! I stay, you go—”
A horrible, high-pitched scream pierces through the entire landscape, as if the ear-numbing sound emanates from everywhere, all at once.