How can I let her out of my sight, knowing anything could trigger one of these attacks? What if I’m not there to hold her together?
I can’t lose another person I care about, not that I love this woman…
But my brother.
My father.
My three sisters.
I—
“Ra’Sa,” Melisa’s gentle voice calls again. She takes one of my hands and places it over her breast. Beneath my palm, her heartbeat pumps. Steady.
Whole.
Alive.
It doesn’t matter what she is or where we are going. I can’t deny what I feel. I soften, and my index finger traces her bare flesh just above her gown’s neckline.
She gasps, but I do not.
If I had thought my blood was pumping hard before, it would be nothing compared to the reaction elicited by the feel of her beauty.
It is one thing to gaze… another to touch.
Gods, I had never touched a woman like this.
As my thumbs stroke the side of her breast, she gasps again, and blood rushes straight to my cock.
The suddenness makes me feel like a molten man. I am impossibly grateful that my brother believed in the worth of humans when I did not.
I want everything all at once: her mouth, her neck. I would bare as much flesh as she would allow in the open air to explore and warm.
Melisa stares up at me with a slightly parted mouth. Then she swallows and steps back, shaking her head. My hands stay frozen in the air where her body was seconds before.
Battle makes the rush of lust that much more potent.
“I am okay, Ra’Sa,” she whispers. Then she bites her lip, and her reaction cools the lust pumping through my veins. As anticipated, the chiding comes, “You shouldn’t?—”
But it is my turn to interrupt her. “We need to burn the body.”
She grows silent and helps me as we scour the ground for wood. We dust off snow, and add branches to the pile of the embers in the middle of the camp. Once the flame is sufficiently large, I toss the halves of the body in.
Melisa watches, eyes wide, as the fire eats away the cursed flesh of the creature.
I don’t want her to stare at the flames. So, instead, I say, “You don’t know how to fight.”
She pauses, looking back up at me and wringing her hands.
“No. It’s dangerous to give the slaves weapons,” she says wryly.
Perhaps it is borne out of the desire to be near her once more, but I say,“Let me teach you. You won’t be a master blade wielder, but you should know how to stab someone lest they get too close.”
She opens her mouth, one side curling upward as if she were going to make a smart comment, but then… she stops.
“I don’t have a blade.”
I shake my head, holding out my hand. My wrist dips and pulls upward from the earth, bringing forth a long, jagged stone. Using my magic, I smooth the handle to protect her small hands and let it fly to my palm. Taking out a spare leather scrap, I wrap and tie it around the handle before passing the makeshift blade to her.