Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 150(@200wpm)___ 120(@250wpm)___ 100(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 150(@200wpm)___ 120(@250wpm)___ 100(@300wpm)
Perhaps he hadn’t intended to be so open with her about his parents? Likely he hadn’t expected her to ask about his being second.
Yet she was glad to know where he was vulnerable. Not because she wanted to hurt him, but because she didn’t want to. Especially not accidentally. If they did move forward, it was important to know that he would need her to put him first, and her need to protect herself might make it seem as if Sarya would not. So she would have to make an effort to reassure him even when her instinct was to withdraw.
Because look at what his withdrawal—as she’d perceived it—had done to her.
In a way, she supposed they had that in common. Oh, the circumstances were surely different and her parents truly cared for her, but still…they had put someone else ahead of her. If Crase had been a brother, she wouldn’t have been so hurt and betrayed. But he wasn’t their son and his wife wasn’t their daughter, so she had felt replaced.
Yet with her parents, the issue had not only been that they’d made a son of the man who’d been about to marry the daughter they believed had died. Perhaps they might have withdrawn from him for Sarya’s sake. But by then, they had also become grandparents to his children, and never could they hurt those children by setting them aside. Never would Sarya want them to, either. So it wasn’t that they’d put Crase ahead of her. They’d simply had no answer to the difficult question of ‘what do we do now to avoid hurting anyone?’
Better that Sarya be hurt than those children. And as for Crase… Well, Crase had not put another woman ahead of her, either.
He’d put himself ahead.
Her heart seemed to stop at that thought, yet her brain raced. Because here she was, sitting with a man who’d gone searching for a way to break the stone curse long before it touched his family, simply because it was the right thing to do. And when it finally had touched his family, it had only added to his motivation.
Yet Crase had…what?
A memory struck her then, of how Crase had railed against whoever had stolen Anhera’s jewels and started the curse, and how he’d ranted about what he’d do to the thief when they were discovered. Yet he hadn’t looked for the thief or the jewels. Instead he’d sobbed and held onto Sarya while asking how he would go on without her—which at the time had seemed so loving, so devoted, to claim that he couldn’t live without her. Yet she had been the one turning to stone and comforting him for the loss he was about to suffer. She had never lacked anything, except his support and comfort during the most horrific days of her life.
The only lack was his.
Her spoon clattered into her bowl. Bannin’s eyes shot up to meet hers.
“What is it?”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “I…had a realization.”
He looked as if he was about to ask. Then he didn’t. Instead he downed the rest of his cider and rose from his chair—then began to pace in front of the hearth. Back and forth. Stopping, turning toward her, appearing as if he was about to ask, then dragging a hand through his hair until it stuck up wildly, pacing again and muttering about something that sounded like “battering ram.”
She watched him, half bemused and half confused, and wholly appreciative of his loosely laced sleeping trousers, which seemed to slip a little lower on his hips with each agitated step. “A battering ram? Do you think we’ll need to use one against the demon?”
“It’s me!” He tossed his hands up toward the ceiling and pivoted to face her. “I’m the battering ram! Though I’m trying to be nimble as I court you. Yet all I can think of is kissing you. And I’m trying to resist.”
Happiness bloomed through her chest. A nimble courtship? His behavior of that day suddenly took on a new slant. “Truly, you ought not do that.”
“Do what?” It was a near roar.
“Is it a strain to resist me?”
“It takes all of my strength,” he gritted out. “And I am not a weak man.”
So saying, he spun away from her again, slapping at his dripping tunic as he paced past the hanging clothes, and was slapped by a sodden sleeve in return.
Sarya almost burst into laughter. The poor man. So frustrated. “If it’s such an effort to restrain yourself now…and I suppose throughout the night?”—his despairing glance was answer enough—“What strength will you have left come morn, when we need to fight the demon?”
Bannin thundered to a stop and peered at her disbelievingly. “Do not dance around this. Are you saying that you prefer being courted by a battering ram?”
“I’m saying you ought to kiss me.”