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)
But Bannin the Blowhard had told Sarya plenty of unbelievable stories. It was her turn to tell him one.
“It looked like a tree trunk. Except it walked. It had arms and legs and…vines. Not green vines, but wooden ropes with sharpened ends. It used those to drag the body—and the vines also stabbed through his chest. And it was tall. Twice as tall as you.”
Nodding thoughtfully, as if he wasn’t a bit surprised by what she’d described, Bannin said, “Sounds like a demon for certain. It was dragging the old hermit?”
“Fas Lergin, yes.” She hadn’t yet told him who’d been killed. “How did you know?”
“That trail we followed. Bits of that ragged blue cloak of his snagged on a few roots.”
She hadn’t noticed that. Only how much blood there’d been. “Why do you think it killed him?”
Sarya had an idea but would rather hear a different one. Bannin instead spoke aloud the thought she didn’t want to say.
“Likely for the same reason we drag home prey from the forest: to eat it.” At her sigh, he gave her a sideways look. “Let’s hope it isn’t also feeding a family.”
She shuddered at the thought. One of those things was more than enough.
His head tilted back and he scanned the canopy. Searching again, now that he had a description of what to look for.
Sarya looked, too. And she realized—“The birds are singing again.”
“They weren’t before?”
“Everything went quiet before the thing showed up. Even the bugs.” How was it that he’d identified Fas Lergin from a few bits of cloth but had missed that? “You didn’t notice?”
“How could I?” He gave Sarya a look that sent hot little tremors through her belly. “The moment I caught sight of your backside in those red trousers you’re wearing, I could hardly pay attention to anything else.”
Thinking with his cock. Even now, with a monster loose in the forest, he was more concerned with loosing the creature in his breeches. Little wonder she couldn’t take him seriously. Maybe if she could, maybe if he wasn’t always flitting off somewhere, she would give in to the warmth that slipped through her flesh when the big man gave her a heated look like that—or when he made her laugh.
But, no. She wouldn’t give in. Sarya was done with love and every messy emotion that came with it. Including lust.
Especially lust.
So she rolled her eyes and didn’t bother with a reply. Instead she started back down the path. No reason to stay in the clearing. The demon had escaped them—and there was no helping Fas Lergin. So the only way forward was to stay alert and slay it when the opportunity came.
Sarya was in the forest often enough, no doubt that opportunity would come.
And if she felt a tiny thrill at the idea of putting her sword to use again…? Well, a woman had to find joy somewhere. She’d given up on love and cut back on ale, so slaying a demon was as fine a way as any to get her thrills in.
Bannin caught up to her and shortened his massive stride to match hers. “You’re thinking of how my tongue felt?”
“What?” Sarya skidded to a halt.
He tilted his head and gave a significant look to her hand, which she’d been absently rubbing against her thigh. Because she could still feel his tongue against her palm.
“I was wiping off any traces of you.”
“That’s not wiping,” he said, his expression insufferably smug. “That’s an itch you’re trying to scratch. An itch I gave to you.”
“Like a rash?” she asked sweetly.
“If so, then I’m a rash that won’t ever fade away.” Green eyes glittering, Bannin stepped closer, making her abruptly aware of the massive size of him. Not that Sarya ever forgot. She just didn’t let herself think of it much, but when he stood before her, so tall and broad, with his tunic stretched across his barrel of a chest and his leather breeches molded to the thick muscles of his thighs, she couldn’t not think of it. “You’ve got an itch that needs scratching, Sarya, and I’ll do it for you. I’ll scratch it hard or slow. With my tongue or any other part of me that you’d like.”
“The only part of you that I ever liked was your beard. But that’s been gone for a year, so…” She trailed off with a shrug, as if to say there was nothing he could do about it now, and as if her mind wasn’t echoing with “hard or slow” and imagining how hard or slow he might go.
“Oick!” With a mock scowl, Bannin rubbed his hand over his clean-shaven jaw. “I’ll grow the beard back—”
“Too late,” Sarya tossed over her shoulder as she began striding down the trail again, then nearly stumbled when he continued.
“—and give you a whisker burn between your pretty thighs.”