Page 138 of Enchanted Shadows
And as we fell onto the bed, her thighs straddling my own, it was at that exact moment I realized that I was the luckiest damn man alive.
A few hoursand a shower later, our footsteps followed the path back over to the castle. Kessara’s hand was entwined with mine, and I felt like I was walking in an alternate reality.
This woman loved me.
Yeah, she was a princess, but to sum her up as just that was to water her down. It was too succinct for who she was. This was a woman who was wildly courageous, courageous enough to even cozy up to her brother Damek and play a part only so that she could better protect Artem. A woman who never knew her real father. A woman who had been torn at and judged for being different, for holding two powers, something she’d never asked for. And yet, this was a woman strong enough to throw herself into training, make friends, and find love. Though life was jagged, Kessara didn’t allow life to cut her any more deeply than was necessary.
“I left your sword at the training ring,” Kessara said, knocking me out of my thoughts.
I snorted a laugh. “Stealing my weapons, Princess?”
The way I said it this time held less mockery though. And she knew it. “A princess has to make do when trying to get a point across.”
“I think you got the point across, all right.”
“I did,” she confirmed. “But only because I borrowed your weapon.”
“Stole,” I amended.
“Semantics.”
I laughed. “I love you so damn much, Kess.” Her banter, her wit. The fact that she hadn’t let the dark parts of her past keep her from the moments like this one right here.
“And I love you, Owen.”
As our footsteps neared The Dead Lake, I detoured us closer.
“Feeling like another stone throwing challenge?” she asked, picking one up and tossing it. But instead of it skipping across the water beautifully like she’d done in the past, it instead just clunked into the water. Laughing, she added, “Dammit.”
I pulled her close to me. The purple hydrangea tree was off in the distance behind me, another towering oak above us.
“Owen,” she warned.
A thought came to me. A thought I had no intention of letting go, not with the day’s turn in events. I wasn’t ready to quit touching her and get back to business at the castle just yet. “Toss us in shadows.”
“What?”
“Humor me, Kess.”
She did, the coolness all around me a welcomed light weight along my skin. I moved to kiss her, moving us backward until her back hit the trunk of the tree. “What—” she gasped, “are you doing?”
“Taking a detour to the place where I first thought I’d like a woman to look at me the way you looked at the sunset.”
She laughed as I moved downward, trailing kisses in my wake. “I was waiting for the shadows.”
“I know that now,” I laughed with her.
“Owen,” she groaned as her hands gripped my abdominal muscles. “You can’t even see right now.”
“No, but you can. And I can stillfeel.”
“We’re going to be late getting back to the castle, aren’t we?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
We absolutely were.
By the timewe finally made it back, I was feeling a deep contentment the likes of which I hadn’t felt since the days we’d taken down the dead king. And alongside that contentment? Utter exhaustion.
