Page 63 of My Hero
The first thing she did was calmly empty it of the half dozen monks who stood gaping at her. Women were normally not admitted to monasteries, but she didn’t have time to argue with them. They endangered their own health every moment they lingered. Pushing back her sleeves and authoritatively dropping her bag onto the bed, she informed the prior she needed to work in peace.
Only when the door closed behind him did she let her mask of cool detachment slip. She rushed to Garth’s side, peering anxiously into his face.
By the candlelight, his skin appeared as pale and transparent as vellum. Beneath damp tangles of hair, his brow was troubled, creased in a furrow of suffering. His breath came shallow and strained, scarcely budging the wool coverlet doubled over his chest. He shivered faintly, as if the marrow of his bones were made of ice. As she watched him, his eyelids rippled, and his lips moved over silent syllables of the language of dreams.
She closed her eyes. The gift was weak within her, weary with use. Still, praying for one last glimmer of her exhausted talent, just enough for Garth, she began rubbing her hands together.
His temples were hot where she placed her palms upon them, yet he shuddered as if he slept in snow. A faint vibration tickled her fingertips, and she gratefully felt the golden glow expanding, connecting her energies to his. Then she waited for a sign—the name of an herb or a vision of the specific combination of extracts that would heal his particular ills.
When the vision swirled and resolved to crystal clarity, she snatched her hands back. But it was too late. She’d seen it. The all-too-familiar black demon still slithered across her mind, breathing poisonous fog to wither everything in its path.
“Nay,” she wheezed.
The black snake. Death.
“Nay.”
Garth couldn’t die. He was young and fit. His entire life stretched out before him. It couldn’t be true.
And yet, she’d never been wrong. Garth de Ware was marked for death.
“Nay,” she insisted, twisting her fingers, as if repeating the word would somehow drive destiny away.
He couldn’t die,couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. He’d never truly lived. He’d never sworn his eternal love to a bride, never bounced a child of his own flesh and blood on his knee, never known the deep satisfaction of gazing across land that belonged to him.
Tears of dismay filled her eyes even as her chest heaved with angry breath. She doubled her fists.
He wasn’t going to die. By God, she wouldn’t let him.
She clamped her jaw and ran a shaky hand through her hair. There was no walking away—not while he needed her, not while he still breathed.
She sighed raggedly. For Garth to have any hope of survival, she’d have to joust with death itself.
From the depths of his dream, Garth groaned. The ache of spent desire rested low in his belly. But Mariana, her green eyes full of smoke, her hair splayed like splinters of charred wood against his skin, still smoldered with longing.
“Take me. Take me again,” she pleaded.
He wanted to. Lord, he wanted to. Mariana was devilishly beautiful. Her writhing body shone with sweat, accentuating each supple curve and alluring hollow. Her breasts heaved dramatically with every breath, her hard, red nipples perched like ripe cherries atop the snowy globes. The tangle of ebony curls between her legs was matted, soaked with her juices, yet the dark pink petals of her womanhood swelled for him again. His milky essence painted her breasts and belly and thighs. And still she wanted more.
She deserved more. He wanted to give her more.
But he couldn’t.
Five times he’d risen for her, joined with her, made her moan and scream with ecstasy as they rode over the brink of lust together. Another half dozen times he’d pleasured her with hands and tongue until he thought she’d surely swoon with exhaustion.
And nowhewas exhausted. She’d depleted him. His weary flag refused to rise even once more. Shite, he hardly had the strength to hoist a flag of surrender.
“What have you done to me, woman?” he murmured with a smile, slurring the words.
“Done? I’ve only begun,” she purred, bisecting his chest with a sharp fingernail.
This time his groan was half a chuckle. He was drunk with exhaustion. “You’ve worn me out.”
“Nonsense,” she breathed, dragging her thigh sensuously over his.
“Drained me dry.”
She pouted prettily and traced circles in the damp hair below his navel. “I’d wager your brothers wouldn’t tire so easily,” she mewled in disappointment.
