Page 25 of A Balm of Healing
She giggled when he ran his tongue over the ticklish spot between her shoulder and throat. But rather than pushing him away, she pulled him closer and released a contented sigh.
Slowly, he backed her up until he pinned her against the wall. It felt good to have so much control over his body. Instead of hanging useless, his legs were filled with strength he had not experienced in many years.
“I suppose the packingcanwait.”
They met in another kiss, this one filled with the heat of passion. He didn’t think he would ever tire of the way her touch left a trail of flames in their wake or the way her kiss filled him with intense longing.
He cupped the back of her knee and lifted her leg to his waist, trailing kisses along her jaw to her throat and across her collarbone. Her fingers quickly worked to unbutton his shirt, and his desire intensified as she ran her hands over his chest and teasingly hooked her thumbs in the waistband of his trousers.
Oh, how he loved this woman—
“Autumn winds!” a familiar voice gasped in his native tongue behind him.
Emeric dropped Gweneth’s leg and spun around fast enough to give himself a headache, only to find his son staring at them with his mouth open, his wife, Seraphina, equally rooted in place with shock a step behind him.
“Bas!” Emeric cried as he hastily buttoned his shirt, all while his face burned with the heat of fluster. He continued speaking in the Sun Fae language so Gweneth could understand them. “Don’t you at least have the decency to look away?”
“Uhhh…no?” Bastien glanced back and forth between them, followed by a lingering stare on his legs before he, too, switched tongues as he ran a confused hand through his long, white hair. “I don’t understand! You’re standing? Walking? Kissing a strange woman?”
Out of all the times for his son to show up unannounced, this was the worst. It was so like him. “The least you could have done was knock.”
“I did!”
“No, you didn’t,” Seraphina said with a growing smirk, her white and brown wings lightly fluttering from where they draped against her back, a stark contrast to the black of her hair and lips. “You walked right in.”
“All right, so I didn’t. But how was I supposed to know you’d be catching embers with a woman in your kitchen?”
With a sigh of lingering embarrassment, he gently took hold of Gweneth’s hand and guided her closer to the other two. “This is Gweneth Caddell. She’s a High Healer Sun Fae. And she’s…uhh…my fiancée.”
A smile slowly grew across Bastien’s face as he glanced between the two of them. “I see what’s going on here. You fell in love with the woman who healed your legs!”
Emeric’s face flamed with heat, and he tried to hide his embarrassment with his hand. He’d wanted to approach this situation delicately with Bastien, not find himself thrown under the cart and run over several times as he tried to catch his breath.
But Bastien took it in stride as he grasped one of Gweneth’s hands. “It’s good to meet you, Gwen. I’m Bastien. I hope you’ve heard lots of good things about me.”
“Well…” She smiled despite the obvious fluster in her pinched mouth as she tucked a strand of hair behind her long ears. “I’ve heard plenty about you. Lots of the mischief you’ve gotten yourself into as well.”
“Someone needed to keep Pops on his toes. His life would have beenbor-ringwithout me.” He turned back to him, hands on his hips. “When’s the wedding? We’re only visiting for a week, so it better be sooner rather than later.”
“I…uhh…” His fluster twisted his tongue until he could barely push words out of his mouth.
Thankfully, Gweneth stepped in for him. “We had planned a wedding in Heulwen in two months to make sure you and Seraphina were able to attend. But…” She shrugged and adjusted her spectacles. “Why not marry in Ebriel? The family is here.”
“Everyone except Calle,” Emeric reminded when his tongue finally untwisted. “It would not be fair to leave him out.”
Bastien clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Road trip to Heulwen, the lot of us. I haven’t ridden in a carriage in…” He rubbed his chin as if deep in thought. “Probably close to sixteen years.”
“Then how did you get here?”
“I ran.” He grinned and gestured to Seraphina with his chin. “And she flew.”
“And I won,” Seraphina added with an elbow to Bastien’s ribs, the perfect smirk to match his own.
Emeric shook his head. “It was a race?”
“Of course.” His son waved away his surprise before turning to his wife. “But you only won because of the snow.”
“I did not.” Seraphina sidled closer to Bastien and tapped his chest with a finger. “Winged fae are naturally faster than those on the ground.”
