Page 14 of Mountain Man's Muse
Again, her expression must have worried him because he left the soapy water to stand in front of her, his knees bumping hers while his hands dripped. “Whatever happened to you, it happened far away from here. You’re with me now, and I won’t let anything bad touch you again.”
The bad things weren’t far at all, just over the next valley, where the spoors would be growing, where the rebellious fae would be taken by the queen’s Ruiner. She forced herself to look up at Josh with a tremulous smile. “You are a good man to bring me here.”
Had she ever met a good fae? Glorious and powerful, yes; never simply good. But Josh’s goodness put him so terribly at risk. How would he even recognize fae peril? He certainly hadn’t seen it in her.
By bringing the faedrealii intrigue here, she was endangering his valley as unfairly as she’d been banished from her place. The knowledge chewed at her with teeth like Bunco’s, dull and grinding, but she didn’t see any other way to get home.
Unable to apologize or explain without betraying herself, she had nothing to offer him except a musetta’s exhilaration. She reached out to tangle her fingers in the waistband of his jeans. “Let me be your dessert.”
He stepped between her spread knees. “You are sweet.” His voice was husky.
“No, but I can pretend for you.”
“Adelyn…”
She slid off the stool to her knees and unzipped his jeans in one graceful move. His erection surged from behind the denim before she had safely cleared the little steel teeth.
She smiled at him as she tugged his jeans lower. “What were you thinking over there at the dirty dishes?”
“About you. I was thinking about you.” He propped one bare foot on the stool, giving her full access.
She slipped her fingers under his sac, caressing the hot, heavy weight of him. He groaned when she breathed across his damp tip.
“Ah, Adelyn. I want you so bad.”
“You have me,” she assured him. For this moment. As for what came next… That too would be him, if the jerk of his hips was any indication. She would give him this. Never mind that the fae only took and never gave. This once, she would be musetta and he would remember her forever, if only in his dreams.
Was that cruel? Perhaps. She was fae after all. But just once more, she wanted to hear him cry out her name.
Chapter 6
The winter evening dark closed in before Josh went out to settle the animals. Wolly glared at him reproachfully as they completed their tasks and made one last circuit through the barn.
Josh grinned. “You’re just cranky because you’re sleeping in the living room tonight.”
He had tried to get a call out with the cell signal booster, which was fairly reliable, but had given him only crackling static. So no word to his hired hands or to Vaile.
He rarely let tech failures upset him—never seemed to make a difference—and this time he has happy to let his cozy world get just a little smaller for just a little longer.
Adelyn seemed content too. She had offered to accompany him on his nightly tour, but he preferred to keep her curled in the comforter, warming his bed.
A man could get used to that.
He wanted to finish the belt buckle for her. He had all the right stones, and the base was delicate enough for a woman.
For his woman.
The thought came out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere really. It came from somewhere behind his own belt buckle, but it was a strange mix of low and high, from cock to belly to heart. All of him wanted to put his mark on her.
And he knew it wasn’t just the sex, fantastic as it might be. He’d never felt this way about a woman. He’d watched his ex leave without a word, admitting to himself that she’d never been and could never be happy in his valley. But Adelyn…
He might never let her go.
Josh paused under the big barn light that filled the yard outside the stable with a white glow. He took a breath of the cold air to steady his suddenly racing pulse. Just standing there, but he was moving too fast. He was practically branding her as his with a big ol’ belt buckle when a girl like her would be thinking of rings—fine rings, rings with sparkling rocks of the kind he would never have the chance to touch.
God, washethinking of rings? He dragged one hand around the collar of his coat.
He wasn’t going to say anything. That would be stupid. He would wait. He had time. The cattle were fed and watered. The horses and goats were in their stalls for the night. The hens and their damned rooster were battened down. Wolly was...
