Page 86 of Woods of the Raven

My face was pressed to his throat, and I opened my mouth against the flushed, sweaty skin that tasted even better than it smelled. “Don’t ever leave me,” I said, the words tumbling free before I could stop them, knowing he would run and never come back. I was offering him a life filled with terrors and uncertainty and continual watchfulness that would never ever give him rest or—

“No,” he whispered, kissed my forehead, and squeezed me tighter, as though trying to fuse us together, make us one. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t even think about that.”

“But—”

“C’mon, Xan, I felt that too. That crazy, scary…bonding, merging? Is there a magic word for that?”

“Great sex?” I teased him, because I was overwhelmed and undone, stripped bare, nothing to me but my heart, which belonged to him.

And it would never change.

If he left me, it would go with him, and I would still be me but not. There was no recovery from this. All that I was, was his.

The hard pinch to my ass startled me, bringing me back from terrifying, life-changing thoughts and down again to him and me, wrecking the bed together.

“It’s us now, Xan. You and me. Say that’s what you want.”

I was so far down the rabbit hole in my head, I’d forgotten I needed to share more words with him. “Lor, I want you to stay here and live with me and—”

“Marry you someday.”

“Marry…me and…” Big word, huge word, and he just put it right out there, center stage, not afraid to name the eventuality, where we were headed. “Yeah.”

“Because?”

Gods, I was terrible at this. “I can’t live without you.”

“Because?” he repeated, leading me.

“You’re mine, aren’t you?”

“Yes, idiot,” he said, laughing at me, but then he sobered. “I feel this too, Xan, like we’re two parts of one thing, and I know it’s too fast to say bigger words, to put a name on this, on us, and I know there’s magic in here too.”

“There is,” I agreed, “but mostly it’s just us.”

“I know, so yeah, when this threat is over, I’m gonna come live in this amazing, scary place with you because I’ve never felt more comfortable anywhere in my life.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

He wanted to be with me in my home that I was finally going to share. “I was afraid if we…here, that you’d be caught in a spiderweb, and I wanted you to make your own decisions and not be stuck or—”

“I’m choosing you, Xan.” His hand slid to my lower back and then to my ass, settling there protectively, possessively. “All mine.”

I closed my eyes and let the words sink in.

He chuckled softly. “You have no idea what you’re in for.”

But he was mine too, and that was all that mattered.

TEN

We slept, got up, showered, changed, ate sandwiches, and began our hunt for Threun. The books I normally used, that were in my bedroom, basically echoed what Declan said which was “possible mountain god.” Lorne checked the internet on his phone and there were strange results, none of which were at all helpful. He brought up more books from the new library and I showed him where my grandfather’s books were in his den. We went through those, without success and then he announced he was going home to get his laptop.

“You realize there’s no electricity in my house,” I told him. “That light in the library you turned on, those are still gas lines powering gas lamps.”

“With pilot lights which are handy,” he teased me.