Excerpt from Forging the Bond

I'd like to give a huge thank you to the wonderful Autumn Dawn for being willing to throw some feedback my way. She's awesome and her books are awesome. Please let me know what you all honestly think of this excerpt, or if you want more. If you hate it, or just hate a piece of it, I'd like to know.

UPDATE: If you have any comments you don't care to post on here, or they are too complicated to add in a comment, please send them to laney.stuart@gmail.com. I generally respond to email very quickly.

“So what happened?” she asked. “How did you get me out of there?” He sighed and set his plate on the bedside table. He had absolutely zero desire to tell her.

“I heard you scream, so I ran outside to see what was wrong. They must have had some kind of horses and moved a good bit faster than I could on foot.” His jaw clenched in anger as he remembered and his grip tightened on his mug until his knuckles whitened. “I followed their trail to the military installation outside a tree city. They had you chained to the ceiling dangling by your wrists. I broke the door, killed the two men guarding the building, killed the man cutting you, and then brought you back here.” He steeled himself for her inevitable disgust and horror and intentionally looked away from her so he wouldn’t have to see it in her eyes. He would be lucky if she didn’t run screaming into the forest. In his experience, women usually seemed to have an issue with killers. Alan certainly wasn’t sorry they were dead and he wouldn’t apologize for it. If given the same choice again, he’d repeat it. He grimaced and plunked his mug down roughly on the nightstand. Even worse, he noticed the blood under his fingernails when the scalding coffee slopped over onto his hand. It was a wonder that she wasn’t scared of him already. He was still staring at his hands when Sage reached out and threaded her small fingers through his larger ones, coffee, blood, and all.

“Thank you for saving me. Those Elves would have killed me and they would have done it slowly.” she said, “It isn’t the first time they have tried to do something like that. I am grateful they are dead.” He looked back into her eyes and was surprised to see tears running silently down her cheeks. He did the only thing his shocked brain could think to do. He let go of her hands and gently smoothed the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. Seeing her cry tore at something long dormant inside him. Sage didn’t flinch away and she didn't seem afraid of or disgusted with him. She nestled her face into his hand, the hand that had ended those lives, and laid a soft kiss on his work roughened palm.

At this point Alan didn’t care what race she was or wasn't. Heedless of the alarms screeching inside his head, he slid his hand into the tangled mass of her hair to cradle the back of her head. Ever so slowly, he took her mouth in a searing kiss. Sage twined her fingers in his shaggy locks and returned his kiss with enough heat to burn the whole house to a crisp. Gods if she was this responsive to a kiss... He couldn't help but picture her writhing beneath him crying out his name. He wrapped one arm around her to pull her closer, completely forgetting about her cracked ribs. Sage blanched dead white and gasped in pain. It had about the same effect as a bucket of ice water being dumped over his head and he pulled away from her with a sick feeling in his gut. He miserably slumped back down into his chair.

"I shouldn't have done that." he muttered, clenching his jaw in frustration. Sage carefully propped herself back up against his headboard, breathing in short, shallow pants.

"What do you mean?" She gasped. Her cheeks were flushed from the combined effect of his kiss and the pain in her side. He grunted and raked his hands through his hair.

"You are injured, I am taking advantage of the situation, take your pick." He grumbled. She gave a short laugh and winced when her ribs pained her again.

"I don't think that kiss requires any apologies." She blurted. He looked up at her sharply and she blushed. She looked away from him, self consciously clutching the blanket to her chest. He watched her grimace when she tried to run her fingers through her snarled hair.  

His expression softened and he offered her his hands, smoothly changing the subject. "Would you like a bath?" She looked so grateful that he almost laughed despite the guilt roiling in his stomach.

"That would be wonderful." She slipped her small hands trustingly into his and he pulled her up to a standing position, wrapping one arm carefully around her waist to keep her steady while they walked the ten steps to the bathroom.