Page 105 of Burdened Bonds

“I’m worried he’s cold,” and then she scurries away with the pig.

I take my opportunity and catch my little rabbit around the waist, pulling her onto my lap. She doesn’t scuttle away, she leans against my body, resting her head against my shoulder.

I strain my fucked-up brain to come up with somethingniceto say. Because me and her, I want us to grow old together. Surrounded by litters of piglets. I like that idea.

For once my mind is empty, devoid of anything she’ll consider nice. The only thoughts rattling around now are dirty, really fucking dirty.

I shake my head, trying to knock an idea free.

“I’ve seen the enforcer kill five men at once,” I tell her. Because she’s sad – I think she’s sad. Sad about him leaving.

“What?” she says, sniffing.

“He fights well.”

“I suppose,” she says. She shifts her head backwards and looks up at me. Those crinkles all over her forehead.

“He can look after himself.”

“Oh,” she says, the crinkles melting away, “he can. But there’s only one of him. I think it’s safer when we’re together. I don’t like it when we’re apart.”

“You believe all that stuff about the five mates?”

She rubs at the wetness on her face. “Do you?”

“Five mates – six of us altogether. Six has always been the most powerful number in magic.”

“Who taught you that?”

“No one,” I say with a chuckle. “It’s just something I know, like how I know breathing will keep me alive,” I bite at her ear, “or stuffing you full of my cock is going to make you feel real good.”

“Behaving, remember?” she says, although she’s perching right over my cock – a cock that’s now hard – so what the hell does she expect.

I flip my head back and growl at the ceiling. “Behaving is hard, little rabbit. You’re asking too much of me. You can’t expect me to be nice to those jerksandkeep my fucking hands off you. It has to be one or the other.”

“It doesn’t.”

I shake my head. “Compromise?” I say a word I’ve never used in my life before. “You can put your hands on me.” I take her hands in mine and rest them on my cock. “And we don’t have to go all the way.”

“I don’t trust you,” she says.

“You don’t?”

“You say one thing, do another.”

Maybe she has a point, my cock is jerking eagerly against her hands. If it came to it, can I trust myself? Could I stop myself? It’s not something I’ve ever had to consider before. I take whatever I want.

“You have a point,” I say. Removing my hands, although encouragingly, hers stay right there.

I pick up the knife from the table and she stares at it, glinting under the kitchen light. I swivel it in my hand and offer her the handle, the blade that’s made a hole in the tabletop, directed straight at my throat.

“Like before, little rabbit? You want me to stop, you have the knife to stop me.”

She stares into my eyes unblinking. Then takes the knife in her hand, weighing it in her palm.

And fuck, doesn’t that look good, my little rabbit with a deadly weapon in her hand?

“I missed this knife,” she whispers, and her magic hisses in the air, a spark of that darker magic there too. Her eyes darken as she stares at the blade, her magic tingling against my skin.