Page 24 of My Hexed Honeymoon (The Bridgewater Pack #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Morning sunlight filters through the tent seams, painting the world in gold. The fire outside must've burned low during the night, because the air in here is cool—but not cold. Not with her curled up against me.

I shift onto one hip to lie on my side, prop my head in one hand, and watch her breathe. She looks so peaceful when she sleeps, giving no indication to the fire within that’ll blaze to life as soon as she’s up.

It takes me a moment to pinpoint why I’m staring at her like this—counting the rise and fall of her chest, cataloging her hums and the tiny, worried noises she’s made since returning from the Hollow with the Blood Loom.

Every few minutes like clockwork, and there’s no way Riven hasn’t also noticed Talia’s rising apprehensions.

But I noticed them in a very different way, attuning every breath, every shift—every everything—to Natalia. So that’s what’s beginning to worry me, though I think it might already be too late to do anything to stop it.

I’m even done pretending it’s strictly the bond.

Yesterday, for the first time in… I don’t know how long, I was scared.

I hadn’t been scared to fight Conall for Alpha—regardless of knowing we’d have to go all out and there’d be broken bones and possibly punctured lungs which hurt like a bitch. I hadn’t been scared to marry a witch, either, just irritated it was necessary for my pack’s survival.

But when Talia began to seize in my arms yesterday, it felt like someone punched through my ribcage and fisted my heart, squeezing, weighing whether I got to keep breathing or not. Much worse than a punctured lung or broken ribs, for the record.

I’m falling for her.

As in who she is as a person, not a thought to the incredibly sexy package she came in.

My dick twitches, calling me a liar, and fine. All I do when she’s around is have dirty thoughts about her curves and getting her naked and moaning beneath me, and how lucky I am to be the guy who gets to watch it sashay as we hike our way down this mountain.

But underneath all that, as surprising as it is—most of all to me—I admire who she is as a person. From her stubbornness to her humor to that quiet kindness she tries to hide under her sarcasm. All the determined parts of her that keep showing up when others would’ve given up by now.

She didn’t have it easy growing up—no question. And maybe that’s why there’s something in me that reaches for her, even when my prejudices insist I shouldn’t. That wounded part of my soul I like to keep buried—losing my mother, father, and two sisters—it wakes up around her.

I’m not sure if it’s being around a witch or if it’s telling me not to fail this time around.

It was my job to protect them.

My mother and father were warriors, trained in battle. But my sisters... they were just kids. They’d tease each other endlessly and beg for piggyback rides like the one I gave Talia yesterday. They’d ask me to read them stories in order to fall asleep, and I’d always get talked from one into two.

They didn’t get a happy ending. Why should I? Why should any creature responsible for putting them through that? And yes, I meant witches, but I’m not sure what I mean anymore.

For the first time in this whole forced-marriage process, I actually let myself imagine a child of my own. One that’s part me, part Talia.

My youngest sister had caramel-colored highlights in her hair, her skin fair enough we teased her she was the gringo of the family.

In my mind’s eye, I see a little one with my coloring and caramel-colored curls, an adorable blend of me and Talia that looks a bit like Mariana.

As my youngest sister was also our prissiest family member, the comparison makes me smile bigger.

I can see them laughing with Conall and Kerrigan’s kid as we all watch on from the porch. Giving them the safe place to run and play we dreamed of giving others one day.

That’s a future worth fighting for.

A protective surge slams into me so hard that my fangs elongate, the tips of my claws coming out to dig into my palms as I clench my fists and blow a breath out my nose. I’ll do anything to keep the woman sleeping next to me safe.

Talia’s breath hitches, picking up as her eyelashes flutter open. With a contented hum, she stretches against me. The thin fabric of my T-shirt does very little to hide the nipples now pressing forward to greet the morning, much like my morning wood’s cropped up again to say hello.

Despite the slight discomfort as I shift from a less squished position, I can’t complain.

I get to lie here, watching Talia greet the day, the sunlight glimmering in her curls and dancing over her skin as if equally eager to get its hands on her.

I reach out and drag a couple of knuckles down her cheek, marveling at how soft she is. “Morning, gorgeous.”

One corner of her mouth kicks up in a crooked smile—a stark contrast to how she looked at me before we came on this trip and hiked our asses off. “Hey,” she murmurs, a hint shyly.

Last night I carried her into the tent, stripped her of her clothes and slipped on my oversized T-shirt, and tucked her next to me to pour more warmth and comfort into her.

She’d about hiked herself to exhaustion, blistered and sunburned and dehydrated to unacceptable levels.

Until I took her choice of resting away, tucking her next to me and kissing her forehead before telling her that I’d take care of everything else—her only job was to sleep.

The way she sinks her teeth into her lip and looks me up and down, however, says she’s nice and rested.

And recalling our first sweaty session in the tent between the sheets.

Or in this instance— what happens in the sleeping bag stays in the sleeping bag —and I never want things to turn chilly ever again.

I’m just also not sure how realistic that is.

She lifts herself up on her elbows, which only draws more attention to the fact that she’s still braless and pantsless in my tent. Her smooth legs slide against my harry legs and there’s no subtly adjusting this time.

My cock’s standing at full attention in a pitch of its own.

Talia doesn’t seem to notice, sitting up in a rush and glancing around her at everything besides me, and now I’m just offended. “Am I running late? Is the rest of the Supernatural Adventure Club awake already?”

“Again, I don’t sleep,” Riven answers, their voice drifting from somewhere near the fire pit—the same fire pit I wouldn’t mind feeding them to.

“Well, you might wanna get lost,” I say, slipping a hand beneath the hem of Talia’s shirt to palm one of those glorious breasts I haven’t been able to stop staring at all morning. “It’s about to get noisy in here. We’ve got an heir to make.”

They make disgusted noise. “I’ll go hunt for my breakfast, as listening to you fumble around as is last on my list of fun activities. But try and leave me, Moon-mutt, and I’ll be sleeping between you tonight.”

Joke was on them. If I convinced my bride to let me carry her for at least part of the way, we’d be out of these woods before that. “Yeah, yeah. Go drink your blood latte like a good little parasite.”

I perk my ears and wait a few beats. When I’m sure the vampire’s gone, I slide my hand to the center of Talia’s stomach to rest, not rove.

Don’t get me wrong—I want to make her scream my name so loud Riven hears it across the valley. But, oddly enough, fucking her breathless isn’t my first thought.

Wanting her safe is.

“How do you feel?” I ask, locking my gaze on hers to catch the real answer, not the one she might try to pass off. “After yesterday and whatever happened in there?”

“Uh…” She shrugs a shoulder. “Complicated.”

Well, that’s confusing as hell, and her expression isn’t giving anything away.

“I don’t mind complicated. I’m a real saint like that.” I draw a halo over my head in case she needs help seeing it.

“Right now, I think I’d rather have a devil.” She switches from cagey to vixen and runs a finger down my chest, so we’re not done with that topic, but who am I to refuse a request like that?

“That can definitely be arranged,” I say, her banter enough to tell me she’s okay.

At least okay enough for me to make a home between her thighs, and then I’ll figure out how to fix the rest.

“Oh, can you do that without going full fur and fangs?” she asks saucily.

“Yeah, that’s the easy part.” I take a risk, attempting to chase the last of the worry that’s not quite clearing the green of her irises. “The hard part is jutting against your leg.”

“I noticed,” she says, and we both glance down at the evidence of my situation.

“It’s noticeable.”

Talia’s giggle fills the entire tent, lighting me up from the inside. Then she throws a leg over my waist and straddles me, and I grunt—failing spectacularly to play it cool.

I jerk my chin at my oversized T-shirt. “Take it off. This isn’t a PG-13 movie.” I pause immediately after issuing the bossy joke. “You’ve seen a few of those, right?”

She laughs again, that warm, addictive sound I want to hear every day.

“Yes, and little secret?” She toys with the hem of the shirt, lifting it a torturously slow inch at a time.

“I snuck my heavily restricted laptop into bed to watch R-rated movies while my mom was asleep sometimes. I might’ve picked up a few moves. ”

“Honey, I’m afraid I’m going to need you to show them to me,” I say, rising up to kiss her and help rid her of that shirt a little faster.

In my excitement, there’s a bit of a collision with fabric and hair and mouths and arms. It makes us giggly and giddy, and the last of the tension in my chest finally eases.

That knot of panic I carried last night—the fear I could lose her—unravels. Maybe I overreacted. Chalk it up to the Hollow. Chalk it up to nearly watching the woman I’m falling for disappear forever.

We retrieved the weapon. We’re on our way home. We’ll save the day, and everything will be fine.

But first things first—I’m going to make love to this woman I suddenly want to call mine.