halloween excerpt
 

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Where are we in the story: The already half in love hero, Seoc, has an old scar and muscles that hurt around it. The once bitten, and twice as prickly heroine, Barabal, means to heal him. If he’ll just behave (ahem, he doesn’t).

 

     ‘Are you arguing that I can or can’t heal you?’ she said. ‘This conversation has taken so long, I have to rewarm the contents.’

     ‘Barabal, I’m only jesting with—’ Seoc started.

     ‘Either sit or let me be on my way.’

     His earnest expression fell. She had done that to him. She’d done that to most people who tried to be kind to her. At first, she’d attempted some sort of friendship when she was younger, but they never lasted, and it became pointless to try. People needed to accept her or not. It was up to her to find that place to be useful, but she’d been searching for so long and was getting tired.

     Maybe that’s why she kept watching this man, why she talked to him when he could provide her nothing and she wasn’t useful to him. Maybe that’s why she wanted to lean against him, just lean into that strength and his faraway looks. To feel his roots hold her strong. His scar was horrific, but she wasn’t surprised by it. He was a survivor. His roots ran deep, held him firm.

     She never stayed in any place long enough to grow any roots.

     A muscle ticked in his jaw. So many insults he probably wanted to voice before he walked those stairs and away from her like so many before him.

     Except he didn’t. Instead, he tilted his head and studied her some more. Then more until an almost smile reached his lips. Her gaze fell from his eyes to those lips, especially when they curved a bit more.

     She blushed. What was wrong with her? If he kept watching her as he did, he’d probably see her wants and desires. Her vulnerabilities and her shame. Could it get any worse?

     ‘I didn’t offend you, did I?’ he said. ‘You’re flustered.’

     ‘I’m not flustered, I’m trying to be efficient. Now tell me where I can set this down.’ Maybe there was a table in another chamber. That way she could be useful and escape this conversation. Because staring at Seoc and becoming flustered couldn’t be good.

     ‘There’s a little table against that wall.’ He indicated with his chin.

     How had she missed that? She set the mortar on the little table, then picked it all up and set it beside the bench. Slowly, he eyed it, then her.           She wasn’t so naive to believe he didn’t see the slight tremble in her hands.

     ‘Now why would you be flustered?’ Pointing at the mortar, and the bench, Seoc said, ‘Barabal, is this your way of getting to spend more time with me?’

     She grabbed the mortar. ‘This will never work.’

     ‘Even if I cooperate?’ He reached behind his head and pulled off his tunic. Threw it on another bench and sat on the one before her. Then he grew quiet.

     Maybe that was because she was staring at him again and it wasn’t for some scar across his chest. It was because of those shoulders, the bulge of his arms. The ripples of muscles along his stomach.

     Pivoting, she turned to the flame again.

     ‘Don’t burn your fingers,’ he murmured.

     ‘I didn’t burn them the first time.’ It wasn’t her fingertips she was worried about.

     ‘So what’s this to do? My injury’s been stitched, burned, bound and salved. People made honeyed mixes until I was sick of the smell of it.’

     ‘A healed wound like that means you suffered, but the fact you don’t like a smell won’t make me pity you. Your scar has been healed by any means necessary. It obviously saved your life,’ she said. ‘As for what I’ll do…’

     He raised his brow, but she couldn’t answer because she only just realised what she truly offered. This wasn’t about handing him the oil, she intended to work the warmed oil to ease the muscles. She’d have to touch him and not only once.

     What was she thinking? ‘This was a mistake.’

     ‘What is?’ he said. ‘I don’t want your pity.’

     She sighed. She hated when people wasted her time and now she’d delayed him from his duties because of a bit of fluster. ‘Your wound is healed, but the muscles around it healed wrong.’

     ‘Healed wrong? I have no open wounds. How can some oil make them as before?’

     ‘It’s not the oil, it’s the easing of the wound.’ She shook her head. ‘I know this sounds mad, but applying this heat and doing stretches sometimes eases injuries.’

     He reached for the mortar. ‘Tell me what to do.’

     ‘Not you.’ She held it out of reach. ‘Someone else has to prepare it, rub it into the flesh, then lay heated linens.’

     He paused. ‘Someone?’

     ‘I have to do it.’ Although how when she was trembling and trapped by her need to belong, to be useful? Trapped because this man called to her simply by being silent. By giving her glimpses of humour and charm, of sensitivity and steadfast roots no matter how much adversity.

     His pause was even longer before he added, ‘For how long?’

     ‘Weeks, months? Every day.’ Multiple times if it was bad, but she wouldn’t tell him that. It was an effort to tell him this much. Mostly because of his expression which sort of lost its edges.

     ‘You’re to touch me, to rub oil into my flesh,’ he deadpanned. ‘And you’ll do it every day.’

     When he put it like that and said it as he did, all low and incredulous, she knew she couldn’t possibly. ‘This was a mistake. You don’t have time for this.’

     He startled to sudden awareness and his eyes pierced hers. ‘You say you can help me and you won’t?’

     ‘I didn’t say that.’

     ‘So you won’t waste that oil and herbs and simply walk away?’

     He couldn’t have known what those words would do to her. He couldn’t. Of course she wouldn’t walk away if she could be of use to someone.         And never, not once would she waste resources.

     She must do this as she’d said she would. It would be no different than when she and Rhona had eased Morna’s newly healed broken leg.               Thinking of little Morna and the relief she’d felt, Barabal felt purpose again. But when she walked closer to Seoc he seemed larger. And she didn’t mean that because she was comparing him to a young girl. It was him.

     And the acres of bared skin. The hard jut of his shoulders, the ridges of muscles that tensed and flexed. It was a man before her, not a child, or a woman or anyone else but Seoc. Seoc, who’d stopped her footsteps on Beltane night and made her unsure of everything she’d done since. It was him. Always him. She couldn’t even close her eyes and pretend he was someone else. Another step, unsure now, as his knowing eyes remained locked on her.

     He wasn’t the same. This wasn’t the same.

     She scooped her unsteady fingers through the warmed oil. Had he bespelled her? Perhaps it was the quiet of this place, far underground while the rest of the clan walked above. Maybe this place was magic. How else did this cellar with its arches and benches accommodate such a man as he. How else could the flickering scones highlight his bronzed skin with such utter masculine beauty?

     Twirling her fingertips through the oil, watching the herbs turning and turning, it felt safer to look at her own hands than the man with his vast, heavy, weighted stare.

     ‘Barabal,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Look at me.’

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