The little girl sat with her knees pointed toward me, heels under her butt as she cocked her head at me.
She was, in no uncertain terms, the most adorable child I’d ever seen.
I loved her immediately.
“You’re not in a brothel,” she said confidently, and I elbowed Ilyas as he smothered yet another laugh.
“No? Do you know what a brothel is?” I asked with a matching quizzical cock of my head. The little girl’s lips twitched even as Ilyas elbowed me in return, and I heard the muffled groan as Folami buried her face in her hands.
“Nope.” She popped the ‘p’ on the end, barely overshadowing her mother’s audible sigh of relief. “But I know you’re in the manor in Lishahl. It’s where our ship landed after rescuing the Bondsmith and escaping from the gods in the south. But now we’re here, and the gods have followed us. At least I got a Gammy out of the whole adventure.”
She spoke rapidly, the words nearly blending together in her haste to get them out, and I felt my lips twitching of their own accord. Her light-amber eyes were incredibly expressive, her strong nose twitching slightly as she spoke.
“Itanya,” Folami grumbled for a second time and was ignored, yet again, by her vivacious daughter.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Itanya. It’s what my mother keeps saying back there. She’s not exasperated enough yet to really yell, but I’m getting close.”
“Itanya!” Folami scolded loudly, and this time I howled with laughter. Itanya’s youthful giggles joined my guffaws, and even Ilyas chortled next to me.
“Oh, now you’ve done it,” I said, wiping a stray tear from my eye. It had been much, much too long since I’d experienced that kind of mirth, that unbridled joy. There was a warmth in my belly, a little tickle that grew the longer I was in Itanya’s presence.
Folami’s daughter.
“I didn’t know your mother had a daughter,” I said, my eyes darting over the little girl’s shoulder to make contact with her mother.
Folami froze under my stare, her eyes going wide in fear, so I quickly averted my gaze, turning back to her daughter.
“But this isquitea nice surprise. I think you and I are going to be very good friends, Itanya,” I said lightly with a wink in the little girl’s direction, which only sent her into another fit of giggles. I could actually feel the anxiety bleed from Folami, the tension in the air dissipating nearly completely.
“And that man over there”—she pointed to a hulking figure in the corner of the bedroom—“is my daddy. His name is Peytor.”
“Didn’t know you fathered a kid, d’Aelius,” I said mildly, darting my eyes to the glowering man, being careful to keep my tone neutral so as to not offend Itanya or her mother.
The final set of eyes.
“I didn’t. But she may as well be mine. Both of them,” he growled in response, eyes flashing with a challenge. I felt Ilyas stiffen beside me, ready to jump to my defense, but I stalled his actions with a calming hand on his forearm.
Peytor’s eyes flicked to where I gently held Ilyas, something flashing in his gaze before he shut his emotions down completely. Rather than bite back, I held my tongue and used the time to catalog his features.
And what features they were.
My gaze trailed up from the floor, along muscular legs that pushed at the edges of his pants to the area between his thighs where I could see the outline of his cock. My eyebrows raised in appreciation, and I noticed his length harden slightly as I refused to divert my attention.
Is he into men, too?
Humming in thought, I ripped my gaze upward to continue my perusal. Strong arms banded across a chest nearly as broad as Ilyas’, the sleeves of his dark tunic pushed up to reveal forearms sculpted and tanned from intense physical labor. Thin, silvery scars sliced across his skin in a randomized pattern, some crisscrossing while others were lone thin slashes. Peytor noticed where my gaze held, and he shuffled slightly, obscuring the worst of his scarring from view.
My eyes instantly jumped to his, bypassing the muscled expanse of chest and enticing collarbone just beyond the top of his tunic. Peytor’s gaze was guarded, his irises flitting from glinting silver to deep grey in a matter of seconds. Carefully so as not to spook him into running, I pushed the sleeves of my own tunic up before pulling the neck down, exposing my heavily scarred flesh. Peytor’s eyes flashed with surprise and more than a little pain before settling somewhere between understanding and acceptance.
Somehow and for some reason, we endured similar agony, similar torture, though we weren’t alone in that experience.
We all bear the scars of our past, of the sacrifices we made,I thought quietly, releasing the neck of my tunic as I finished lazily perusing Peytor’s body. His posture was more relaxed now, even if he still radiated some hostility. His jaw was cut from stone, and a muscle feathered there, revealing his anxiousness and frustration but doing nothing to detract from his beauty.
And hewasbeautiful.
Where Ellowyn’s hair was a flowing light-blonde wave, Peytor’s was a messy auburn mop. The tresses were so thick and long that my fingers ached to run through them, tugging and twisting as I claimed his lush mouth.
