My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 271

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Mina

The word hung between us, a small, heavy thing that settled into the quiet of the room. Jace didn’t blink. His hands, wide and mapped with the faint, pale tracks of old scars, didn’t shift from the stone ledge, but his weight leaned forward just enough that his bare chest brushed against mine through the thin linen of the nightgown. The contrast was a shock—the linen was cool, the stone beneath my thighs was unforgivingly cold, but he was entirely heat.

I looked at him, really looked at him, and the ten years between the alleyway and this kitchen felt like they were being crushed into a single second. I was ten again, clutching a phone in a closet, listening to a voice from a city of glass. Now, that voice was a physical weight. He wasn't the boy who killed the dog. He was a man with heavy shoulders and eyes that looked like they knew exactly what I was thinking.

He reached down, his fingers catching the hem of the gown. He gathered it up slowly, the rough, home-spun fabric bunching in his palms, dragging against my shins, then my knees, until the chill of the morning kitchen air hit my bare thighs. I tensed, a reflex from a lifetime of hiding, of making myself small so I wouldn't take up too much space in a room.

But Jace didn't let me slip away. He stepped directly into the space between my knees, his thighs solid and rough against the inside of mine, grounding me to the ledger. His hands came up to my waist, his thumbs pressing into the soft dip just above my hip bones. The grip was firm, almost heavy enough to bruise, but it was the absolute certainty of it that made my breath hitch. He wasn't guessing. He wasn't waiting for me to adjust or give him leave. He was just there, taking up every inch of my horizon.

"Look at me, Mina," he murmured, his voice rougher now, stripped of the easy teasing from before.

I looked. His eyes were dark, the pupils swallowed by the intensity of whatever was moving through him. He leaned down and pressed his forehead against mine, just for a second, breathing me in. The scent of him was cedar, salt. When he kissed me this time, it wasn't the tentative testing of the waters from before. It was heavy. His tongue parted my lips with a slow, deliberate pressure that felt less like an invasion and more like a claim.

My hands found his bare shoulders, my fingers curling into the hard muscle there. He felt massive up close, an immovable weight, and yet when I pulled him closer, he came willingly, sinking into me. His mouth left mine, tracing a path down the line of my jaw to the sensitive skin just below my ear. He bit down, gently, a tiny nip that made a sound tear from the back of my throat.