My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 270

Mina

"I heard that."

I spun around, one hand still on the handle, and my heart was in the back of my throat, I could feel the blood in my face going from zero to everything in about a second.

He was standing in the arch of the kitchen doorway with his shoulder on the frame and no shirt on, and his arms were crossed at his chest, he was looking at me with the small expression on his face that I had been on the wrong end of since yesterday — that slight angle of his mouth, the unhurried patience of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing.

"You were not meant to hear that."

"And yet."

"I was talking to myself."

"In my direction."

"The kitchen is small." My voice came out steadier than I had any right to. "There was nowhere else to be facing."

He pushed off the doorframe and came in, and I held my ground by the coals because the alternative was giving him the satisfaction of watching me back up.

He had the kind of body that you couldn't be casual about up close, and I'd been up close all night, and that hadn't made it easier, only different. I already knew the weight of his arm. I already knew how his ribs felt under my fingers. Standing here in the bright morning with the oil going on the coal behind me was a different knowing.

"Say it again," he said.

"Absolutely not."

"Why not."

"Because you made a face when I said it."

"A good face."

"I didn't see it."

"Mina."

I turned back to the pan because the thing in it was going to burn. He came up behind me, close but not touching, and the heat of him reached me before his hands did, and when his hands did reach me they went to my shoulders, one on each side, the palms warm, and he turned me around.

"Say it again," he said. Close, now. Low.

I looked at his collarbone first. Then I made myself go up to his face.

"I love you," I said. "Sir Jace."

The expression he made then wasn't the teasing one. Something under the teasing had surfaced and pushed it aside, and he put one hand up to the side of my face the way he had in the foyer yesterday, and it was the same grip, the same weight of his thumb at my jaw, and I let out a breath I'd been holding since breakfast.

"There she is," he said quietly.

"I've been here the whole time."

"I know." He drew me in by the jaw until my forehead was against his chin, and he stood there with me like that, not moving, and the pan behind me was still going on the coal and I couldn't have cared less about it.

"Jace."

"Mm."

"The food is going to burn."

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