WIP Wednesday

I really need to come up with a title for my WIP at some point, but I'm concentrating at this point on just getting words on the screen for a first draft. It currently stands at 36k and chugging along quite nicely.

Klea has just survived the first attack on her life...

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Klea turned her face into his chest, her quick breaths tickling along his bare skin. It wasn’t sexual. She sought comfort, he told himself. Still, placing her gently atop her blankets was more difficult than it should have been, his disloyal flesh responding to her femininity when it had no right to.

He put a safe distance between him and the edge of the bed, though he suspected no such thing existed any more. She tracked his movements without speaking, not arguing when he conducted the rest of his search to secure her rooms. He ended at her terrace windows, spending more time than necessary examining the hinges, the locks, the curtains. There wasn’t even a rough edge where careless housekeeping had splintered at the frame. Nobody had attempted entry from this point.

“Garen.”

It was the first word she’d spoken since coming upstairs, and he turned to see her attempting to sit up. At her first sway, he was there, at her side, bending over to provide a strong arm upon which she could brace.

Her fingers fluttered, hovering over his tense wrist. The fragile skin at the hollow of her throat dipped as she swallowed, and he fully expected the touch of her hand to be just as brittle.

It wasn’t. The fingers that curled around his forearm radiated strength, and she branded his skin with hers as she sat up.

“It surprises me that I was so unprepared.” She spoke with her eyes downcast, perhaps regarding the join of her body to his. “I've grown up with guards in every corner of my life, and yet, this is the first time I’ve ever felt truly threatened.”

“My apologies, Mistress. It should never have happened.”

“Because you would have stopped it?”

“Because I should have.”

Klea looked up at that, and her trusting gaze slashed through the command he’d forced upon himself. Garen had no choice but to retreat, unfolding her hand from his arm, then resting it on her lap so he could stand back.

“But you saved me,” she said. “How did you know?”

The memory of the metallic glint flashed before his mind’s eye. “I saw it, though too late. I cannot say for certain the architrave was checked today, but I can assure you that nothing will be overlooked again, Mistress.”

The corners of her mouth drooped. “I preferred it when you called me by my first name.”

He glanced at the door, ensuring she saw his notice and understood. “There's a time and place for that. This is not one of those.”

“Will there ever be one again?”

Yes, he wanted to say. Oh, yes. Then, he would sink to his knees and banish any memory of her near-miss with searing kisses along her delectable curves. He would teach her more of what it meant to know her body’s responses, how it could crave both a firm hand and a gentle touch, all at the same time.

He almost did it. Then and there. She made it so easy, looking upon him as if he was a man and not her slave.

The only reason he didn't was because of the knock at her door.