Blue Blood (Series of Blood Book 3) by Emma Hamm (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

he was. Being a burly man with pink wings didn’t make him any less of a person to them.

Mercy stopped in front of him, oblivious to his epiphany. She gestured behind her at a rather small tent, which he thought might be green. It was hard to see in the darkness beyond her glow.

“This is yours. There’s a bedroll and a pillow for you. Not the highest of comforts, but it’ll have to do for tonight.”

“I’ve slept on the ground many times,” he told her. “This will be no different.”

“Have you?”

“Grew up outdoors. The city life came after I gave that up.”

She cocked her head to the side. Again, he thought she would ask him details about himself. Instead, she nodded and turned to leave.

“Mercy.” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He only knew that he didn’t want her to leave just yet.

She turned until he could see the silhouette of her face outlined in the flames behind her. The graceful slope of her nose, the slightest bump that suggested she may have broken it once before. Lips that he realized were now far more pronounced than he had given her credit for. A square jaw and chin that suggested stubbornness was in her blood rather than a learned trait. She was no natural beauty, but she was rugged and shaped by the world into something strong.

“Stunning,” he muttered.

He could hear her sigh. Not the happy kind of sigh a young woman would breathe when a man complimented her. This was an exasperated sound, immediately followed by her stalking towards him.

The top of her head struck his chin. He had never had a woman come this close to his height before.

“Don’t make this mean something it doesn’t,” she growled at him.

She reached up and buried strong fingers in his beard. With a tug, she brought him down to her lips.

She kissed like an open flame. Burning, scorching, she left nothing of him behind. Every movement, every inhalation, she branded him with her mark.

And she tasted of fire roasted chestnuts.

He was stunned. Shocked. Awed. There were too many words rattling around in his head for Jasper to react properly. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had kissed someone because, again, Mercy turned his thoughts to ash and dust.

Like an idiot, he stood still until his brain caught up with him. Only then did he raise his  arms and yank her against his chest. He splayed his fingers wide against her back to draw more of her into himself.

He knew his beard had to be scratching her, or he was squeezing her too hard. Someone had told him that before, but he couldn’t think of a name when Mercy’s teeth were nibbling at him.

As quickly as the kiss had begun, she ended it. She pulled back so far that his arms dropped from her body to hang limply at his sides.

He stared at her, doe eyed, until her words caught up with him. “How am I supposed to take that?”

“I was asleep for two hundred years, Jasper. How many times do you think I thought about doing exactly that?” Her eyes sparkled with mirth. “It’s been a very long time. I’m glad it’s as good as I remembered.”

The sight of her sauntering away from him would forever be burned into his memory. Sleep would not come easy this night.

11

She tried not to touch her lips. That would have been foolish after all. She was two hundred years old. She had lived longer than any other human. Teenagers touched their lips after kissing someone new.

Her chin itched where his beard had scraped her skin and her back tingled where his fingers had massaged the muscles. Above all the other sensations, her lips felt swollen.

Mercy’s sudden desire to kiss Jasper had emerged from curiosity. She had watched her family and her people all night. With that connection, her humanity slowly began to return. She wasn’t trapped in a Dream World. She wasn’t hidden in the roots of the World Tree and devolving into something dark. Ignes wasn’t even currently healing her.

Life was now unpredictable. She didn’t know how to act, which was just as exciting as it was frightening.

She paused in front of her red tent and told herself not to look back. Looking back meant she might see him staring at her. Or she might not.

Mercy didn’t know which was worse. If he were staring at her, she thought she might turn around and go back to him. That could only end poorly as they barely knew each other. If he weren’t looking, she would assume he was thinking about the woman whose name he called out in his sleep.

Strange how a man could profess such emotions for one woman and yet still show interest in another. But Mercy was not the jealous type and she wasn’t interested in wasting her energy on things she could not control. Jealousy only festered. There was enough negativity festering in her soul already.

She didn’t look back. She would only be inviting difficulties into her life. He was enough trouble as it was.

Brushing aside the tent flap, she stepped inside. While Jasper would be spending his night on a relatively thin bedroll, the creatures had made a nest for her. Tiny had mentioned it before the Hag had begun to tell stories.

Mercy hadn’t expected them to take care of her. They had their own struggles, and they were all aware she did not need help. But they truly wanted her to be comfortable while she remained here.

She was both touched and horrified. Learning how to control Ignes’s powers was hard enough. She didn’t want to also worry that if she didn’t have complete control, she would harm people she loved.

This was why she didn’t get close to anyone. Mercy reminded herself that, although she felt normal, she was not. Phoenixes should know how to control their powers, but she and her childlike creature were not capable of learning on