Shadowlords had not trusted him to come on his own and he wasn’t sure he could
have.
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Her Reaper’s Arms
Epilogue
Bevyn took the bandana from around his head and dipped it into the bucket of
water, wrung it out then retied it around his hair, pulling the ends behind his head and
tucking them up. He was stripped to the waist and sweating, his face burning from the
furnace blast of the sun’s heat.
“You reckon it could get any hotter?” Burt Gilbert, one of the men helping the
Reaper paint, asked.
“Only in the Abyss, my friend,” Bevyn agreed. His chest was streaking with white
paint and he had a smudge of it on his cheek.
“We didn’t pick the best day to be slinging paint,” Buford Gilchrist mumbled. The
sheriff had been complaining all morning.
“He don’t look none the worse for wear,” Cornelia observed as she rocked in her
chair and plied a battered wicker fan.
“He says it wasn’t bad, but he would say that anyway,” Lea said as she sewed a
button on one of his shirts.
“Suppose so,” Cornelia agreed.
“There was this look in his eyes when he came back,” Lea said, pausing with the
needle in the air. She studied her man. “It was bad. I could tell, but he didn’t want me to
know.”
“Don’t dwell on it, girl,” Cornelia told her. “It’s over and done with.”
“It hurts me that I was the cause of him suffering,” Lea said.
Bevyn turned and gave his lady a comical look, crossing his eyes to make her laugh.
Lea giggled and looked down at the shirt.
“He reads minds, don’t he?” Cornelia asked.
“Aye, he does,” Lea said with a sigh.
“Not a good thing in a husband,” Cornelia said.
Lea shook her head. Although they had made no formal vows, were not legally
Joined, she thought of him as her husband and when he introduced her to people who
did not know them, he introduced her as Lea Coure, a name she was very proud to
bear.
“What about that Amazing woman?” Cornelia inquired.
“The Amazeen?” Lea corrected. “She stayed behind at the Citadel. The last I heard
of her—the last I ever hope to hear of her—was that she would be helping train the
marshals and sheriffs, the lawmen who help the Reapers in the territories. Lord Kheelan
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made her a captain in the security section and she is also in charge of punishments for
the lawmen. She seemed content enough with her lot.”
“She looks the sort to enjoy punishing a man,” Cornelia stated. “Reckon her people
will ever come after her?”
“If they do, they won’t get her,” Lea said. “Not out of the Citadel. The Shadowlords
have some kind of defense thing that doesn’t allow entry by outsiders.” She looked up
from the shirt to watch Bevyn as he swept his arm up and down over the boards, the
muscles in his broad back flexing with each circuit. “Not unless the goddess allows it, I
suppose.”
Bevyn stooped over to put his paintbrush in the can then lifted his arm to wipe his
forehead.
“Your man looks hot,” Cornelia told her. “Best go take him some lemonade, I
reckon.”
Lea laid the shirt down on the table between the two rockers and got up. She went
to the frosty pitcher of lemonade and stepped off Cornelia’s porch to the garden shed
her Reaper and his friends had built for the black woman and were now painting.
“The gods bless you, milady!” Burt said as he saw her coming.
Bevyn turned around and smiled. “I’ve got her well trained, men.”
“Humpf,” Lea snorted as she poured first Burt then Buford a glass, leaving her
sweaty, grinning lover the last to receive the cold lemonade.
“Remind me not to volunteer to build anything else,” Bevyn told her as he took the
glass and rubbed it over his forehead.
“Does your head hurt?” she asked, frowning. “Are you having one of your
migraines?”
“Nope,” he said. “Just hot.” He took a big swig of the lemonade, a bit of it trickling
down his chin, and he tipped his head back to drink.
“You sure?” she queried. He was prone to vicious headaches that sometimes
resulted in her having to give him an extra dose of tenerse.
“The only aching head I’ve got, wench, is between my legs,” he said with a feisty
grin.
“Way too much information,” Burt grumbled. “Didn’t need that image in my mind,
Reaper.”
Bevyn cracked ice between his strong white teeth, grinning like a little boy at Burt
and the sheriff, wagging his brows at them.
“Behave,” Lea told him as she turned to go back up to the porch and relative cool,
but she gasped as her man snaked an arm around her waist and drew her to him,
slamming her against his sweaty chest. “Bevyn!” she shrieked.
The Reaper lowered his head and nuzzled her neck, whispered something in her
ear before she slapped at his naked chest and pushed him away, him laughing
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Her Reaper’s Arms
uproariously at her red face. She took off as though the hounds of hell were nipping at
her heels, looking over her shoulder at him as she hurried away.
“What did you say to make her run off like that, Bev?” Buford asked.
“And what’s she running over to your house for in such an all-fired hurry,
Reaper?” Burt inquired.
“I just reminded her how much sugar was in that pitcher of lemonade,” Bevyn said,
pulling off his bandana and striding purposefully after his lady, a wide, wicked grin on
his handsome face.
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About the Author
Charlee is the author of over thirty books. Married 40 years to her high school
sweetheart, Tom, she is the mother of two grown sons, Pete and Mike, and the proud
grandmother of Preston Alexander and Victoria Ashley. She is the willing house slave
to five demanding felines who are holding her hostage in her home and only allowing
her to leave in order to purchase food for them. A native of Sarasota, Florida, she grew
up in Colquitt and Albany, Georgia and now lives in the Midwest.
Charlee welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email
address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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