She was sweet. Genuinely sweet and unassuming. Spoiled and ignorant, too, but her cheerful disposition was rooted in something deeper; there’d be some whimsy in her even had she been raised in a beggar’s hovel. It was reckless to be this way, in a world such as this; she could be hurt in all sorts of ways. He felt a knot in his stomach as a cold sensation seeped beneath his skin. He hadn’t felt moved to keep a particular woman safe from . . . everything . . . in over ten years. Now the long-buried instinct rattled its cage at the bottom of his soul. Unless he kept it buried, it might swell
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