“You want honesty, Vidar? Akareth is real. He is as real as you and me and his reach is vast. And I don’t know what to do.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears. I forced them down, keeping them at bay, hoping that hiding my weakness would eventually destroy it. Vidar’s hardened expression slowly began to soften and part of me despised that. I needed his rigid edges and punishing touch, but instead, he pulled me against him, cradling me in his arms.
“Stop this now,” he demanded, embracing me so tightly I found it hard to draw breath. “I need you here with me. I’ve chosento fight this battle with you and if you need me to hold you together, I will.”
I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again, refraining. Instead, I pressed my head to his shoulder, breathing him in just to forget the smell of Lyla. Vidar smelled of sweat and salt and rum and… hemsbane.
I drew back, looking up into his moonlit gaze, and breathed in deep, savoring the dangerous scent.
“Hemsbane?” I said.
“In the rum, love. A lot of it. We can’t take any chances.”
I glimpsed his lips, taking in another breath of the familiar odor. Mixed with rum, it could be missed by a hasty siren coming in for a bite.
“Kiss me,” I whispered.
“I don’t—”
I cut him off, pulling him against my lips. I forced my tongue into his mouth, kissing him deeply and without restraint. Vidar stumbled forward a bit and caught himself before he began to kiss me back, driving his tongue between my lips.
It didn’t take long to feel the burn. It started as a simple tickle on the tip of my tongue and turned into fire in seconds, engulfing my mouth with a wicked sting that nearly made my eyes water. I pulled away from him with a whimper and licked my burning lips.
“What does it feel like?” Vidar rasped.
“Like fire.”
His fingers bit into my hips as he drew me hard against him, his breath coming out almost like a growl. I could sense his desire building like a flame that had just caught a dry patch of grass.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“Maybe I need it. The pain. So that I might forget everything for a moment.”
He snarled again as if my words caused him discomfort, but it was a delicious sound. The sound of his suffering because hewanted me was music to my ears and that his desire overpowered his anger made me ravenous.
“Forgive me,” I whispered.
His hand shot up and gripped my chin with bruising force, but it was all that I craved.
“Say that again.”
“Forgive me.”
He pulled me into another forceful kiss that felt like lightning across my lips.
“We’ll see if you’re sorry when I’m through with you.”
He released me and clutched my hand, leading me across the firelit clearing. The men were getting rather rowdy again, drinking their fill of rum and eating whatever food stores had been brought to shore. Mullins’ music was sounding a bit off-key now, but people were dancing just the same.
When we cleared the festivities, Vidar kept walking, taking me toward a tuft of trees covered in thick vines and foliage. Behind it all I could see a wooden structure built against the trunk of a long-dead tree. A sort of cabin. A short, curved staircase made of warped wood led to the door and when we stepped inside, the same vines appeared to have invaded the interior. But there was a bed, a trunk, and boxes filled with more bottles of rum and other goods that looked to have been there for years. The bed had a fresh bedroll laid over the top of the mattress.
Moonlight flooded the cabin from the two windows, casting blue light on everything. The music outside was faint, giving way to the steady beat of Vidar’s heart when he turned me to face him.
“We can’t keep things from each other,” he said, pushing me toward the bed.
“I know.”
“When we agree on something, we keep that promise to each other. We can’t afford anything less.”
