“What happened?” I tried hating him for the gentle way he asked. Because it made me want to reach out to him, touch him. Maybe even tell him what I’d shouted in front of everyone.He is exquisite. Resplendent.
I was such a fool.
We had no time for feelings.
We needed to find the portal.
We needed to get out of Naiadon.
We needed to save Oakhaven.
“Tell me,” he said, trying his stern captain’s voice. Fuck, why did I like that voice?
“I’m not your subordinate,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Oh, I am well aware. If you were my sailor, I’d have you flogged daily for defiance,” he said with a sly smile.
“Stop.”
He put a callused hand on my bare knee. “Come, tell me what’s the matter.”
“I had a night terror. That’s it.”
That’s what I’d call it. So he wouldn’t worry that someone was attempting to … well, I wasn’t sure what they were trying to do, really. But whoever poisoned me had ill intentions, clearly.
His finger drew figure eights on my knee, igniting a wildfire up my thigh and between my legs. That was all it took. My heart leaped in my chest. Little traitor.
“What was the night terror about?” he asked.
I pushed his hand off my knee and stood up. “Nothing of importance.” I walked to the virginal. “Will you be able to fix it?”
I ran my fingers over the keys, but frowned when no sound rang out at my touch. I longed to lose myself in its music and quiet all these senseless thoughts.
“Elowyn,” he said, following me, “if you keep secrets from me, I cannot help you.”
“There are things you can never help me with.”
Like my dead mother and hateful father. The world and how it sees me. Or how it doesn’t see me at all.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him.
“Arlo,” I said weakly.
He lifted his large hand and delicately traced a thumb over my cheek. His other hand fell on my waist. I shuddered. What was he doing? Why couldn’t I tell him to stop? Remind him not to be distracted, nor to distract me. So I could appropriately wall myself off further from him. Instead, my hands, with minds of their own, traveled up the muscles of his broad back to rest on the lower curve of his ribcage, where strength and vulnerability met. He was so solid. So steady. So real. When everything else felt fleeting and false.
“When I heard a noblewoman would be on my ship, I thought you would be snobbish, cold, removed. Then I saw you there, in your wool under-frock,” he growled in a low voice that filled me. “And I knew you were different. Then you sat with my men.” He smiled that perfect, damnable smile, crinkling lines into his nose. “You dined with us. Laughed with us. Like you were meant to be there all along at my table.”
I wanted to bathe in the pool of contentment that was Arlo. Bask in him. My personal sun below the sea.
“That world you were born into, you do not fit its confines,” he said.
“Yes, I know that I don’t exactly fit in among the elite—”
“No. That isn’t what I mean.” His hold tightened around my waist and heat radiated from him, seeping into my soul. “Elowyn, your life is worth more than dressing ridiculously for feasts and stamping out that fire in you. You’re meant to be free. Wild and unbridled. I had a hand in locking you away once. I can’t bear to do it again. I will not. That’s why we should—”
I put a hand over his mouth to stop the words from spilling forth, so the sirens would not hear them when they searched his mind. But also, so I would not hear them, because I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to refute them.
Our faces were so close. I yearned to know what he tasted like. Felt like.
