“Deal,” she said, then bit into the apple.
Juice slid down the corners of her mouth, a drop splashing on her breast. The sight made both my stomach and my heart rumble. It took immeasurable strength to hold myself back from licking it off her skin.
When Circe pulled the apple away, she quickly wiped the corners of her lips with a shy giggle. “See?” She smiled, covering her mouth with the palm of her hand. “I much prefer messy.”
Heat flashed across my face.
It was an odd feeling. One I hadn’t felt before.
I swallowed. “Duly noted.”
Circe tossed the apple in the air, and I caught it in my fist.
“Your turn,” she insisted. “Trust works both ways. Eat the apple, and I will take you to Bone Island.” Adventure tangled in her voice. She was a rare and wild thing, with ferocity wrapping her bones but as delicate as a snow flurry as it drifted upon the beach. When I hadn’t made a move, she offered me a weak smile. “You can trust me, Stone.”
Taking a bite of this apple was difficult after what Mother had done to me. Somehow, it felt personal. I’d been poisoned before, and taking a bite signified an immeasurable act of trust between us she may never understand—the destruction of a barrier standing in our way.
As she sat on her knees before me with a soft expression, I recalled the way she held me days earlier. There was no place I’d ever felt safer than in her arms.
My stubbornness and fears slid off me, and I gripped the apple and brought it to my mouth.
Then I bit into it.
CHAPTER 14
ADORA
November 24, 2020
65 days until the Crimson Eclipse
A winter morninghad risen from a grave like a resurrection. Black snow to frosted white. Water to ice. The sun winked behind strokes of clouds, promising to stay a while. Although, I knew my reality, and the truth was we only had six hours of daylight.
For weeks, the boat docks were abandoned. The Order forbade fishermen from shipping out, afraid they wouldn’t return in time before the silvery day turned into a night of horror. The current and unfortunate events gave Stone and me the perfect opportunity to get to the jon boat unseen.
Stone had been silent the entire walk down the shore.
We stopped a few times so he could catch his breath and bear the pain. Like a pregnant woman would do when a contraction hit. He hardly flinched when I’d stitched him, so I knew something had to be terribly wrong if the agony was too much to hide.
“We’re almost there,” I promised as the cold threatened to steal my breath.
I glanced over at him as he stood with his head back and his eyes pinched.
I reached out my hand. “Give me the bag. I can carry a bag, Stone.”
He refused, gripping the bag around his shoulder. “Let’s keep moving.”
He was stubborn, painfully so, and the way he seemed not to need anyone reminded me much of myself. I wondered what made him believe he was all he ever needed. Had he escaped a place that held him too tightly or a person who made him feel like he was suffocating?
It was true that a man had many faces, but Stone only showed one.
He’d never smiled, never frowned.
He hardly gave anything about himself away.
Despite his strangeness, the gloves he always wore, and the way he spoke in a forgotten language, I couldn’t deny that he was handsome. But he was also precocious, a man of marble and brash in a chilling way.
At times, I caught him looking at me, but even as I caught him, he never turned or looked away. In those fleeting seconds tangled in a web of disarming stares, I imagined us together in a way that caused my core to drum and my flesh to turn to liquid and pool into the ocean. In my mind, I would lay under him, with the gentle curve of his lips tickling the shell of my ear and his velvety erection pressing between my thighs.
