Stiffening in my seat, I mostly keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Still interested in collecting on our deal?”
“It’s about safety, not sex.”
So I’m right. He’s changed his mind and doesn’t want me. “You still think anybody else would lust after me? I’m flattered.”
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“I’d guess that my natural attributes are deterrent enough. Now that I’ve decided to be done with facial coverings.”
Merc reorients forward again. “I don’t know what you’re about.”
“How am I going to pay you?” I wonder aloud. “If sex is off the table?”
Merc pulls the horse to a halt, and swings his leg over the chestnut’s mane to drop to the ground. As he lands, he does that thing with his hands, clapping his torso under his surcoat, at his hips, then his right thigh, left thigh. He’s absently checking for his weapons.
“Yes?” I prompt when he just looks around.
After what feels like too long, he turns back to me and our horse. “Rule number two—”
“I haven’t agreed to the first one—”
“You will cover your head again as soon as we get in range.”
This takes my breath away. And I want to keep the raw emotion to myself, I really do. But as I lower my head, my voice comes out small and soft.
“You are… that ashamed, then.”
But come on. A man not finding me attractive isn’t nearly as hard as nearly drowning in a submerged tunnel or almost dying in a moat. Or falling off a horse. Or being eaten by demons, cursed by black magic, lost on the way to the Badlands—
“Well, too bad,” I answer for myself. “I like the air on these features of mine, such as they are, so you’re just going to have to deal with it. If you have a difficulty being seen with me, we can part ways anywhere you wish.”
In the periphery of my vision, I absorb the details of him, and am struck by an absolutely penetrating conviction that he’s about to leave me and the horse—and I swear to the crescent moon that he’ll do it by disappearing into thin air, as if he’s an alter I’ve conjured in my mind, rather than a living, breathing person—
The chuckling that rumbles out of his broad chest is the very last response I expect from him.
And then he laughs at me properly.
Thirty-FourWhereupon We Are Both Fishermen and Bait.
“What are you laughing at.”
When Merc ignores me, I dismount and lower down next to him. “I said, what are you—”
“I heard. You weren’t exactly shouting from a rooftop up there.”
Finally, he looks at me. As I have to lower my eyes, I’m not completely sure what he focuses on, and that’s probably a good thing.
“I didn’t fancy you one who liked to fish.” His voice is smooth, too smooth. “But I don’t mind being caught, if it’s on my terms.”
The next thing I know he’s stepping up to me and sheathing his broadsword on his back. Then he reaches his long arm out toward my face.
“What are you doing?” I say hoarsely.
By way of answer, his hand circles round to the back of my head, and I feel a tugging at my nape. My hair uncoils as if it has been waiting all these years just for this liberation, and he pulls part of the heavy twist over my shoulder. In the sunlight, there’s the slightest golden cast to the deepest waves, but most of it is cloud white.
As Merc’s fingers fan out and comb through my hair, it’s as if he’s moving in slow motion, and I notice every scar on them and also that his nails are blunted and clean. And though I imagined him leaving me just moments before this, now I can never see us parting. It’s as if we were always supposed to be here, in this barren wasteland, standing beside this tired, stolen horse, with him touching my—
“Give me your hand.”
