YOUBASTARD
23
RUNE
Iam royally fucked.
Tavi knows it by the look she gave me earlier. I know it, and no doubt Elio knows it too. It’s one thing to pull Odi close, it’s another to have her straddled across my hips with her soft, warm thighs, her infectious lips clinging to mine as our tongues entwine in a passionate dance.
I wanted to inhale her. To drink her in until I drowned in her essence from the inside out. She was all consuming—the way her back arched into my touch as her hips rolled over my cock. Any longer and I would have come undone.
I would have torn the buttons from her blouse. Sending them across the room like tiny bone shards so that I might have complete freedom to explore her sun-kissed skin. To touch her, taste her, and watch her come apart in my hands.
Damn the seas.
Odelia is a walking ocean. Unpredictable. Dangerous. Raging. Calm. Breathtaking. And I’m drowning in her.
What am I doing?Father would rage if he knew that I had a pirate in my bed. Selene would scold at first, and then she’dwant to know all about Odi. Dash would probably cheer me on . . . in secret of course.
Mother would have asked when the wedding date is.
I have this overwhelming desire to reach for Odi every time she’s near. She doesn’t need me to protect her,godsknow she can hold her own. I’ve seen her face her fears head on, rallied her bravery against hopelessness. She’s strong like she’s schooled it into an art. And yet, there’s something in the way she feels pressed against me, the way her breath hitches when I brush her lips with mine, the way her eyes soften when she thinks no one is watching.
All of that makes something sharp and fierce coil in my chest. I want to shield her. Guard her. Keep the world’s teeth off her skin.
Little doe—you’re not making this easy.
I wasn’t entirely surprised by her little weapon stash, but why hadn’t it occurred to me to search her sooner? She still can’t be fully trusted, right?
She’s still a Viper.
Pirates hunt to kill. They cling to the old tales, the ones where water elementals whisper secrets of the oceans treasures. And my mother is—was—one of them . . . a water elemental. She told us how the tales were true, how the greedy would capture her kind and bleed them until everything they knew spilled out onto the deck. The elementals keep what is lost in or taken by the sea, and Odelia has to know how precious one of their maps would be. What wouldn’t she sacrifice to find a wealth like that?
She’s only using me.My ship. My crew.
She has to be.
So why do I feel this need to pull her closer instead of pushing her away?
A diffused flicker of white light behind dark, ominous clouds flashes on the horizon as I make my way from my room to the quarter deck. The storm is approaching abnormally fast, yet there is still time to pull the ship round and head southwest.
Unkind winds whip around me as I step out into the open. Elio is already halfway up the ratlines, trying to get a better view. He flicks his attention to me as I approach. “That’s the biggest storm I’ve seen in a long time.”
I plant my palms against the railing’s edge, straining my eyes into the distance. Soraya appears beside me. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn't need to.
Boots thud on the deck as Elio drops from above. “Cap?”
“We should’ve been at the next island by now,” I growl in frustration. I’m mad at myself, at this damned map. Whatever trick it’s playing is made worse by the angry gale that promises much, much worse. “At least then we could have gotten the injured to higher ground.”
Soraya twirls to face me. “You didn’t know it would change direction.”
My jaw cracks as I grit my teeth. “I should have been prepared.”
“Well,” Elio chirps, “there’s no point dwelling on that now, what do you want to do?”
There is really only one thing we can do, and it's going to require all hands-on deck. We have to outrun the stormbefore it tears the ship apart and sends us to the bottom of the cold, vicious sea.
I push off the edge of the ship, twisting to face the sleeping quarters. “Get everyone up here.”
