Zane gestured broadly at the snow-laden trees around us. “What do you think?”
I followed his movement, then looked back to find him watching me intently. “Of?”
“Rymar.” He settled onto a log across from me, close enough that I could see the darker flecks of gold in his eyes.
I tilted my head and stared up at the towering pines, their boughs weighed down with snow. The storm had passed, so the wind didn’t howl, but the sky remained an unrelenting gray. “It looks like Legacia.”
“If you think that, you’re not looking closely enough. Can’t you taste it in the air?”
“It?”
“Magic. Freedom. Dreams yet realized.” The enormous axe-toting man was a poet. Or a romantic. Possibly both.
I used my hand to hide a smile. “What do dreams taste like?”
“Like spring flowers after an endless winter, like the finest wine, like the most delicious meal, like you.”
He paused, as if surprised by his own words, then gave me a rueful smile. “Sorry. That sounded hokey. It’s just that the visions make it feel like I’ve known you forever, but I suppose to you, I’m still a stranger.”
My cheeks flamed yet again. Fortunately, my rumbling stomach distracted him.
“You’re hungry?” He sounded horrified. “When did you last eat?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Sit.” He pointed at a merrily crackling fire surrounded by large logs. “Are you cold? Thirsty?”
I wanted a hot meal, a hotter bath, and a soft bed more than I wanted to keep breathing, but I’d settle for a place to warm my fingers and toes and a sip of water. I sat, and he shoved a canteen into my hands.
There it was again—the scent of tea. It was coming from him. Zane Stark smelled like tea. And tea smelled like home.
“Drink.” He touched my cheek, and I melted.
Melted.
I didn’t trust. Especially not men. But his touch eased the tension in my neck and back. This stranger, the man who claimed to be a commanding general, the man with the naughty smile and devilment in his eyes, felt inevitable.
He shouldn’t feel familiar, but he did. The pool hadn’t just shown me possible futures—it had shown me this moment, this man, this inexplicable sense of belonging I felt in his presence.
“Please, Haven.” His golden eyes implored me. “Drink. You don’t want to get dehydrated. I’ll get you something to eat.”
I drank. The ice-cold water tasted like heaven. I raised the canteen for a second drink and choked as the most gorgeousman I’d ever seen emerged from the trees with a brace of rabbits hanging from his arm.
If Zane meant comfort, this man was the opposite. An enigma.
He spotted me and smirked. I knew that smirk. I’d seen it before. More times than I cared to count. It was one of the expressions men used to make women feel small. Unworthy. Intimidated. It reduced me to my face and my boobs. An object.
This object lifted her chin and glared.
Chapter
Forty-One
ZANE
She stared at Remy as if she’d never seen a man before. Right now, in this moment, in this instant, he held her in the palm of his hand. I gave it thirty seconds before he fucked it up.
As I waited, I pulled on my shirt and coat.
