Shaw doesn’t wait for my reply anyway. Instead, he stands abruptly, peeling his shirt off and tossing it to the shore. My face flames as the bare skin of his chest gleams in the sun and I glance away quickly, but not before glimpsing the look of pure delight cross his face. “What are you doing?” I hiss.
He laughs, a real, ringing sound that lights in my chest. “Swimming, Lemming. Aren’t you hot?”
I shake my head stubbornly, ignoring the pools of sweat that have begun to gather beneath my shirt. Has the air always been this sweltering? It was never this hot so early in the year in Similis.
“Suit yourself,” Shaw replies with a shrug. I yelp as he dives in, dousing me in a curtain of icy droplets. He surfaces a few moments later near the center of the pond, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. His long lashes bead together, framing his pale blue eyes in a way that makes him look almost innocent. Almost. If it weren’t marred by the positively wicked grin that rends his glistening face as he glides toward me.
I’m a fraction of a second too slow in realizing his deviousness and my scrambling is useless against the slick granite as he wraps his fingers around my ankle and pulls me from the shore. It’s all I can do to hold my breath as I’m plunged into the brisk depths. Water logs in the fabric of my clothes, weighing me down as I kick out frantically. I struggle for purchase on solid ground, panicking as my lungs threaten to expand in want of air. And then a large hand hauls me up under the arm and pulls me to the surface.
I gasp and choke, certain I’m going to go under again, but Shaw’s grip is solid. He guides me closer to the shore, my body feeling oddly weightless in his arms. My toes squelch in the sediment. “You ass!” I shout. “I can’t swim!”
Shaw’s face is a picture of amusement with no sign of remorse. “That seems quite obvious now. Don’t they teach you anything useful in Similis?”
I glower at him indignantly, rivulets of water streaming from my soaking hair. “And just how is swimming useful?”
He is gravely serious as he replies, “Well, it is entirely useful to keep oneself from drowning in a manor pond.”
I send a wave splashing at him and he makes no move to dodge it. His mouth parts in surprise and he blinks slowly as water streams down his face. He lets outs a laugh that sends something warm shooting through my belly, so I try to splash him again, but my feet slip, sending me careening forward toward another potential drowning. Lightning fast, Shaw catches me and pulls me toward him, hauling me upright. Surprise and shock weave through me. I can only imagine how ridiculous I look, flailing around like a drowned rat; or a drowned lemming. A wild peal of laughter escapes my lips.
It feels so good in my chest and in my belly and in my heart. By the Covinus, how long has it been since Ilaughed?Certainly, not since Easton was diagnosed, but I have the feeling it’s been much longer than that. Why is laughter against the Keys, when it makes you feel so airy and light, as if actual sunshine expands in your lungs?
I crack open my eyes to find Shaw, still clutching me around the waist, staring down at me in wonderment. “So, you do laugh,” he says, his voice low.
And because laughter has rioted through me, consumed me, and made me its worshipper, I smile broadly at him. His gaze drops to my lips with the same sort of hunger that flashed in his eyes when I stabbed him. I almost laugh again; stabbing him is the furthest thing from my mind now. His hand tightens on my waist, so minutely it would probably be imperceptible to any but me. How could I not notice, when every brush of his skin has electrified me since the moment we met, tangled in the woods outside the Boundary?
I’m suddenly aware of the way my sodden clothes cling to every inch of me. Of the way the water droplets gleam on Shaw’s bare chest and glide over his rigid muscles. Of that gnarled scar above his heart, a few shades lighter than his buttery copper skin, that I now know was put there by his own father.
By the Covinus, I shouldnotbe thinking of Shaw’s naked chest. I make to pull away, color flushing my face, but he tightens his grip until I’m pressed up against him. Embarrassment floods through me, along with something headier. Something hotter. “I’m sorry, this is…I can’t—” I stop talking because I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
The pupils of Shaw’s eyes are blown wide, the glacial blue now only a thin ring. “Mirren,” he breathes, and I sink into him at the way he wraps my own name around me. “You know that I’m safe right? That I will never again do anything to you that you don’t choose.”
He watches me until I nod. Because I do know. Have known for a while.
A sinful grin curves his lips, as he says, “but I am not Similian. Don’t expect me to act like one.”
The words are dangerous, oh so dangerous, because in them, I find a piece of myself. A wild piece I thought I’d successfully killed in service of my Community; the part of me that longs for moon rises and fresh sea air and darkness anddifferent.
A small gasp leaves my lips and Shaw’s eyes flick to them again with predatory focus. He lowers his head and a thrill of elation shoots through me at the same time as a tremor of terror. I want to run from this pond, from him, back to the safety of the familiar. I want to fling myself at him, burying myself in him until we are so intertwined, I can no longer remember my own name.
Every thought melts from my mind as his lips brush against mine, barely there. So quickly that I wonder if I imagine the spark that lights my blood. If I imagine the deliciously soft feel of him.
“Mirren,” he says again, and I am undone. I’d no more run from him than I would my own shadow.Heis the adventure I’ve always craved, the darkness I’ve always longed for, and the desire to plunge into his depths spirals through me hot and potent. Shaw pulls back slowly, and my fingers dig into his chest. I want to cry out, to object to the unacceptable distance between us. To demand that he finish what I didn’t know I wanted to start, when a voice rings out across the pond.
“Oh, lovely. I do so enjoy interrupting ill-judged trysts in the middle of the morning. It doesn’t make me feel like losing the contents of my breakfastat all.”
I jump back from Shaw as if burned, sliding my feet ungracefully up the side of the pond until I finally manage to sprawl on the granite shore. Max stands a few feet from us, a hand on her hip and eyebrows raised in abject judgement. “Am I interrupting?” she asks sardonically.
I smooth my hair, which feels like tangled seaweed and futilely attempt to pluck my soaked shirt from my skin. I don’t know whether to be angry or relieved by her interruption, but her evaluating gaze makes me wish desperately to sink into the pond silt. Shaw, on the other hand, appears perfectly unruffled aside from his hair, which has begun to curl upward as it dries in an unfairly handsome manner. “Did you need something, Maxi?”
Max purses her lips irritably. “It just figures you’d ask for a favor and then forget you did,” she says to him and then rounds on me. “Out! Now we’re going to have to start totally from scratch with your hair.”
Her eyes rove downward as I stare at her in bewilderment. “And your clothes. And pretty much everything else as well. And we’ve only got seven hours!”
She glares at me expectantly. I turn to Shaw helplessly, but he only shrugs with a small smile as if to saygood luck.“Seven hours for what!?”
Max puffs in annoyance and stalks down the embankment like she intends to pull me from the pond herself. I scurry forward hurriedly. Whatever her plans for me, I prefer to walk there of my own accord rather than be dragged bodily. I havesomedignity.
“To make you look less Similian,” she replies as if this is obvious.
