She frowned in confusion.
Then he clarified, “A drug.”
“Oh,” she whispered, her eyes sliding away from him.She bit her lip, thinking of her mother.Taylor had never touched drugs in her life because of her mother, never wanted to.
“I will not use it again,luxiva,” he told her.“I vow to you.”
And Taylor knew that he meant it.“It helped the pain?Did you get headaches?”
He nodded.“Always.I felt the visions clawing up my throat sometimes, trying to scramble into my mind.Theyikavahelped numb everything.”
“I can’t blame you for it, Vikan,” she murmured.Though she wanted no part of drug use, she knew why he’d used them.
He looked at her and then said, “Around you, I feel no pain.”
She stilled.“What?”
“It is like you calm my mind, my body,” he replied, cupping the sides of her head before running his fingers through her hair.“I have not had a vision once since I took you from the command center.And usually, I see many during the span, even with theyikava.”
Her lips parted.
And she couldn’t help but think,What happens if I leave him?
Would he go back to seeing them constantly?Would she condemn him to dealing with that pain all over again?
Stay in the moment, she reminded herself, trying not to get caught up in the future, just for once.
“No matter what your decision is,” he murmured, touching her hand with his, “I thank you for that.”
“For what?” she whispered, unable to resist entwining their fingers together.
“For making me feel whole, normal, for the first time in my life span.”
Tears burned the back of her throat.When Vikan had proposed that they pretend that night, pretend that she was his and he was hers and that they had all the time in the world, she hadn’t expected this.She hadn’t expected for him to open up this much to her, to let her in, to touch her with infinite gentleness, and to look at her like she was the only woman in the entire universe.
And she hadn’t expected the intense maelstrom of emotions swirling around in her chest because of it.
Taylor wanted to kiss him.
She wanted to hold him in her arms and feel his skin pressed against her own.
But not there.Not in their dark, little cave, where he’d just confessed one of his darkest memories.She wanted to kiss him under the open sky, wanted to feel the salty cool breeze across her cheeks, and feel his heat warming her.
When her gaze strayed past him to the entrance of the cave and saw the bright silver light of the moon and heard the gentle waves of the shores ofLopitax, she knew where she wanted to kiss him for the first time.
“Can we go for a dip in the sea, Vikan?”
“Rebax?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“Right now?”
He studied her, probably trying to figure out why she would ask something so strange.
“Tev,” he finally said.“As if I could deny you anything.”
FOURTEEN
“IT’S SAFE, RIGHT?” his female asked.
