“You said there were thunderstorms in Tundrayn? Over the last two decades?” he asks, long fingers tracing patterns across the bare skin of my shoulder.
“Nearly every month. Sometimes several.”
“What did you do, then?”
I swallow my shame, even as it threatens to choke me. “I cried. Cowered.” My words sharpen with self-loathing. “Sometimes I passed out in bed.” My eyes cut to him. I don’t know what possesses me to speak the next words, but I want to be truthful with him. I owe him at least this much after all he’s done for me. “And when I was older, I wasn’t always … alone. I mean—I’ve never, um. But…” I trail off, unsure how to explain my relationship with Daak.
His fingers still on my skin.
“Does that upset you?” I whisper.
He works his jaw, hands gripping me tighter. “I don’t care what you did before.” A beat passes, then he sighs. His fingers drag down his face, frustration etched into the motion. “No, that’s not true. Idocare. I’m burning with jealousy, actually. But I don’t hold it against you. You weren’t my wife then.”
I’m silent for a heartbeat, a strange mix of emotions pulsing in my chest. “You’ve had lovers.” Not a question.
“Yes,” he admits softly. His iron-tight grip loosens marginally around me. “But the last one was months before I met you.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
There’s a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
“No. I find most people … disappointing. I become disenchanted quickly.” His eyes cut to me.But not with you, they seem to say.
We fall into a silence that isn’t entirely comfortable, but not unpleasant either.
“Your father,” Zev says slowly. “Did he comfort you during storms?”
I stiffen in his arms. “No. Not once.” It’s difficult to speak past the shards of ice in my throat. “He knew I was afraid—I’d burst into his chambers often enough as a child, tears streaming down my face. Searching for a mother that wasn’t there. Desperate for a comfort that never came. He’d always look disappointed. Disgusted, even. A servant would walk me back to my chambers. Some were kind enough to stay until the storm passed.”
Zev is quiet for several heartbeats, his fingers tracing the shell of my ear. “It must have gutted you to marry me,” he finally says, remorse coating each syllable. “The embodiment of your greatest fear.”
“No,” I say immediately, cupping his cheek. “I may fear storms, Zev, but I don’t fearyou. Not at all.”
I hold his intense, searing gaze until I fall asleep.
My eyelids slowly flutter open. I try to stretch, but I can’t. Strong, muscular arms wrap around me, my back flush with a firm, broad chest.
Zev. He’s still in bed.
I shift slightly—and freeze.
The hard, unmistakable length of him presses against me. Heat pools low in my belly. I shift my hips again.
A ragged breath tears through his throat, hot against my neck.
Tides, he’s awake.
Half of me is desperate to flee, the other desperate to melt deeper into him.
“Sorry,” he mutters, voice rough with sleep. “I usually leave before you wake. I don’t want you to feel … that.”
But I do feel it. And it sparks something dangerous inside me.
I swallow hard. My heart batters my ribcage.
“It’s all right,” I whisper. “When I came here, I knew I’d have to … with Faramir—”
“Don’t say his name in our bed,” Zev growls, hand braced firmly over my clavicle. “Or at all.”
