I drag the warm cloth lower.
I bathe the tight plane of his stomach. My hand lingers against his bare skin, hot and heavy with primal possession.
I pull my eyes up from his chest.
Our eyes lock.
The silence trapped inside the shell shifts, swollen with a thousand desperate confessions we can't speak out loud.
His warm breath ghosts against my scarred cheek. The heat radiates from his flushed skin.
I lean in. Just a single inch.
My attention drops to his soft mouth, then flickers back up to his golden eyes. I lift my right hand to frame his face, cupping the elegant line of his jaw. My heavy thumb is rough and calloused. I brush the scarred pad back and forth across his sensitive lower lip. Vaelis shudders under the touch. A small tremor vibrates against my thumb. A needy, broken hitch of breath.
My black pupils blow wide. A low, heavy sub-harmonic vibration ignites deep inside my chest. A rumbling purr. The resonance travels down my arm, pushing through my hand to vibrate against his jaw, sinking into his very bones. It is the primal, undeniable sound of absolute possession.
I am lost. I lean closer, my mouth hovering a fraction of an inch above his.
I want to consume him.
"If you two are determined to molt on each other, go do it outside," the eel complains from his copper cage. "I run a clean ship."
I snap backward as if struck.
I rip my hand from his striking face, the sudden absence of his skin against mine a physical burn. Shame crashes over me in a heavy, suffocating wave. A monster. A filthy beast overstepping rigid boundaries.
I snatch the glass jar of poultice from the sand. My movements become jerky and efficient, devoid of the gentle reverence from moments before. I slather the green paste onto his torn wound, the cool medicine a stark contrast to the heatstill radiating from his skin. I bandage his shoulder in record speed, my fingers fumbling with the clean fabric, dodging his eyes. I rise up with a lurch, my broad back turned to him.
I refuse to look at him.
I grab my cleaning supplies and swim to the far side of the room.
Vaelis sits in silence on the bed. A bright flush sits across his pale skin right where I touched his jaw. The heavy, suffocating silence returns to the shell, broken only by the low hum of Bolt's engine and the frantic beating of my own heart.
My hunting knife slips from my trembling grip, clattering into the white sand.
I try to curse. I try to scream my frustration into the empty room. My jaw opens and closes in a silent, pathetic pantomime of blind rage.
I slam my scarred fist against the wall, the impact sending a dull vibration through the entire shell.
Bolt flinches at the noise. "Hey, stop that!"
I snatch the knife from the sand. I return to chopping the leftover slugs for dinner. My broad movements are a chaotic mess of raw anger. The knife connects with the makeshift cutting board with brutal, jagged force. Frustration boils in my blood, hot and acidic.
I am a prisoner inside my own silent head.
The unresolved tension from the sponge bath magnifies the isolation. I want to tell him my reasons for running. I want to tell him the truth about my betrayal. I want to tell him my soul belongs to him, even if my voice is lost forever.
The vibration of shifting nets travels through the sand floor. Vaelis rises from the bed.
I ignore the tremor. I chop the gray meat with brutal, jagged force, the rhythmic thud of the knife a pathetic substitute for the words I can't say.
He glides across the room to hold himself at my side, his presence a warm current in the cold fury of my mind.
He reaches out with his good hand. He presses his soft palm over my fist, stilling the knife mid-swing.
The movement halts. My muscles go rigid, vibrating with pent-up tension under the fine weight of his touch.
