"I know it is."
"Especially from a man I haven’t known long."
"I know that too."
The kitchen was small, the table between them, the candle from the other night still sitting in its dish though she hadn't lit it. He could see her weighing his words against Malrick's, trying to find the seam where truth separated from performance.
"He scared me," she said. Not dramatically. A confession delivered to the kitchen table more than to him. "Not because he threatened me. Because he knew things about me that nobody should know, and he talked about them like they were ingredients in a recipe. My father, the boats, the years I spent running. He laid it all out like he was reading from a ledger."
"That's what he does. He turns people into data points and then uses the data to get what he wants."
"And what does he want with me?"
"Control. Access. The ability to point you at a stretch of river and let the weather do his negotiating for him." Rafe held her gaze. "He doesn't see you as a person, Isla. He sees you as an advantage. And he will say whatever he needs to say to make you believe the two things are the same."
She stayed quiet as the light in the kitchen shifted from afternoon gold to the deeper amber of early evening, the sun dropping behind the ridge, shadows stretching across the stone floor.
"You came here angry," she said.
"I'm still angry."
"At him or at me?"
"At him. For going near you after I told him not to. For using your father's death as a conversation starter. For walking up to my dock afterward and smiling about it." His jaw was tight. "Not at you. Never at you."
Something moved across her face but it wasn’t the guarded look she'd worn when he came through the door. This was softer, more open, more dangerous for both of them than the anger had been.
"Why do you care this much?" she asked. "About what he said to me. About whether I'm safe. You're leaving in three days, Rafe. Your ship is almost fixed. You said it yourself, the water is your life."
"It is."
"Then why are you in my kitchen for the second time this week looking like you'd tear a man apart for talking to me?"
Because you're my mate. Because my wolf chose you and I chose you and every hour I spend pretending otherwise is a lie I'm telling both of us.
But she wasn’t ready to hear it. And he wasn’t ready to say it.
"Because you deserve better than what he's offering," he said. "And because I'm not the kind of man who walks away when someone I care about is being hunted."
Her arms uncrossed slowly, hands dropping to the counter behind her.
"Someone you care about," she said.
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Don't ask me to put a date on it."
"I'm asking."
"Then the answer is earlier than makes sense and I'm not going to apologize for it."
The light was almost gone from the window now, the kitchen settling into the blue-gray of evening, and she was looking at him with an expression felt through his entire body. Not just attraction. Recognition. The same pull he'd been fighting since the dock, reflected back at him from a woman who didn't have a word for it yet but was done pretending it wasn't there.
She pushed off the counter and crossed the kitchen. Two steps. She stopped in front of him where he sat in the chair, close enough that his knees bracketed her legs, close enough that he could feel the warmth coming off her skin.
"Stay," she said.
