“I want to wash and eat right now. Later tonight, before we sleep, you can do that.” He takes a gulp of fresh water before offering it to me. I straighten and take it.
“There’s a place to wash?” I ask as I hand it back. His hand grazes against mine for a moment too long as he takes it. “Or—you didn’t mean the ocean?”
Roiven can go in there if he wants. It won’t make him any cleaner. I’ll gladly keep my distance. I clasp my hands behind my back and push my chest forward, drawing in a deep breath. It feels nice to move after spending all day on a dragon. My shirt strains as I feel my muscles lightly ache.
Roiven’s staring. He quickly looks away and starts removing his armor.
“No. A hot spring.”
“Is it far?”
“Fifteen feet behind you.” His voice is clipped and I can’t feel anything from him at all, even when I try, following the connection between us in my brain. If being connected to a Hellion was like having a knife dragged through your skin, being connected to Roiven is like a thread tied around both our waists. But right now, a thread vanishing behind the other side of a shut door.
“I’m going in. Look away if you don’t want to see,” he says.
I turn over my shoulder to hunt for a sign of the spring. Roivenwalks past, stripping his shirt over his head as he goes. In the dim evening light I can make out his broad shoulders and the way his waist tapers in, all lithe grace traced by the cruel lines of enchantment and the pale scars of the ones I’ve removed.
There’s a small pool of water, ten feet across at best. The side nearest to us is jagged with stone, but across the way the rock slopes gently down to the pool. It doesn’t smell sulfurous. But Roiven pauses at the edge and drops his shirt beside him. With his back to me, I can tell he’s unlacing his trousers. Just watching him makes me feel flushed and warm. The muscles in his shoulders shift as his arms move. A single lock of hair traces down his back to the middle of the spine, where it overlays the white scars that once commanded him to obey me. The rest of his hair is pulled forward over his shoulders.
We aren’t friends. We’re barely allies. But gods be damned if the sight of Roiven doesn’t make my mouth water. I roll my neck without taking my eyes off him.
I shouldn’t watch. But he didn’t tell me Ihadto look away. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve seen him naked over the past few days. I gulp as Roiven eases the trousers down and kicks them off to land on top of the shirt. I feel a throb between my legs. My mind may know better than to want a witch, but my body disagrees. It’s been disagreeing a little more loudly every time he strips in front of me.
Roiven freezes, and turns over his shoulder. His eyes lock with mine before I can look away, and he raises an eyebrow in a slow, deliberate move. In the span of an instant, I remember about the gods-damnedfuckingbond.
He can feel what I’m feeling. The simmering heat beneath my skin and the way my whole body aches.
I’m an idiot. My entire body goes so still I don’t draw a breath. As if Roiven’s some kind of predator that won’t notice me if I don’t move.
28
That should be the end of it. I should be so embarrassed at having been caught that lust is the last thing on my mind. But the warmth low in my stomach flares. There’s an insistent, needy ache pounding between my legs that makes me press them together. Even the back of my neck feels hot as my heart races.
Roiven’s eyes are still on me, burning. Bright and nearly red, not the familiar gold. Not accusing. Not anything but hungry.
His gaze slips down my body, and all of a sudden I understand why him staring at me made the feeling stronger instead of making it go away.
It’s his lust, too. Whatever forbidden feelings I accidentally shoved into his brain…he’s showing me they’re mutual. That it wasn’tjustthe sight of me on my knees before. That maybe he wants me like I’ve been wanting him.
He rounds the pool, to the other side where the stone is smoother and the entrance looks easier to manage. For the moment before he steps into the water, I can see how hard he is. Roiven covers himself with one palm pressed to his length,as if a hand could coverthat, and the fact that he’s trying to at all just makes it look like a joke, because I can still see both the base and the tip of his erection.
As he sinks into the water I finally free my eyes from him and stare up at the sky. The clouds are dark overhead, no stars visible. The sun has just sunk below the horizon, but there’s still a little light left.
If we both want each other, can’t it be simple? We’re never going to be lovers. He’s a witch and I’m a knight, and no matter what I’m coming to believe, we’re opposites. Sworn enemies. He killed the people on my Hellion and I killed the witches who came to rescue him, and before that we both killed hundreds more. But sex can just be sex. And we’re alone on a barren island for the night, with no witnesses except a dragon who’s currently hunting out at sea.
I grind the ball of my foot against the stone. The lust pounding through my body hasn’t calmed down, and I know a fair share of it is mine and mine alone. But this isn’t a tavern or even a ship’s berth, and I’m not sure what the rules are, between a witch and a confused knight. Asking if he wants to fuck feels… stiff. Especially given our history. I’m sure he still hates me, no matter how he’s been acting.
I glance back down at the pool. Roiven has turned his back to me, resting his elbows on the far lip of the stone. I’m not afraid of the water, which means it’s fresh, not salt, and fine to wade in. From his casual pose, one shoulder a little higher than the other, he’s standing, not treading. Good. It isn’t a deep pool.
Before I can think twice, I remove my sword, strip my clothes, and stride naked across the rocky ground. Where Roiven lounges, his back still to me, is the only easy way in. The stone on my edge of the pool looks painfully jagged, and it’s higher, too, with a two-foot drop into the water.
I wince as I walk across it, find a smooth spot to place my palm, and slip into the water with a splash. It’s deeper than I expected, so deep on this end I can stand and be mostly underwater. It’s warm,and the parts of my body aching after the long day’s flight—my thighs, chief of all—feel immediate relief.
Roiven spins to look at me, eyes hard and jaw tight. He doesn’t say anything. The water rocks between us, covering me up to my neck for a moment before baring the swell of my breasts.
His disbelief cuts through me like a knife.
Just because he was feeling lust didn’t mean he wanted me naked in the pool with him. This was wrong of me. Not bold in the way I’d intended, but downright wrong. My shoulders stiffen as my cheeks burn.
