“This was a bad idea,” I say tightly, as he keeps staring, and staring, and staring, like he’s making an accusation. “I’ll get out. Do you want to turn around first?”
Roiven’s eyes, fixed tight on mine, slowly break away and slide down to where the water laps against my chest. Then back up. The swells soften as the water settles. I can feel his eyes as clearly as if he’d reached out to touch me.
“...And if I want you to stay?” Roiven says. His voice is a low knife that cuts right through me. My mouth falls open.
“Doyou?”
He nods.
I push off the wall to float toward him. It’s only ten feet or so wide. But Roiven immediately skirts to the side, away from where I’m pointed.
“That’s a bad idea.”
“What?”
“You’ll regret it.”
“I’llwhat?” I wave my arms under water to stop me from drifting any closer to him.
Not ‘we’ll regret it.’ But that I will. Does he think I’m a virgin or some aristo’s daughter? He really is a prude.
“Sex doesn’t have to mean anything,” I tell Roiven. The water’s deeper here. I reach down for the bottom with my legs.
“I know,” he growls. “But we’re bonded, Cai. That changes things.”
“I’m not going to chase you.” My toes point. There’s still nothing beneath my feet. The water laps higher as I sink into it. Up to my chin, then just over. I swing my legs, but if I could stand at the edges, surely the bottom isn’t far below me now. When I sink to find it, I can push off hard toward one of the walls of the pool. It won’t be a problem.
“Let's just enjoy the water,” Roiven says.
I’m not exactly at a good moment for some quippy response. The water laps up over my lips and I thrash my legs harder. Because pushing off the bottom is fine intheory, but I’d much rather just not sink in the first place. I manage to pop a few inches up out of the water before I sink down again.
“Caiteven?” Roiven asks sharply.
“M’fine,” I snap. The word isn’t all the way out when I slip below again, and in an idiotic burst of panic I gasp a mouthful of water. The water’s up over my nose now and I thrash, and it would have been fucking nice if I remembered how to swim, but as I refused to get in the ocean there had been little point. Whatever hazy memories I have of knowing how to as a child are better left ignored.
And if somehow I’d always survived anyways, if there had always been something there to push me back up to the surface…
Roiven’s arms close tight around my waist and suddenly I’m flying to the side of the pool. My feet drag on the stone floor and I stumble, coughing, my head and shoulders free now. My lungs ache. He’s holding me, pushing me up against the wall until I can reach up to grab the stones with my shaking hands. Roiven’s warm, hard body brackets mine. I cough, and cough, and cough. His still-hard length is pressed against my lower back, his arms are around my shoulders and waist, his warmth envelopes me.
I shiver.
“You can’tswim?” Roiven asks, outraged, his voice nearly shaking.
I cough harder, spitting up water, and then cling to the rock with a shudder.
“So what?” I mutter. My throat hurts.
“You’re bound to thekraken, and you don’t even know how to swim? What were you thinking, stepping into the middle of a spring without testing you could stand there? By all the gods—”
“Haven’t I humiliated myself enough for one night?” I growl, chest heaving as I gasp. The aftershocks of the panic shudder through my body. “I’d have hit the bottom eventually—”
“Do you have any idea how deep this spring is?”
“The edges—”
“Drop off. A thousand feet.”
“Oh. Well…” My throat tightens. It was stupid of me to try to go after him. Stupid of me to think that just because the physical attraction between us was blazing, because his lust crackled through me like lightning and fury, that he’d want anything to do with a knight at all. And now notonlydo I get to stomach that rejection, he thinks I’m an idiot, too.
