Page 95 of The Silversmith

I closed my eyes, leaned into his touch, and heard the words he left unspoken.

While you still can.

“Here. Wear this while swimming.” He placed a clean, folded black shirt in my arms. His shirt. “So your clothes don’t get wet.”

I let the black linen drape over my fingers and resisted the urge to hold it to my nose to see how strongly his cedar and leather scent lingered on the fabric.

When I looked up, he was removing his jacket, shirt, and boots. Mercifully, he kept his pants on as he stepped down into the water. Mercifully, because… well, I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing any more of him bare without losing my breath.

His bare, broad shoulders, arms, and torso were even more brutally glorious at a distance. The tally marks inked across his upper body seemed infinite. His scars only made him appear more savage.

And I wanted to feel all of him beneath my fingers.

When I reached to lift my sweater over my head, he turned his back to give me privacy. Water droplets glistened on the scarred planes of his shoulders. His muscles rippled with each shift of his body as he waited for me to change.

I removed everything but my undergarments. Nerves burned my insides as I stood only in my white briefs and brassiere. There was nothing fancy about them—practical, comfortable, only trimmed with thin lace on the edges. If he were to see me this bare, I would want to be wearing something more womanly.

His shirt covered me down to my knees, a protective shield against my insecurities. Just like his sweater. The sweater that I’d kept and sometimes slept in.

Carefully, I lowered myself to the edge of the pool and dipped my feet into the water. Hot and refreshing, the water pooled up to my calves with a welcome caress. I leaned forward and slowly let my fingers drift beneath the gentle surface.

The water rolled in small waves toward me. I looked up to see he’d turned back and now watched me with a gut-wrenching longing I had seen in him only a few times before. Once, when he had found me in that barn after killing the wolf. Again, when he told me about his wife.

I wanted to think of only the former moment, frightening as it was. The first time we met.

“I don’t have a coin on me,” Gavin began, drifting toward me. “But if I did… for your thoughts?”

I smiled down at my hands. “What were you thinking in the barn that night, when you saved me from that wolf?”

“Why?”

My eyes darted to the rings on the leather cord around his neck. Now, that vial of dark liquid I recognized from when I’d woken to him sitting at my bedside our first morning in Tovick was on the same leather cord.

“Because I couldn’t understand why you looked at me like…” My voice, along with my thoughts, drifted off, as I tried to relive that moment without the burden of near-death terror. “Like I was a ghost. And you said you’d found me.”

He studied me, his expression giving nothing away. And waited, appearing to weigh his words very carefully. “When I saw you,” he said slowly, “I knew I was witnessing a miracle.”

My heart fluttered, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea. “A few weeks ago, I was depressed skin and bones with hardly any knowledge of the world, no skills, and barely any motivation to leave my house.”

Shadows crossed his face. “And I will never forgive them for leaving you that way.” That angry tendon in his jaw pulsed. “In due time, they will pay for it.”

I swallowed a shudder, forced it back down into my belly. Elowen, he could snap in half. But Simeon? An ancient sorcerer. He threatened him like it was nothing.

“Elowen,” I muttered. “Don’t—”

“I won’t kill her, Ella. She means something to you.”

I gulped. As if that were the only reason not to kill her.

“Can I ask you something else?” I watched him move closer to me. The water was not very deep. He was clearly standing, and his head and shoulders were still well above the surface. The tips of his dark hair that had escaped from his leather strap clung to his wet shoulders.

He waded closer through the water. “Yes.”

“What did Ezra say to you before they left Tovick?”

Gavin smirked. “He threatened to kill me if I hurt you.” I gasped, to which he gave a responding chuckle. “I’m not worried.”

“Why?” I demanded.