Page 78 of The Stolen Crown

“For me, the only way to soothe it is by washing.”

“Why are you letting me touch you, then?”

He stopped swaying and brushed his knuckles against my damp cheek slowly, as though testing the sensation of my skin. “Your touch isn’t the same. Just now, yes, it was agonizing. But not because of you. Because I don’t…ever want you to feel pain or fear. I want nothing but peace for you. The venom is a fast-spreading threat, and…forgive me, I allowed the idea of losing you overtake every rational thought.”

He feared losing me? Emotion thickened in my throat. “What about other times?”

“I still react to your touch, but it’s not rancid or painful. It’s…it’s warm. Since that damn sea singer first took hold of your desires in the Ever, since you first touched me, I’ve craved more, Vicious. And for your sake, I cannot.”

Thoughts tumbled through my mind. Tait Heartwalker, the man I thought could barely tolerate me, “craved” me?

Desire was heady, a rush of heat and satin in my veins. Every want or need I’d bottled up in my heart to keep safe from his indifference burst through the cracks like a wave crashing through a weak dam.

One palm covered my mouth, a blockade against the bubble of emotion in the back of my throat. I pressed my forehead to his chest. Tait encircled me with his arms, dropped his lips to the top of my head.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why, then, did you act as though you hated me?”

“Part of me did resent you. You awakened a desire, a hope I never expected to feel, but I could never entertain having it.”

“Why?”

Tait let out a heavy sigh. “Understand that I’ve never known this.” He gestured to us, the way we held each other. “I hardly know what to do with it, the way it feels gentle.”

“I don’t understand.” I lifted my head and took a step back, palms still pressed to his chest.

“All my life, being touched has brought pain. Excruciating pain. Now I think my head or my body simply expects it, so I get ill until I can wash it off. But it’s not happening in the same way with you, and I don’t know what to do with it. I’m standing here waiting for the pain to come. And it’s only warmth.”

This man. This moment. All those broken pieces I’d yearned to see were on the surface, and he wasn’t pulling away.

Pain. Tait had lived a life of pain. I knew his father was cruel. I knew he hurt his son. Now I knew Boneseer and others had saved him during the war, right before Erik poisoned Harald.

But surely after his father died…My shoulders slumped. No. Even then, who was there to show Tait affection? He and Erik were not close. He was solitary, likely as stoic as he was now.

Tait had no one, not really.

I pressed a gentle palm to his cheek. “I won’t ever bring you that pain, Tait. Never.”

“I know,” he said, voice rough. “But I might.”

“What?”

Tait unraveled from my hold. There was a strange emptiness without his skin beneath my hands.

He faced away from me, gaze on the sky overhead, arms folded across his chest. “There is a sort of touch I adore—agony given to others by my hands. You’d think I’d hate violence after enduring so much as a boy, but when it’s not happening to me, I become even worse to those I feel deserve it.”

Hair lifted on the back of my neck. Not in apprehension, but in a twisted sort of relief.

Unseen rage was no stranger to me. Since the war, when I thought my mother and father and everyone I loved might fall, I found peace in the unbridled rage that reared up when someone I loved was threatened.

If Tait slaughtered enemies with a touch of darkness, I would not flee from him. Not even close.

“You don’t frighten me,” I whispered.

Tait considered me for a breath. “I should. Ask me how long I took to kill Filib after he touched you. Ask how slowly I peeled back his flesh.”

“Keep trying, Hearttalker. Perhaps I’m twisted inside and find it all romantic.” I lifted a brow. “I do, actually. You honestly think I’d ever want a man who merely slapped the wrist of the sea singer who tried to kill me twice? Hardly a grand gesture. Now, a man who tears said sea singer apart on my behalf, well, for that I would give the whole of my devotion.”

Tait paused. “I can’t tell if you’re jesting.”