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An unattainable dream. One she shouldn’t even fancy.
Rune rolled them over, clamping her to the top of his body.
She buried her face in his chest, in the scent of him. Raw of sex and battle. “I don’t know if I’m happy about the map we discovered.” She whispered the words into his skin, almost afraid to say the thought out loud.
His hand stroking her hair along her spine stilled. “No? Why not?”
“If we find it—if we find where the box belongs…it means the end. I’ll have done what I promised Jules and Des I would do. You’ll have done what you’ve promised.”
“And?”
“And that’s the end.”
“The end of what?”
“Us. The reason we are together.”
He set his hands on either side of her face and he tugged her head upward so she had to look at him. “The box—the promise you made to Jules—is not the reason you’re naked in my arms right now.” The copper flecks in his eyes were burning, flames hot enough to melt steel. “You still can’t see I love you? You can’t see the possibilities? The future?”
She shook her head against his hands clamped to her face. “I am trying to, Rune. But after what happened today…I almost lost you. And I cannot do that—lose you. Not if I let my heart go there. I cannot bear losing my world—losing everything—again.”
The smallest quirk came to the right side of his mouth. “I would be your world?”
You already are.
She bit the words off before they left her tongue. Out of nowhere and against all her better judgment and all her fight against it. He had become all she cared about. All she thought about. All she needed.
But she couldn’t say that. Couldn’t trust it. Couldn’t believe in it.
No matter how he looked at her in that moment. No matter how he held the world in his eyes—everything she’d ever truly wanted in life.
He lifted his head and kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry if you can’t see the future, Elle. I don’t need you to, for I can see it for both of us. Returning the Box of Draupnir to its origins isn’t an end. It’s a beginning.”
She nodded, holding onto the words. Not quite believing them, but holding onto them, just the same.
{ Chapter 20 }
“You are positive you don’t want to stop by Lord Kallen’s castle on the way?” Rune held his hand out to Elle and she stepped up into the carriage. “We don’t know how long we’ll be gone on the ship.”
The driver had scurried back inside the dower house to retrieve the one last bag Elle needed to come. Rune had begun to wonder if she thought they were travelling to Paris for all the clothing she had packed. And he had serious misgivings about where all of her trunks were going to fit on theFirefox.
“We’ve called on him every day in the last week since the ball—I am positive he is well and done with us, though I have never seen his eyes as lively as they have been since seeing the box and looking at the maps. He wants us to get on with this mission even more than we do, I think.” She shook her head. “No, visiting with him yesterday will have to do, as much as I would like to stop by there. He finds goodbyes awkward and has always complimented me on my ability to disappear on him with little fuss.”
A half chuckle and his eyes pinned her. “Don’t ever think me akin to Lord Kallen. I will always require a goodbye. A long, thoroughly naked, goodbye.”
She laughed. “You will?”
“If only to stop you from leaving.”
“Even if I’m just on a mission to the milliner shop?”
“Especially then.”
With a smile on her face and the echo of laughter at her lips, she sat down on the rear cushions of the carriage and arranged her skirts and the pocket underneath holding the Box of Draupnir. “Yes, the conversation we had with Lord Kallen yesterday will suffice as our goodbye. Plus, it will have us leaving the island with him holding you in high esteem. Who knows what he will think of you after your next interaction.”
“I shudder to imagine it. The man is a dichotomy—impossible to figure out. To think he’s actually pleased with what I did to his nephew.” Rune shook his head.
“The only thing I believe he finds regrettable about the duel is that he wasn’t the one that pulled the trigger. He has always disliked Sangton, but not until this did I realize the extent of his hatred for his nephew.”
