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The confusion in her gaze was the only thing that stopped me. I was no stranger to a good, old-fashioned hate fuck, and I would have been one-hundred-percent on board if she’d made that move, but there was too much uncertainty shining through those stone blue eyes.
She didn’t say a word when I moved my hand, maintaining gentle contact as I slid it down her shoulder and arm to her wrist. Her muscles tensed when I lifted her hand and turned her palm up, but she didn’t pull away. I kept my gaze locked on hers and leaned down, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist.
Her pulse raced against my lips and suspicion flickered dangerously in her gaze. “What is happening? Am I dead?” She glared down at her wrist. “I’m dead and this is my hell, right?”
Ouch.
I straightened a little and brushed my thumb over the spot I’d just kissed. “You’re very much alive, Never, and this…” I shook my head. “This is my feeble attempt at an apology.”
“For being the kind of asshole who would leave me in the forest to deal with that little glitter bitch on my own, or for being the kind of prick who hurts a woman to make his point?”
It took me a minute to process that retort. Once I did, I had to make a real effort not to smile at the ill-tempered reference to the villainous pixie.
“First, I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. And my apology is for the second part. I was out of line and I am deeply ashamed by my behavior.”
She tugged her hand free and looked away. “Yeah well, that actually hurt less than the first part.”
“I didn’t leave by choice.” I could have said more, could have tried to convince her of my sincerity, but I was finally realizing the seemingly fearless woman used words as armor, hiding her real feelings behind a wall of snark and sass. It probably worked well for keeping the wrong kind of people from getting too close but, in some ways, it made her even more vulnerable.
The first sign of hope flickered in her gaze when she looked at me. “Anya?”
I nodded once. “She wanted to deal with you one-on-one, so she sent me to the sea, the same as she did with you later.”
“She sent me back to the beach the first time.” Never scooted back on the bed, propping herself against the headboard. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I think it was a test, you know, to see if she could break me that easily.”
“That sounds about right. Her powers to transport are limited, with only a few locations holding enough of their own magic for her to link to. The four compass points in the sea surrounding the island, the beach, her tree, and two or three others. My crew was prepared in case she tried something like that. I wanted to go back for you, but—”
“You didn’t.” She let out a tired sigh and closed her eyes. Silence filled the space between us, creating a void that made me want to reach out and touch her just so she didn’t slip away from me entirely. Only a second passed before those gorgeous eyes snapped back open, filled with an emotion I couldn’t quite put a name to but that had my full attention.
“How did you find me? How did you know where she would send me?”
“Luck, more or less. I had a team waiting on the beach, and I called in a favor to make sure there were friendly faces patrolling the other points surrounding the island. I figured if she did the same to you, she would make sure there was as much distance between us as possible. The pixie is vicious that way, vicious but predictable in her pettiness.”
“You know all her tricks, don’t you?”
I stretched out on my side in front of her and propped my head on my fist. “No, but when you’ve been enemies for as long as we have, you start to notice the other side’s habits and tendencies.”
“So, it wasn’t luck. You were waiting for me.”
It wasn’t a question.
“There was a chance she might try something else, or that something would go sideways on the island.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how I’d paced the deck endlessly until the sun set or how I’d doubted every decision I was making. She didn’t need to know that I’d called in a favor I’d held onto for over a century to make sure there was someone there waiting for her, just in case Anya surprised me. No doubt the shifters were all too happy to clear that particular debt from their books.
“But you were waiting for me. And you saved me.”
“I think you can chalk your survival up to your own stubbornness more than anything.”
Her lips quirked up in a smirk. “Funny.”
I gave her a little shrug. “Youarestubborn.”
She unwound her arms from around her knees and leaned back, pressing a hand to her side. After a second, she stretched her leg out and rolled her ankle. “I suppose you had nothing to do with that either. Has my stubbornness given me the ability to heal at superhuman speeds?” The sarcasm in her voice was at odds with the heat in her gaze, and when she bit her bottom lip, I had to sit up to disguise the reaction that tiny move had on me.
“How are you feeling now?” My voice rumbled lower than I’d intended, but there was nothing I could do about it. My body was responding to her heated glances and her movements without any guidance from my brain. It refused to heed the warnings flashing through my mind.
Instead of recoiling from the roughness, she swung her legs beneath her, climbed to her hands and knees, and closed the distance between us without a hint of concern for her own safety. When she pressed a hand to my chest, the fire in her touch was undeniable.
