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I stepped out into the night air. Not cold, not warm, the air was thick with the sea, the tang of brine in my nostrils.
Stepping behind Damen, I slid my arms around his middle, leaning forward to press my nose into his back, the dark robe he’d slung over his frame not blocking the crisp scent of him from me.
He’d showered while I’d said goodbye to Triaten and Aiden, his shallow wounds already mostly healed and the crust of blood that had covered his body nothing but a memory now.
Blood I could still smell deep in my nose, locked into my memory bank. Blood I never wanted to smell again.
His free hand went down, rubbing along my arms wrapped around his waist. “Your uncle and his Hercules are gone?”
I smiled into his back. “You say it like that because you don’t like them or because you’re annoyed you’re currently indebted to them?”
“I say it because I hate you showing even an ounce of affection to another man.”
I groaned, squeezing him tight, smothering my face into his back, my words muffled by the thick Egyptian cotton weave of the dark robe. “Triaten is my uncle and Aiden is like my other uncle. Any affection for them is purely familial.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not an insanely jealous fucking bastard when it comes to you, who has to continually fight a vicious battle to suppress my base nature that makes me want to control you every single minute of every single day.”
I laughed. “Are you trying to remind me that you’re an ass of gigantic proportions?”
He set his drink down onto the stone railing of the balcony and spun around in my arms to face me, his right hand sliding up the slope of my bare chest above my tank and wrapping around my neck, pushing my chin upward with his thumb so I met his gaze. “Have I not made enough marks, raw and ragged and deep in your soul, for you to know you’re mine?”
I nodded slowly, his words striking me deep and straight to my marrow. “That is the problem with us, isn’t it? Those marks, those wounds that will always fester deep within us that don’t let the other one go. That manic energy that flows from you to me to you that makes me feel like I’m suffocating when it isn’t there—like a raging river without the raging water.”
A sad assessment of my life, but it was what it was.
He nodded with a deep breath, blistering heat in his eyes making the amber of his irises come to the forefront. “That is the gist of it, yes.”
A smile came to my lips. “Then I’ve marked your soul just the same?”
“You have.” His head dipped, his words low as his breath tickled my ear. “And remind me why that is a problem with us?”
I chuckled. “You’re not serious, are you? How about that no one in either one of our worlds wants us to be together.”
His head lifted, his look serious as he found my eyes. “Who? Tell me who and I will break them.”
“Maybe we should start with a list of whodoeswant us to be together—it would be easier—can you even name one?”
“Yes.”
My head snapped back. “Who?”
“Venetia.”
I scoffed with a smile, shaking my head. I did have to give him that one. “Aside from your daughter, the list is short—nonexistent.”
“There must be some.”
“There aren’t. And the people on the anti-us-a-couple side are people you won’t break. Leo, your other offspring as well, I imagine.”
“Leo doesn’t speak for all my offspring.”
I lifted my shoulders. “Okay, then…how about people I won’t let you break? Triaten. Aiden. Charlotte. They would rather us not be together. I didn’t get a read on Skye when we were on the mountain, though I don’t know her as well. But she does seem more helpful and less judgey than those that know me well.”
“She’s a half-breed and her sister’s a malefic, so I imagine she’s the least judgey of that foursome.”
I cringed. “You don’t know the conversation I just had trying to get rid of Uncle Tri and Aiden. If they hadn’t needed to get back to Charlotte having the baby, I daresay they would have found reason to bunk in this room with us tonight.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Charlotte is having another baby?”
