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“As we speak. Assuming she could induce labor like she hoped.” My hands ran up his back as cords of his muscles twitched, tightening under my touch. “What happened between all of you? Clearly there’s history there.”
“Do you really want to know or do you want to let it live in the past with all my other heinous acts?”
I paused to actually consider it. There was so much about this man that I would have to accept blindly if we stayed together.
It wasn’t my strong suit, blind trust. But if I wanted him, wanted us, I had to at least acknowledge there would be a lot I would have to live with and not question. I just had to somehow set all of that right in my head.
I met his gaze. “Give me the abridged version.”
He heaved a sigh. “I kidnapped Charlotte to mate with her.” His eyes rolled to the sky. “My breeding half-breeds obsession and all. Triaten got her back. I saved Charlotte’s life during that debacle off the coast of California. A tenuous peace was achieved between us all.”
Ouch. The kidnapping part particularly stung.
But I nodded, taking all of that in with a stony facade. If I reacted, he would stop telling me things in order to protect me.
“Also, I’ve entertained Skye’s sister, Shiv, at Netherstone.”
“As in entertained, here’s a drink? Orentertained?” My eyebrows stretched high.
“The latter.”
I nodded. “Good to know.” A jab of jealousy spiked through me, but I quickly let it go. If I got angry jealous every time someone Damen had slept with popped up in conversation, I would spend my days rage swinging my sword into every wall at Netherstone. And that would only make me tired. Not to mention ruin the walls.
I met his eyes. “That is the extent of the abridged version?”
“More or less. Yes.”
“Thank you for telling me. The truth of it was all I really needed.”
His look narrowed at me. Not quite believing he was getting off that easy.
He was. But I let him dangle in uneasiness for a moment before I pulled back, grabbing his right arm and pushing the sleeve of his robe up past his elbow. “How is your arm?”
My fingers ran over the stitches used to cobble his cleaved forearm together on the boat ride to the mainland from Mykonos.
“It’s already healing. It was straight to the bone, so will take a little while to heal. I imagine it will be seared shut, nearly gone in a half day.”
“It’ll scar.”
“It won’t be the first. Besides, the scar will bring a smile to my lips.”
My look jerked to his face, my eyebrows raised. “Why?”
“Because Aiden kicked you off of sewing detail once he saw how haphazard your stiches were.” His left forefinger ran across the start of the line, where the stitches were gaping and puckering the skin. “You are rather horrendous at sewing up skin. As humiliating as it was to have him tend to me, Aiden was remarkably good at it, given his ogre-sized hands.”
“In my defense, the boat was thumping hard over all those waves and your blood was everywhere, making everything slippery.” I ran my fingers over the side of the wound that Aiden had sewn, all of the stitches perfectly neat and tidy and pulling the exact right amount of skin together. “Damn. He is good at it, isn’t he? Of course, he’s always the one that comes out of battles unscathed, so he’s used to stitching everybody up.”
My hand clamped over the length of the wound that stretched across the entire width of his forearm, covering it as I looked up at him. “You didn’t need to take this strike for me. You know that blade would have just bounced off my skin.”
He shrugged. “What I know, and what my instinct to protect you makes me do, are very different things.”
I leaned into him, going to my toes as I grabbed his face and kissed him softly. “But I don’t like your blood. Especially when it isn’t necessary.”
“For you, every drop is a necessity.” Wrapping his arms around me, he spread his legs apart to pull me closer into him as he leaned back against the railing. “Now, tell me what you found out in the devil’s lair of that weird tree room that almost killed me.”
“Are you feeling better after being in there?” I asked. “That was some weird shit, what that tree did to you.”
“And even weirder that you were fine with it.”
