Chapter 21
S O R E N
T he quarters we’ve been given face the ocean, which looks entirely too calm for the storm I know awaits. It’s such a gentle roll of the waves, softly caressing this ship.
When I look down at this wild, yet beautiful creature, I smile without reservation while no one’s watching.
She lifts her heavy gaze, her hair falling past her shoulder. I love how rough everything around her is compared to how soft her body is. “Can I ask you things about your life?” she asks.
I stiffen for a moment, not having expected that. Boring my gaze into her, all I feel is a genuine desire to connect with someone right now. “You want to know about me?”
What joy filled her now partially fades. “What if something happens, and it’s all I have left of you?”
There’s something about that statement that punches clear through any armor I have left to shield me from her. She says that as if it matters. It’s been a while since I considered my death directly impacting someone—emotionally—other than my mother.
And now, apparently, this woman with a Zenith tattoo would use memories of me as her comfort. I’m completely weak for that. To read someone’s heart to the depth that I can, and feel that true desire in return, when you want it but it’s not something that can be forced, is a sensation so alluring it scares me. “You can ask whatever you want.”
She relaxes more, and I stroke a finger down her shoulder, hovering my lips over her head and breathing her in as she lies back down on my chest.
“What’s your favorite childhood memory?” she asks, her arms limp across my chest.
“ That matters to you?”
She slightly knees me as the hammock sways more, and I can’t help but gently laugh before hearing her persistent voice, “Answer it.”
I think on it, finding the past so bittersweet, a place I don’t like to frequent anymore. But there’s something about her, about this moment. She’s comforting to me . “It was right before Serena was taken,” I state, recalling the last time I felt truly happy while still feeling like a child—before I was forced to become a man. “I was proving myself to Death’s Wing at about twelve, and killed a man for them. They let me have his coin bag for doing it so quickly—which was easy with my powers. I used that money to buy us our first real feast. We ate so much, Serena threw up.” I chuckle, only for the humor to fade as I wonder if she thinks of that day, wherever she is. “I can still smell how salty the pork was, and remember how the fat dripped over the table.”
I touch Jane’s hair, feeling guilty as I recall my family. I only joined the Council of Zenith to find Serena, and now that plan has blown up in my face.
‘I’ll help you find her…’
It still hurts to think it won’t be me , but I cannot abandon this woman in my arms. Somehow, that might hurt more.
“What did you eat at the feast?” she softly asks, and if I was able to see in front of her, I’d bet that her eyes were closing.
“A pig roast, and potatoes with butter and cream. Our mother baked the fluffiest biscuits, and then we had two pies for dessert.”
Peace fills her heart, so soothing against my chest. I want to guard this sensation as long as my heart beats, my grip on her skin digging slightly deeper.
With a dramatic sigh, she continues, “Do you ever see yourself settling down? Would the people that follow you be okay with that?”
I raise a hand to stroke her hair, eyeing a strand as it wraps loosely around my finger. “I don’t think it’s shocking to any of them that one day, I’d want to settle. It’s a natural evolution for us all. Their primary motive is safety in numbers. It’s a dark fucking world outside of Belstead, and even then, some warlords are creeping in on those lands. I live near water and it’s harder to siege, and I don’t struggle for a second to make hard decisions, even if they’re distasteful . As long as I continue to make them, they’ll be there for me.”
All it does is soothe Jane, and it’s why she feels so faultless against me. “Why aren’t you a pirate with the way you talk?”
I stiffen, but decide to get it over with. “My father was a pirate.”
I bet her pretty little eyes are open now.
She’s intrigued, and sorrowful. Perhaps even slightly bashful for realizing how personal of a question that was. “What if you run into him?”
“I already tried. He was dead before I got to him.” I run my fingertips against her skull. “Otherwise, I’d have killed him myself.”
Acceptance .
The Zenith princess not only is molded for me, but she accepts me. She shifts slightly so her body closes in all the space between us, my cock hardening, even though I don’t plan to use it again so soon. I’m enjoying the gentleness.
“I don’t think I could live with peace,” she confesses. “I desire it, sure, but I know I’d get bored.”
“Which is why you’re with me, because that’s how I’m built, too.”
Something profound blooms inside of her, and I realize we’ve never outright stated we’re together. It deepens whatever she feels for me— security . I want to give her more. “After this, I think we will go across the Black Sea with Basilisk, to look for Serena and get away for a moment. Explore, which I know you want to do.”
Her walls are nearly non-existent at this point, and I can tell how much she wants what I just offered. That’s it, love. Such a good girl. “Is that his real name?”
“No.” I glance up at the ceiling, then out the window. “It’s Rasmus. He has a small kingdom out there. He’s also someone that can make very hard decisions very quickly, which is what all men really want to follow.”
A cool breeze enters the room through the open window, her shivering against me, making my cock twitch even more. I want to be the man who knows her body better than she does. Even if she hated me, she’d always have to crawl back if she wanted to properly be tended to, to feel my touch that would know every inch of her and how to make her come over, and over.
Owning this part of her is a triumph nothing else will satiate.