Chapter 20 #2
“Are you going to be the one to give it to me?” I shake my head as I take a step away from him.
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the low light, I try to orient myself and discern which direction I need to go to get back to my cabin.
I let myself wonder if that’s where the shields are headed, if they know where my safe space is.
I feel the warm presence of a body behind me before Rylan’s hands find my hips. I freeze in place, all of my defences long gone. I could simply step forward, but I don’t.
His hand slides forward on my hip, sliding down and into the pocket that houses the dagger. “May I?” he murmurs, his breath skating across the skin of my neck.
I just manage a small noise of affirmation, words leaving me. I feel him exhale a quick breath, like a whisper of a laugh as he gently pulls the blade from my skirts.
“Do you trust me, Rosie?” His other hand still sits comfortably on my hip.
I pull the inside of my lip between my teeth, tasting the metallic tang of blood as I accidentally split the delicate skin. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“That’s fine,” he says, and a surge of his scent envelops me once more. I breathe it in, and it’s intoxicating—the familiar scents of nature around us. It almost smells like a place I would run back to, a smell that reminds me of home.
“Anywhere is good,” he murmurs into my ear, his breath dancing over the apple of my cheek. “But some spots are better than others.”
“Right,” I say on a breath.
I can’t help the nerves that riddle my body. I don’t think he would hurt me, but this moment feels like a test. A test of my trust, and a test of his honesty.
“Like here,” he says, pointing the dagger towards my heart. So close that if I so much as leaned out of his warmth, the weapon would be plunged into my chest, so I don’t move an inch, leaving my back pressed against his front.
It’s an improper position, one that sends destructive thoughts to my mind, like how I don’t quite mind the steady weight of his hand on my hip, even though he is currently holding a knife to my chest. Thoughts that I try to extract from my mind before their roots settle in my brain. Thoughts I wish I weren’t thinking.
Silas’s face comes to mind, and the expression painted on it is what I imagine he would look like if he saw me right now. If he saw that I was willingly standing here, letting a man I barely know, hold a weapon to me.
I have this feeling that if I so much as utter an indication that I am uncomfortable, Rylan wouldn’t hesitate to step back.
But I don’t, so he doesn’t.
“And here.” This time it’s resting at the bottom of my ribs and pointing upwards. “You have to be strong for this one, and you have delicate bones,” he says.
I note the way he doesn’t say that I am weak, that I am not strong. But that I am delicate. I don’t know why it feels more like a compliment than an insult; maybe it’s just the way it fell off his tongue.
“Why do you know all of this?” I ask as my eyes stay on the dagger still at my side.
“I had a lot of spare time in a place like Ashewood,” he says plainly over my shoulder.
“And you chose to spend it learning this?” I ask.
“If you are fighting a man,” he says, ignoring my question as he drags the dagger down my skirts until it is pointed between my legs. “You can’t go wrong with this region.”
“Mmhmm,” I murmur, pushing even further back into Rylan until I realise what this must feel like from his position, and it makes me halt. There’s that heat again. I can feel it all through my body, like a poison slowly spreading through my veins.
“But this one,” the dagger is back at my throat, but I don’t feel scared the way I did earlier, I feel exhilarated. “With this one, you can likely get out of any situation.”
I nod ever so slightly, the dagger grazing my skin before Rylan pulls it away from me, slipping it back into my pocket. But he doesn’t let me go, and I can’t bring myself to step away either.
There is something about him—there always has been—that pulls me into his orbit, that leaves me feeling so confused every time he walks away from me. It’s dangerous.
“Thank you,” I breathe. “For saving me…again. I don’t know what would’ve happened if that shield had caught me.” I screw my eyes shut, shaking my head. I can only imagine all the different possibilities.
His grip on my hip tightens, making my breath hitch. “You will never have to find out.”
I don’t ask him what he means because I understand. He is always going to be around to save me. I should be concerned that he can somehow always find me when I’m in trouble. How he is always in the right place at the right time to help me…
“How are things with you and the stableboy?” he says, the question catching me off guard.
I narrow my eyes as I turn my head ever so slightly. “What?”
One of his hands climbs up my body, sliding over the curve of my hip until it’s resting in the hollow of my waist. “You didn’t look as pleased as one would have hoped when he kissed you at the tavern.”
I nearly roll my eyes. Of course he saw. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
“Yes, you do,” he breathes. It’s a warm evening, but a chill skates across my chest, leaving gooseflesh atop my breasts where my dress leaves them exposed.
“It was missing something, wasn’t it? I could see it on your face.
” My back is already pressed against his front, but somehow it feels as if he gets even closer.
“It’s all right; you don’t have to admit it,” he says.
“But I know you feel more of a rush right now than you did when his lips touched yours.”
I swallow thickly, letting out a sharp breath. That’s a lie. Maybe he’s right about that night in the tavern, but when Silas kissed me in my kitchen…that was different. But this is different too.
“Maybe that’s because I am scared of you.”
“Maybe.” I can hear his smirk. He pulls one of his hands from my body, leaving the spot where we were connected cold as his fingers come up to trail a line from my neck down to my shoulder.
His touch is featherlight, like a whisper.
“Or maybe it’s because you feel like you should be scared, but you’re not. ”
Words escape me because that is how I’ve always felt about Rylan. That I shouldn’t trust him, that I should be wary of him, yet whenever he is around me, all of those warnings disappear, and I’m left wondering how I let him distract me once again.
That chill rushes in all at once, the warm presence behind me fading quickly. I turn to see his retreating form, his body nothing more than a shadow in the dark.
What do you want? I ask inside my head, and I must be beyond the threshold of exhaustion, because I swear I hear his voice in my head saying, you.