Chapter Eighteen #3
Her hands travelled slowly down his chest, one smoothing over the taut swell of his arm and the other dipping beneath the water to trace the muscular vee of his hips.
His mouth parted against hers in a low groan—and she had him.
He was still blinking the heat away when Adeline bounced backward with the pendant in hand.
She waved it at him, and as he stared uncomprehendingly after her, she returned his earlier wink, perhaps a touch more viciously.
And Kai huffed a laugh.
“Well played,” he said, still half-panting. “Still making good use of those training room tactics, I see.”
She beamed sweetly at him as she fastened the pendant around her neck.
“Why change a winning strategy?”
“If I say you won, will you come back over here?”
She hummed, considering. “Only if you say it very nicely.”
Kai spread his arms wide, watching her from beneath a cocked brow as he offered his conceding bow.
“You win,” he said.
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
His own taunt thrown back at him, amusement flashed in Kai’s eyes when it landed, but he only sighed and straightened. Brow flat, the king splayed a hand to his chest, voice low and oh so sincere.
“Adeline, sun to my skies, your brilliance knows no bounds. You’ve thoroughly bested me, my love, as you always do.
” He paused, lips twitching beneath all that overgrown bristle.
When he spoke again, his voice had dropped so low she nearly felt it in the water.
“Now won’t you please come over here, and best me again. ”
Adeline’s heart thundered, blood surging so adamantly that the giddy flush of her cheeks gave way to a full-on flame.
“Daughters, so dramatic,” she teased, but she waded back over and let him drag her close once more.
Perhaps she should have known he’d use a similar strategy to steal the pendant back, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be too sore.
At first, anyway. Their little war saw them splashing back onto the banks, and devolved quickly into what Adeline considered to be extremely unsporting behaviour.
Something she tried to communicate between breathless squeals as Kai held her down and tickled her sides, unrelenting until she released her grip on the pendant.
They called an eventual truce and lay spent in the moss, catching their breath and waiting for Adeline’s dress to dry in a patch of sun.
Kai half-dozed, stretched out on his back with his head cushioned on his folded arms. He wore the pendant around his neck, Adeline’s pinky finger barely brushing one cold edge when she curled in close and splayed her hand on his chest. Eventually, though, he did seem to feel the movement in his hair; he peered down at her through one cracked eye, and she beamed innocently back at him.
“How do I look, then?”
Her grin overtook her, and with any pretence at innocence forgotten, Adeline propped herself up to admire her work.
“Marvellous.”
Kai gave a disgruntled hum, but there was a soft tilt to his lips as he closed his eyes.
The effect was rather serene; that barely-there smile, the white petals and pale stems curling between his dark waves, golden light slanting through the shifting leaves above them to contour the angles of his face.
For a moment, as she gazed down at him, Adeline was gripped by an incongruous wave; an odd, dreamlike feeling that made her eyelids briefly flutter.
In the stillness of the forest, she’d slipped between the pages of an old fairytale.
Kai was a fairytale, with his crown of flowers and the dappled sunlight sliding over his skin like the loving touch of the Goddess.
Lying there in the grass, he was every bit the tragic, beautiful prince; the figure of legend, whose stories she’d been reared on.
But he was real, and he was here; his heartbeat sure and steady beneath her palm. His breath a peaceful tide.
And all too quickly, Adeline’s odd dizziness gave way to something solid—it hit her so often she should have been well used to it by now, but staring down at his face in the shifting sunlight, that feeling seized her so fiercely it knocked the air right out of her.
She choked on her too-thin breath, and Kai’s eyes flicked open, widened with mild alarm.
“Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she wheezed.
He was plainly unconvinced. “Adeline.”
But she still couldn’t breathe, much less speak.
Her stupid, soft heart had absorbed that whole feeling, all of it, and Goddess, it was far too much for one weak human heart to contain.
Her chest was too full, her lungs ached.
Panic started to trickle through her veins, and she tried to get up, but Kai was quick to grab her wrist and keep her hand pinned to his chest.
“Adeline?” He took her face in his free hand, guiding her gaze back to his own so she could see the tension in his brow, the vivid urgency lighting his eyes. “What is it?”
“I just—”
She couldn’t. The words tripped over that same spot at the back of her tongue and lodged there painfully, choking her again. She swallowed and felt them sink a little, barbed though they were.
“I was just thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
When she didn’t answer, Kai’s thumb traced a coaxing line across her jaw. His eyes were so full of care and warmth and—and that thing, the feeling he’d named for her again and again when she couldn’t bring herself to say it even once. Couldn’t even let herself think the words.
Bollocks.
She was a wretch. She was an awful person, wasn’t she? She must be. It was an awful thing to care so much for a person and never let them know it.
I hope you know, my darling Adeline—
Pain lanced through her like a warning, and a hot prickle built beneath her lashes. Adeline squeezed her eyes shut.
“I was thinking about my mother.”
It wasn’t a lie. The sharpness in her throat faded a little, and her chest eased. This truth, she thought. This is the one. The measly little truth she could manage, and the barest of what he deserved. She could not say the words, but maybe if he understood …
“I was thinking about her letter,” said Adeline. Her voice was a rasping mess, hoarse with pain and imminent tears, but she swallowed thickly and pushed on. “How she said she was proud of me and that—and that—”
“And that she loved you.”
His voice was so steady. So full of warmth it nearly seared her skin.
Adeline nodded; a hot tear slid beneath her closed lashes and spilt over her cheek. She felt Kai swipe it away with the pad of his thumb, but she knew that if she opened her eyes and saw the look in his, she would lose her grasp on her courage. She could go on, though. She could do that.
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I never said it back. I never told her.”
There. It was out now, and she couldn’t unsay it any more than she could go back and speak the words to Selma herself.