Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Roremar
Swimming might have been a horrible idea after all. He could never say no to Siena, especially not on her birthday, but he was enduring some beautiful sort of nightmarish torture when Emmeline walked onto that beach beneath their cliffside home.
Even if it was a nightmare, he never wanted to wake up.
A silk slip draped her frame, dark-blue fabric stopping mid-thigh. In the moonlight, her scars shone, but she didn’t attempt to cover them. Didn’t pull at the hem or hide. And he wanted to see all of her, splayed out beneath the stars for him to indulge in.
Siena held her hand, tugging her down toward the water. Vivienne and Nico bickered at his back. Over what? He had no Fatesdamned clue. Every drop of his attention was on Emmeline.
The waves washed gently up the beach, chilling the sand beneath the moonlight as they reached him. Without warning, Nico raced by, scooped Siena by the waist, and threw her over his shoulder. As he left, he tossed Roremar a wink that had him scowling in return.
“Not too far!” Roremar called as Nico grabbed Vivienne under his other arm and charged into the water, his sisters’ shrieks filling the air.
Emmeline’s low laughter pulled his attention back, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from coasting over her body. To the long length of her legs, the curve of her waist, the—
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Emmeline tilted her head, chestnut waves slipping over her shoulder. “What was that?”
His eyes snapped up from her tits—peaked nipples very visible against the silk—to her hazel stare, glinting with challenge. The freckles dotting her nose formed small constellations against her skin that he wanted to memorize.
Needy but refusing to back down, Roremar took an inevitable step closer. Emmeline’s breath hitched. The air around them charged like the strike of a match, and he was teetering on the edge of letting it burn.
Watching her come back to life today, seeing her with his family, had dragged up feelings he’d been trying to shove down.
Each time she grinned at him over the dinner table pumped air into his lungs, his desperation for those smiles last night so stark in his memory.
When had he started needing them so fucking badly?
And when had that need shifted into something much more dangerous? Something that tore apart realms and bled on battlefields, something even the Fates had forsaken: Desire.
Voice thick, he repeated, “I said fuck, Emmeline. As in fuck me or fuck the Fates or whatever clever iteration you’ll spin it into because you look like a fucking goddess carved from the stars.”
Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, his stare memorizing it. “It’s only a slip, Roremar.”
“It’s silk woven by the damn Angel, then,” he challenged. His quickly hardening cock agreed. Fuck, he couldn’t have that. His gaze flicked to the moonlit water. “It’ll look even better in about ten seconds.”
“What—”
Emmeline’s words melted into a squeal as he threw her over his shoulder and charged into the waves.
“Hold your breath,” he said as one crested, and with her skin pressed against his, he dove.
Their legs tangled beneath the surface, her hair floating around their bodies like tendrils reaching out for him. A part of him wished they were.
He curled one strand around his finger, trying his hardest not to picture Emmeline’s hair wrapping his fist, her bent over before him.
He shook away the thought, watching the dark strand float away, an elusive thing he could never claim. Her legs continued to brush his, pulling him closer.
Something had changed between them last night.
The cracks in their friendship had been forming for weeks, despite Desmond, despite Roremar trying to pull away—ever since he felt her terror the night she was attacked at the Academy and was driven by that urge to protect her.
Last night, it was like someone took a hammer to that icy wall.
And now they were both left in the mess, trying to figure out what they could make of it.
Moonlight sliced through the surface of the water. The myriad of colors in her hazel eyes glowed, but differently than when they bickered. This was soft starlight igniting beneath the surface; it was dusk encasing the day, making room for the secrets of the night to sweep in.
For a moment, as it always was when he swam, everything was quieter. Easier, with her eyes on his. There wasn’t so much damn pressure lacing his bones or crushing his throat.
And in a twisted way, beneath the water with her, Roremar felt like he could truly breathe.
Gently, testing, Emmeline stretched forward, tracing the dark ink that wrapped around his left shoulder. Her eyes branded him as she explored.
Fates, please never stop touching me.
If they’d been above the water, he thought the words would have slipped out. Down here, though, it was as if they were a secret—every glide of her fingers and sinful thought of his own something they could tuck away.
Her nails scratched down his oblique, tracing the letters etched there, questions burning between them.
His muscles tensed, every inch lower pure torture, his hands begging to reach for her.
To press her firmly against him, to sink into her and fucking feel something good and indulgent when he spent so many days enduring numbness and overwhelm.
Emmeline’s fingers traveled lower, stopping on his hip at the waistband of his undershorts, and unless she planned on giving herself to him fully, that was all he could endure. Roremar gripped her wrist, and her gaze flashed up to his.
Her eyes widened, as if she’d been as entranced as he had.
She shook her head, and he knew what she meant. They couldn’t do this. This is all they were. Partners in an investigation, maybe friends. It was all they would ever be despite the way he was pulled to her.
When they were done with this case, she would go to Valyn to find her sister.
And he would stay here to take care of his family.
They’d both given up everything for those two goals for far too long. It was what they had to focus on. He couldn’t get lost in her instead.
So Roremar pressed his lips into a line and nodded. And he pretended it didn’t rip his heart out to do so.
He pulled Emmeline to the surface. As they gulped down air, he forced a wide grin to his lips—and it wasn’t all fake. Despite the way his chest squeezed, he had her here. For a few hours, they left the murders and threats and future behind.
For a few hours, she was his.
Back stroking toward the cliffs his siblings were already halfway to, he called, “Welcome to my world, Huntress.”
There was something in her stare he couldn’t name, but he memorized the flicker of longing that followed, and he promised when she went to Valyn, he’d always hold it close.
They swam to the caves beneath the nearby cliffs, his siblings taking turns jumping off the rocky outcrops as he and Emmeline sat under the overhang. Moss clung to the walls and tunnels stretched behind them.
Emmeline whispered, “You do think we’ll find this person, right?”
His stare spun to her, his damp waves swishing over his brow. “We will. We’re getting closer, Emmeline. Can’t you feel it?”
“I suppose so.” The words were smaller than normal. She twisted that opal ring on her finger. “It feels like there’s an obvious answer that we just aren’t seeing. A piece we’re missing. But instead of figuring it out, we’re”—she waved a hand over the water—“here.”
“After last night…” He let the words trail off, watching for any reaction that signaled she didn’t want him to go there. “I think we both needed a day to just be. A distraction for a few hours.”
She nodded, chewing her lip. “You’re different out here, Roremar.”
“What do you mean?”
Turning toward him, her eyes flicked across his face. “There’s Roremar the Reckless, the warrior who earned the reputation. Then there’s the clever, analytical—albeit aggravating—”
“Trying to flirt with me, Miss DeLeoste?” he interjected.
She only raised her voice. “—man who keeps all his secrets bottled up but is one of the smartest, most observant people I’ve ever met.
” Pride bloomed in his chest at the words.
“There’s the son and brother who clearly shoulders all the stress of his family.
The tightness in your body when you’re looking out for them or worried about schedules and plans makes sense now.
” She paused, hugging one knee tighter to her chest, the other leg dangling over the drop into the shallow water.
Beads of water rolled along her skin, baring her scars as she seemed to peel back his.
“Then there’s this version. The one who seems… relaxed. Happy, almost.”
Fates, he fucking was. The water at night always had that effect, but here. Now…
“I think, despite everything going on on Lyra, right now I’m the happiest I’ve been in a while, Huntress.”
She gave him a soft smile. “Me, too, Reckless.”
And the way she said that name was different this time. Knowing that she saw the other sides of him made it sound like hers, like she was reclaiming the reputation for him.
Emmeline’s words from the night before came back to him. All the pain she’d been through—the loss. The deaths she’d both suffered and inflicted. Tonight, as she flicked a smile at him from her perch atop the rocks, she was an entirely different person than she was in that bathing tub.
Just as she’d catalogued the versions of him, he collected pieces of her.
This wasn’t the woman she displayed to the world.
The orderly and controlled tutor. But this also wasn’t the ghost that haunted alleys in the night.
This was raw and vulnerable and real. He thought maybe it was the joy that dared to flame within her, the one that threatened to raze the world if she let it out.
Did she realize how deep that power went? It was evident in every bubble of laughter, every glance at the stars. Emmeline DeLeoste was made of magic and stardust.
A kind Roremar could never bottle up in this corner of the world where he was trapped.
And if that didn’t make him sick.
Much to Siena’s dismay, eventually they made their way back up the path. She was drifting to sleep on Roremar’s shoulder by the time the house came into view. Vivienne twirled ahead of them, her wet braids flicking droplets to the jungle ground.
A pair of panthers lounged in the trees near the front door, a white crescent marking one’s forehead. Tilting her head, Emmeline studied her from the porch as she scrunched water from her hair, the tunic Roremar loaned her dropping to mid-thigh.
“Everything okay?” Roremar asked, adjusting Siena to hold the door open.
“I recognize that panther.”
Knowing jade-green eyes met Roremar’s. “Cirre?”
Emmeline whipped her head toward him. “She has a name?”
Roremar shrugged. “She’s sort of—”
But before he could explain the family’s affinity for the jungle cat, Leo’s animated voice drifted from the kitchen. A familiar, deep tone answered it.
Roremar froze, despair sinking claws into his gut as he felt Emmeline slipping away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
From beyond the foyer, Vivienne exclaimed, “Uncle Aldryn!”
Emmeline’s brows creased as she peered around Roremar. “Uncle…”
And Aldryn Falliare stepped into the hall, his face grim as he took them in. “There’s been another murder.”