Chapter 31 Rada #3
“I have many more, my lady,” he said earnestly. “Yesterday, I found the perfect rhyme for your silver eyes. It’s your slender thi—”
“Rada!” Goran called out, saving me, and I half-shoved Dustin out onto the deck before the poetry began again.
Kellin had returned with a boat. It was almost the same size as the one I was on, though it was beyond weathered. “By Her holy hangnails, Kellin. You actually found a boat?”
He swam close and shifted, holding onto the boat as he accepted a cup of fresh water from Alexios. “I know this area well. I’ve even stayed on a few of the islands within a day’s swim. There’s an abandoned fisherman’s hut on the nearest one.”
“I could kiss you,” I said before I could think better of it.
He flinched like I’d hurt him. “Thank you for the thought,” he replied, pulling away.
Ouch. I deserved it.
I motioned Lachlan closer and whispered in his ear, “Watch over him for me? I don’t have time to make it right. Dustin has the plan. Ask him for it.”
“My brother has a forgiving heart. You’ll find a way to heal it after you’ve finished your mission.” He pressed a kiss to my lips and slid his pelt back on.
Kellin started to slide his pelt around his shoulders and follow, but I called out, “Wait!” He hesitated, though he was already shimmering with the change. “You have to take good care of yourself, Kellin.”
“Why?”
I reached over the water and grabbed his arm, then hooked my other arm around his neck, barely avoiding falling in the water. “Because I owe you an apology we don’t have time for now. And don’t forget, you owe me hundreds of orgasms.”
“I don’t forget anything,” he replied, staring as if he were trying to memorize my face.
“You don’t, do you? You’re all about the details.” I hesitated, hoping I was right. “You made maps. With sea monsters and diamonds. For me?”
He nodded.
“How much of the world have you mapped?”
“You told me you couldn’t draw, and you wanted a map of everything. I had to do something while you traveled. I’m not finished, of course.” His lips curled up slightly. “It’s hard to keep secrets from a spy.”
I set my lips at his ear and whispered as softly as I could, “If you can do what Dustin asks and find me again, I’ll tell you all my secrets, my mate.” If I live.
Our heads turned at the same time, and our lips met.
The kiss said everything I couldn’t put into words: all the feelings he’d stirred in me, and how dangerous fully bonding with me would be.
How much I wanted to go back to those first days and nights with him, and how sorry I was that I’d left him the way I did.
Of all the Alphas I’d known, he was the one who’d lit a fire in my mind, not just my body or heart.
He challenged me intellectually, and I wanted him…
in much the same way I wanted Alexios, as a friend as well as a lover.
I knew I was probably heading to my death.
But if I survived, I wanted him there to play chess and cards with.
To mix herbs for our baths and my perfumes, and sing me to sleep.
I’d only spent a few days with him, but those had been a seductive promise of what could be, if I could make it through the next few…
weeks? Months? I had no idea how long my mission would take.
And since the kiss I was giving him now might be our last, I made it count.
I stopped when Alexios started chuckling, and Goran poked me in the side. “Let him go before you kiss him too stupid to swim,” he grumbled.
It may have been too late.
“I don’t understand,” Kellin murmured, staring at my face like it was a puzzle he needed to solve more than he needed air. “You left me. You poisoned me.”
“I poison a lot of males,” I whispered. “I just don’t use lethal doses on the ones I’m falling in love with.”
His jaw dropped on one word. “Love? That’s...”
One of the others cleared his throat behind us, and I straightened, nodding for him to go.
Kellin shifted quickly, joining his brother.
Alexios, Goran, and I watched the selkies pull the small boat out of sight, Dustin waving until they were too far to see.
Then I relaxed back onto Goran’s lap, hoping my worry for the three who’d just left wasn’t obvious.
Somehow, a small metal box had found its way to my side, and I opened the latch that kept it tightly shut. A rush of buttery sweetness filled the air. “Honeyed cakes?”
“A gift from Lusca,” Alexios called.
“How very thoughtful.” I ate one. It was crumbly and rich, more like a shortbread cookie with a glaze of honey soaked into the top.
I was almost certain he hadn’t baked them, but who knew?
“I need to get this recipe for…” I thought of my adoptive mother and sighed.
I had no idea when I’d make it back from Pict.
I pressed a hand to my gut, feeling the cold pocket that Skadi had put there, but sensing the fire licking at it from within. Small flares of pain reminded me of a campfire’s embers, ready to burn hot at any moment. Who knew if I’d even survive whatever Edan had done to me?
For a moment, I wondered how the fire god had used Serak’s voice to trick me into answering him. I’d dreamed for years about the boy who’d given me my first kiss. I was sure he’d forgotten about me, but I’d obviously been wrong.
A finger pressed at the center of my forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles that had formed there as I thought back to what had happened with Serak in Rimholt. “What are you thinking of, ma bohinya?”
“Of my first kiss,” I admitted. “And why it was his voice I heard back in Mirren when I struck the bargain.”
“The bargain?”
“To go to the Alldyns Vug.” I thought of the stories I knew about that volcano, and what it was used for. “I have to sacrifice myself to the fire god.”