Chapter 7 The Wave Held Still #3
“You are plenty strong,” she murmured, holding up a familiar silver ribbon. One of the two he’d left by her pillow. The pair to the one she still wore every day in her hair.
She didn’t speak again at first. Just looked at him.
Her shift brushed against his thighs, whisper-soft.
Maddening. Her bare legs were visible now in the firelight, skin pale and delicate.
Her body was so small compared to his, but her presence was enormous.
Consuming. How did she charge the air between them just by being?
“A ribbon won’t cut a beast,” she continued, voice warm and unguarded. “But perhaps this will remind you what you fight for.”
Her fingers ghosted across his chest, dragging the silver silk in a slow loop over his collarbone.
Her words pierced him, but it was the way she stood that destroyed him—the way her hips hovered near his thighs, the way her chest rose and fell just inches from his mouth.
Heat radiated from her skin. He envisioned pressing his forehead to her stomach, burying his face in her softness, worshiping her with his lips and hands and—Void help him—his entire soul.
I would fight gods for you. Would reshape the ground beneath you just to lighten your step.
She tied the ribbon with slow deliberation, not understanding the havoc she was wreaking.
Her hands settled on his shoulders, weight shifting between her feet.
He tensed at the gentle press of her palms. The heat of her fingers over the stretch of muscle that strained not to grab her hips and pull her onto his lap.
He wanted her there. Wanted to drag her against him and show her what she did to him.
Needed her to understand it with her body, her breath, her shivers against his skin.
But he didn’t move. Couldn’t. Because if he gave in now—
“Kailorien,” she called.
His voice was low, rough. “What is it, starlight?”
She leaned in, not shy. “You’re pulling me toward you.”
He was. Every breath, every look, every tightened knuckle was a gravity well, aching for her to fall. He reached for her hand without thinking. Their fingers laced—and gods, that tiny touch sent a bolt of longing through him.
He brought her closer, until her body pressed more firmly between his thighs, and his mind lit up with images he had no business letting linger. Her in his arms. Under him. Writhing against him, gasping his name, breaking apart with the pleasure he alone gave her.
She stood there, flushed and luminous, his thirst reflected in her eyes. As if her skin felt every imagined stroke of his hands.
“Your eyes are like steel,” she sighed. “But your lips…they look soft.”
His heart stopped.
She touched her mouth, then his. Not rushed. Not tentative. Just curious. Like tasting a word she didn’t know.
“Yes,” she whispered, “soft.”
All he could think was that if she kept looking at him like that, touching him, whispering his name... He wouldn’t survive the night. The heat between them pulsed and something inside him—something caged and coiled and starved—snapped.
His hands lifted of their own accord. One found her hip. The other braced just beneath her ribs.
She stilled.
So did he.
But his fingers didn’t retreat. They pressed. Possessive. Reverent. As if he needed to remind himself that she was real. That this wasn’t some dream he’d spun from fevered nights and battle-weary imaginings.
Her warmth bled through the fabric of her shift. He drifted in the faint rise and fall of her breath. The delicate tremor just beneath her skin.
She watched him. Not afraid. Not confused.
Open.
Waiting.
His thumb moved in a slow arc over the side of her hip. His chest rose, drawing a breath frayed at the edges.
“I shouldn’t…” he rasped, voice unraveling.
She tilted her head, silver hair tumbling over one shoulder. “Shouldn’t what?”
“Touch you like this.”
“But you already are,” she countered.
He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to pull her the rest of the way in. To bury his face in her neck. To kiss the hollow of her throat and taste the pulse dancing there.
“I’m not made for soft things,” he lamented, voice rough with the weight of the admission.
She moved closer—but not close enough. So, he did what instinct demanded. He reached up—hands guiding her hips—and tugged gently. Her breath hitched as she folded, her knees bending, one hand bracing on his chest. The space between them vanished.
Their foreheads met. His eyes closed. Her hand pressed against his heart.
“I burn too easily,” he murmured.
A confession.
A warning.
Maybe a plea.
She leaned into the contact, her nose brushing his, her breath whispering over his lips. Her voice came soft. Certain. “You always burn, Kailorien. I know because I lay beside you every night.”
He opened his eyes.
“What if…” she hesitated. It was the first time she did, and her cheeks flushed. “What if I want to burn with you? What if I want to remember the heat that lingers between skin? But with you…only with you.”
The look she gave him—Void, it ruined him. There was no fear in it. No coyness. The sort of purity living somewhere between curiosity and quiet devotion. She meant it.
Not a seduction. A truth. Her hand slid upward—resting lightly on his jaw now. Her thumb brushed his cheekbone. And for a moment—one heartbeat suspended in time—he forgot everything else.
The war.
The rain.
The beast inside him.
All he knew was her.
He leaned in, close enough to breathe her in. Not to take. Not yet. Not when this moment was a vow. His lips hovered just above her skin. Then—like a touch of air against gossamer—he pressed a kiss to her temple. A glimpse of worship. A promise unspoken.
Her eyes were wide and the flush on her cheeks had darkened. Like a sunset spreading across white dunes.
“Auryn,” he breathed.
And then the tent flap snapped open.
Resh sprang to his feet, toppling the chair behind him in his haste. Zarrek stood in the entrance, rain dripping from his armor, his sharp eyes darting from Auryn to Resh to the ribbon in his hair.
“Well then,” he drawled. “Looks like you’re feeling better.”
“I am,” Auryn answered, the serenity of her tone a stark contrast to the firestorm inside Resh’s chest.
He turned away, pretending to rearrange maps. His ears burned.
Zarrek stepped inside, boots squelching on damp canvas. “You gave some of us a scare,” he said, dropping something in her lap.
Auryn blinked. “Fish?”
“Tribute,” Zarrek said dryly. “From the men.”
“And flowers?” she added, brow furrowed.
“For stopping the river,” Zarrek replied. “Saving their lives.”
“I only helped the river remember.” She frowned.
“You did it on a whim?” Resh asked.
She glanced at him. “No. I didn’t want the water to wash away your memory. The soldiers. The horses. You. Kailorien.”
Resh tried not to react. Tried.
“You should eat,” Zarrek muttered. “You’ve been out nearly a full day.”
“This fish looks tasty,” she said. “I will have some.”
“I wouldn’t,” Zarrek warned. “The men can’t cook for sh—”
“Zarrek,” Resh cut in. “Watch your mouth. She’s learning everything you say.”
Zarrek snorted. “What are you, her father now?”
Auryn placed the fish beside the flowers. “Voids-damned,” she repeated, then smiled. “You say that a lot, Kailorien. What does it mean?”
Resh stared at her, helpless.
Then he laughed.
Laughed until his chest ached and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Even Zarrek cracked a smile.
For the first time in weeks, the air between the three of them was clear.
That night, Resh immersed himself in journals and continued preparations for potential dangers of the coming Cycle.
He was penning a missive when the world thinned, the sounds of night in the Kelvasari camp blurring into a deep echoing voice calling his name.
He drifted, and from the dark, red eyes watched.
He jerked up, startled, his fist clenching so hard he snapped the stylus in his hand clean in half. Ink spilled over his fingers onto maps, half-filled notes about rivers, and the safest way through the Emerald Moores.
I need to sleep. Soon. His jaw ached with weariness, eyes burning from too many nights awake. But not while she’s near.
Auryn hadn’t stirred since Zarrek left, still curled up on her side where he’d tucked her.
Too pale. Still drawn thin from the river.
Weeks ago, she had slipped into his bed claiming cold as her excuse, and she hadn’t left it since.
He told himself he let her stay because it steadied her. Truth was, it anchored him.
He set the charcoal down and pinched the Polis lanterns to embers.
The tent dimmed, shadows pooling along the canvas.
Buckles fell open one by one; armor rested in its rack.
He stripped to trousers and an old undershirt and eased down beside her.
The mattress dipped. Warmth spilled between them. He lay still, listening.
In. Out.
Her breath was a softer metronome than the river, but steadier. Against his will, his own chest fell into its rhythm. His eyes half-shut.
The jolt came fast.
Auryn sat bolt upright with a sharp, panicked breath. He reached for the sword that wasn’t there—remembering he no longer brought it to bed.
“Auryn.”
Kenaz flared, granting him vision in the night. Dark bled into clarity. She was half-awake, eyes wide but not seeing.
“It will tear,” she whispered hoarsely. “It will tear, it will tear—”
He caught her forearm, not to restrain but to anchor. “Auryn. Look at me.”
Her gaze slid past him. Not here. Not yet.
“It was only a dream,” he murmured, voice low and steady. “You’re here. With me.”
Her fingers found his shirt. “Kail—” Her voice broke, and she tipped forward into his chest.
He wrapped an arm around her back, palm spread between her shoulders, the other bracing her knees. Holding her steady while she trembled.
“Breathe,” he whispered.
Her heartbeat thundered against his ribs. His own kept time until hers slowed. He thumbed a strand of hair from her temple.
“Does the Resh’Agar dream?” she asked against his throat, voice still thick.
“I don’t sleep.”
“Not ever?”
“Rarely.” A faint, wry exhale. “Only with someone to watch my back.”
Her breath hitched. “Are you afraid to close your eyes?”
“Not for myself.”
She pressed her face harder against him, small and stubborn.
He pulled the blanket higher over her shoulders, arms wrapping around her.
For a long while, neither of them moved.
Her eyes closed, and she drifted back to sleep.
Resh told himself he imagined it when her heartbeat slowed to match his own, as though his led a march to dreams, and hers synched to match it.