Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
ALLERIA
A bargain?
Fae bargains are binding. I learned that lesson at Cairn’s hands before. He’s careful with his wording. He always is, and I know better than to blindly agree to any bargain he sets. But he hasn’t asked me to forgive him, only to let him keep trying until I decide whether he’s earned it.
Forgiveness isn’t something I can promise on demand, and he knows it. Even letting him try is more than I’m ready to give him right now.
I should tell him that. But I’m still pinned between his body and the rock, and every part of me that should be saying no is too busy wanting to say yes before he changes his mind.
I open my mouth with no idea what I’m going to say.
He steps back before either of us can find out.
Cold rushes into the space where his body was, and I blink at him.
“What are—”
The words fade as he reaches behind his neck and pulls his shirt off over his head. Every clever thing I might have said vanishes.
I’ve seen him shirtless before, but never like this.
The dark marks I remember tracing the first time I saw him naked still curl over his shoulders and down his arms, but now they’ve been added to.
Threads of green and gold wind through the black, blue and silver glinting where the light catches them.
The colors are so alive against his skin they might be lit from beneath it.
“Join me.”
I stare at him. “In the sea?”
His gaze has already moved past me, out to the black water rolling against the shore. Something shifts in his face when he looks at it. The arrogance eases. The hunger stays, but it changes shape, no longer directed at me.
Stripping out of the rest of his clothes, he walks into the sea.
The first wave breaks around his ankles, and he stands there a moment.
I’ve seen him face soldiers. I’ve seen him smile with blood on his hands. I’ve seen him collared, furious, half-starved and impossible to break.
I’ve never seen him look relieved.
He walks deeper.
The water climbs his legs, his waist, his chest. He tips his head back as it closes around him, and something in my chest pulls tight. This isn’t want. This is home. I can see it in the way his body answers the water, and the way the last of the tension leaves him.
He ducks beneath the surface. For one horrible second, he’s gone.
Then he rises again, water sheeting off him as he shoves his hair back with both hands. The marks across his skin gleam wet and bright. He turns, smiling at me.
And the sheer joy in it takes my breath away.
I remain on the sand. He’s at home in that water, and I have never once set foot in the sea.
I’ve watched this sea for days from the window of my chambers. From up there, it was beautiful. Black water. Silver waves.
Down here, it’s louder. Colder.
Until today I’ve never been close to it. I’ve never watched water reach for my feet. The thought of it closing over my head, of the ground vanishing beneath me with nothing to hold onto, locks me in place.
He holds out a hand. “Alleria?”
“I can’t swim.”
“I know. You won’t need to.” His smile widens. “Take those off, and come to me.”
I should refuse. I should hold my ground and wait for him to come back. Instead, my fingers find the hem of my tunic and lift.
The way he watches me heats my blood. His eyes track every movement I make as I strip the tunic off, then step out of the pants.
The cold shocks the breath from my lungs when I first step into the water. I stop ankle deep, arms folded tightly over myself, staring down at the place where the black water covers my feet. A wave slides in, pulls back, and the sand moves with it.
My stomach drops.
“It’s moving!”
“The sand?”
I nod.
“It will. Step forward. You’ll be fine.”
Easy for him to say.
I take another step. Then another. Slow and careful. The water reaches my knees, then my thighs, and every pull of it tries to convince me that the ground is about to vanish.
Then it does.
My foot finds empty space, and I lose my balance.
“Cairn!”
“I have you.” He reaches me before I go under, his hands closing around my waist and lifting me against him. I clutch at his shoulders, heart pounding.
“I’ve got you, Moirthalen.” His mouth is close to my ear, his voice low. “The sea won’t take anything that belongs to me.”
It’s a ridiculous thing to say.
But somehow, I believe him.
He moves through the waves with a confidence I’m jealous of, one arm firm around my waist as the water lifts us and lowers us again.
At first I cling to him hard enough that my fingers ache, convinced every swell will be the one that drowns us.
But he shifts with it, easy and sure, and after a while my grip loosens.
“There. Look.” He eases his hold just enough to point.
In the distance, something breaks the surface and leaps clean out of the water, silver against black, before diving under again with barely a splash.
“What is it?”
“A tidehart.” His voice is lighter than usual. “Keep watching. The rest of the pod will follow. They travel in groups of ten or so. This pod has lived near the cove for centuries.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Only to other fish.”
More of the creatures rise out of the water in a graceful arc, one after another. I get a better look this time. Sleek, silver-scaled bodies. Long fins. Pale coral-like horns that sweep back from their skulls.
“Gods,” I whisper. “They’re beautiful.”
We watch them for a while, his arm anchoring me close as the waves swell and roll around us. Every now and then another silver body flashes through the water farther out, and each time I catch sight of one, something in me eases a little more.
Cairn stays quiet. He doesn’t tease me for clinging to him, or try to make me let go. He keeps me steady in the water and lets me look.
Then he shifts.
His hand slides over my hip, tracing the curve of my waist beneath the water, and I remember all at once that we’re both naked.
The bond has been a low constant hum since I summoned the steed, but now it dims. A wall sliding into place, cutting off the easy flow of feeling between us.
I turn to look at him, lips parting to ask why he closed it.
But before I can speak, he kisses me, and the question dissolves against his mouth.
I’m only half-aware of him carrying me back through the water. One moment I’m in his arms with the sea rocking around us, and the next the cold has become air, the wet sand cool under my feet as he sets me down.
He lifts a hand.
The air shimmers near the base of the cliff, and a shelter takes shape out of nothing. Walls of soft, shifting magic rise around a thick bed of furs.
Taking my hand, he draws me inside, and down onto them.
“I believe,” he murmurs against my lips, “that we had a bargain to seal.”
“I don’t recall accepting the terms.”
“Hmm. Do I need to convince you?”
His mouth finds the point of my ear. When his teeth catch the tip, a sensation shoots through me so sharp and sudden that I cry out and arch off the furs.
He goes still for half a breath, then makes a low, pleased sound, and does it again.
And I am lost before he’s even begun.
His mouth leaves my ear, and he kisses his way down my throat. His tongue traces the dip of my collarbone, and when his lips close over the peak of my breast I gasp, fingers twisting into the furs beneath me.
“Cairn.”
“Patience.” I feel the word against my skin more than hear it.
He moves lower—the underside of my breast, the line of my ribs, the skin of my stomach—and everywhere he touches leaves a burning trail in its wake. By the time he settles his shoulders between my thighs, I’m trembling, wound so tight I can barely breathe.
He gazes up the length of my body, golden eyes turned molten, and the sight of him there …
“Do we have a bargain?”
“Cairn!”
He gives a quiet laugh and turns his head, pressing a kiss to the inside of my thigh. “Then tell me you want this.”
Pride makes me hesitate for half a second, then his thumb strokes over me, slow and deliberate, and pride loses.
“I want it. Please.”
His mouth closes over me and the world narrows to that one single point. When I writhe beneath him, his arm settles over my hips, holding me in place. His other hand spreads flat against my stomach, keeping me helpless under the onslaught of his tongue.
The pressure builds, coiling low before spreading through my body, until I’m coming apart at the seams, and begging him in a voice stripped of every shred of dignity I’ve ever possessed.
When it breaks, I cry out, back arching, the sensation rolling up my spine and whiting out everything for one long, shattering wave.
Everything goes quiet. Every complaint. Every hurt.
They’re still there when I come back to myself, but for a few breathless moments, they can’t reach me.
I come down slowly, his name still on my lips, and his mouth pressing soft, unhurried kisses to the inside of my thigh. When I am able to focus, I look up and find him watching me, pure satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.
I look at the colorful marks shimmering on his skin. At the way his fingers caress my stomach as he holds my gaze, and something new unfurls inside me.
Reaching down, I grasp his hand and tug. He prowls up my body until he’s braced above me, hands either side of my head.
“There.” He’s watching me with so much smug satisfaction I almost laugh. “Terms met. The first of them, anyway.”
“The first? You’re very confident.”
“I have reason to be.” He dips down and presses a kiss to my lips. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I can’t. That’s the maddening thing about him. He isn’t wrong, and he knows it.
“I’m not forgiving you just because you’re good with your mouth.” I try not to smile and fail.
“Very good with my mouth.” His lips curve into a smile. “But no, you won’t forgive me because of that. You’ll forgive me because you decide to. Eventually.”
I do laugh then, because the sheer arrogance of him … the confidence … it makes me want to try and shatter it.
I place a hand against his chest and push, and I’m surprised when he lets me press him back into the furs.