Chapter Ten #2
The decision formed somewhere between lunch and sunset, crystallizing with the kind of clarity that only came when a person stopped fighting the obvious.
She wanted to kiss him. Not because her omega biology was screaming for it, not because heat was fogging her brain, not because his scent made her weak.
She wanted to kiss him because he'd held her hand under the stars and told her about the women he'd lost, and his voice had cracked on Adele's name, and she'd seen the man behind the curse for the first time without any filters between them.
She wanted to kiss him because she chose to. And that distinction mattered.
She found him in his cabin at dusk, studying charts at his desk. The light from the oil lamp threw shadows across his face, softening the hard lines, gilding the blue-silver streak in his beard. He looked up when she entered. Awareness. Wariness. Want.
"Looking for another lesson?" he asked.
"No." She closed the door behind her.
His hands stilled on the charts. She watched him track her movement across the cabin, the way a predator tracked prey, except there was no hunger in it tonight. Only attention. Every particle of his focus narrowing to a point, and that point was her.
She stopped in front of his desk.
"I'm not in heat," she said.
"I know. I can smell the difference."
"And you're not in rut."
"No."
"Good." She stepped around the desk. He turned in his chair to face her, and she stood between his knees, looking down at him for the first time since she'd come aboard.
He was always so much taller, so much bigger, that she'd grown used to craning her neck.
Like this, with him seated and her standing, they were almost level.
"Jeanne." Her name in his mouth was a question and a warning.
"I want to try something." She placed her hands on his shoulders. Beneath the linen of his shirt, his muscles were locked, rigid with restraint. "I want to touch you without biology making the decision for me. I want to know what this is when neither of us is burning."
"That is a very dangerous idea."
"Everything on this ship is dangerous. At least this is my choice."
She kissed him.
Not the way they'd kissed during the heat, all desperation and teeth and the need to consume each other. This was slower. Her lips against his, learning the shape of his mouth without the haze of biology blurring everything.
He didn't move. His hands stayed on the arms of the chair, white-knuckled. Letting her lead. Letting her choose the pace, the pressure, the depth. Giving her control when every alpha instinct he possessed must have been screaming for him to take it.
She pulled back. His eyes were blue. Not gold. He was holding his wolf in check with an effort she could see in the tendons of his neck.
"You can touch me," she said. "I'm giving you permission."
"If I start, I won't want to stop."
"Then don't stop. Just..." She traced the line of his beard, the silver-blue streak that marked the curse's claim on him. "Just stay here. Stay with me. Not the wolf, not the captain. You."
His control broke. Not the way it had during her heat, all animal and instinct. This was a man choosing to let go. His hands came up to frame her face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, and he kissed her back with a tenderness that stole her breath.
He stood, lifting her as he rose, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her to the bed without breaking the kiss, laying her down with a care that made her chest ache. His body covered hers, his weight settling over her, and the rightness of it resonated through her bones.
"Slow," she breathed against his mouth. "I want this slow."
"Slow," he repeated, like he was learning a new word.
He undressed her with patience she wouldn't have believed him capable of. Each button unfastened deliberately. Each inch of revealed skin kissed, tasted, learned. He mapped her body with his mouth the way he'd mapped the stars for her, naming each landmark.
"This scar." His lips found the mark on her collarbone. "How?"
"Fell out of Marc's oak tree when I was seven. He carried me home on his back."
He kissed the scar like it was something sacred.
"These freckles." His mouth moved to her shoulder, where sun had scattered bronze across her skin. "From the vineyard?"
"Years of working in the fields." Her voice was unsteady. Not from heat. From the unbearable gentleness of his mouth on her skin. "My mother had them too."
He kissed every freckle he could find. Her shoulders, her arms, the bridge of her nose. She lay beneath him, trembling, not from cold or fear but from the realization that no one had ever touched her like she was worth taking time over.
When she pulled his shirt over his head, she returned the favor.
The scar across his chest was a ridge of old tissue, silver-white against his tanned skin. She traced it with her fingers first, then her mouth. He shuddered.
"The night Morvenna cursed you," she said.
"Her magic cut me open when I tried to reach Marguerite. I should have died from it." His voice was strained. "Sometimes I think it would have been kinder if I had."
"Don't say that." She pressed her mouth to the center of the scar, right over his heart. "Don't you dare say that."
He made a sound that wasn't a word. His hand cupped the back of her head, holding her there, against the place where the curse had opened him up. She could hear his heartbeat, strong and fast, and she kissed it again, and again, until his breathing evened out.
When they came together, it was nothing like the heat.
Slow, the way she'd asked for. He entered her with a gentleness that bordered on reverence, watching her face for every flicker of response, adjusting his angle when she gasped, stilling when she needed to breathe.
She was sore from the three days before, and he seemed to know it without being told, moving with a care that made her eyes sting.
"All right?" he asked, his forehead resting against hers.
"Yes." She cupped his face in both hands. "More than all right."
He moved inside her, and she moved with him, and it was unhurried and deliberate and nothing like the frantic coupling of her heat. This was a conversation conducted in breath and skin and the slow roll of hips. This was two people choosing each other with clear eyes and full knowledge of the cost.
She came quietly, a long shuddering wave that built and crested and broke without the screaming intensity of before. He followed her over, spilling inside her with a groan that vibrated through both their bodies, and when his knot swelled to lock them together, it was a joining, not a conquering.
He didn't lunge for her throat. His wolf didn't fight for the bond. He just held her, buried inside her, his face pressed to her hair, breathing her in like she was air.
"Jeanne," he said against her temple. Just her name. But the way he said it carried the weight of everything he hadn't put into words.
"I know," she said. And she did.
They lay together, knotted, the oil lamp burning low. She traced idle patterns on his chest while he stroked her hair, and the silence between them was full of things they were almost brave enough to say.
"I'm falling in love with you," she told him. Not because the heat demanded it. Not because her omega nature was driving her toward bond. Because it was true, and she was tired of pretending it wasn't.
His hand stilled in her hair.
"I know," he said. "I can smell it on you. Have been able to for days." A long pause. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever scented. And it scares me more than anything the witch ever conjured."
"Does it scare you because of the curse? Or because of you?"
"Both." His knot pulsed inside her, and they both caught their breath.
"The curse feeds on love. It takes what's real and turns it into poison.
Every bride who loved me died for it. And I.
.." His throat worked. "I am not a man who knows how to love without holding too tight.
Without trying to control the outcome. Without treating it like a battle to be won. "
"That's not how you loved me tonight."
Silence. Then his arms tightened around her, pulling her closer, and she heard the catch in his breathing that he would never admit to.
"No," he said. "It isn't."
She pressed her face against his chest and listened to his heart. Outside, the sea rocked the ship in a rhythm as old as the world, and the stars turned overhead, and somewhere in the lowest deck, the forbidden door hummed its patient song.
But here, locked together, choosing each other in the lamplight, neither of them was listening.
ANATOLE
SHE FELL ASLEEP IN his arms, still knotted, her breath warm and even against his collarbone. Anatole stayed awake.
He watched her sleep the way he'd watched the sea for twelve years: searching for signs of the storm he knew was coming.
Her face in repose was younger, softer, stripped of the defiance and wit she wore like armor during waking hours.
Her lashes fanned against her cheekbones.
A strand of honey-brown hair lay across her lips, fluttering with each exhale.
She'd said she was falling in love with him.
His wolf was incandescent. A bright, burning certainty that filled every corner of his being, drowning out the darkness that had lived there for over a decade. She loves us. Our mate loves us. The curse will break. She is strong enough. We are strong enough together.
Anatole wanted to believe it. With every damaged piece of himself, he wanted to believe that this woman, this stubborn, brilliant, infuriating human omega who had no wolf and no claws and no supernatural protection, could do what six wolf omegas before her could not.
But belief hadn't saved Marguerite. Hope hadn't saved Celeste. Cleverness hadn't saved Isabeau. Kindness hadn't saved Vivienne. Courage hadn't saved Lucienne. And love, simple and uncomplicated and growing in Adele's belly, hadn't saved her either.
What made Jeanne different?
She chose us, his wolf said. Tonight. Without heat, without biology, without compulsion. She walked into this room and kissed us and it was her choice. None of the others did that. None of the others could.
Because the others had all come to him through some form of transaction. Marguerite through forbidden love, yes, but also through secrecy and rebellion. The rest through purchase, barter, arrangement. Even the ones who'd grown to care for him had started from a position of captivity.
Jeanne had started there too. But she was building something different on that foundation. Not heat-induced attachment. Not the desperate gratitude of a woman with no options.
Something real. Something that had looked him in the eye tonight and said stay here, stay with me, not the wolf, not the captain, you.
Nobody had ever asked for just him before.
His knot softened and he slipped free. Jeanne murmured in her sleep but didn't wake. He eased her onto his pillow, pulled the blanket up, and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, watching her breathe.
What if I stop trying to protect her from the curse, he thought, and start trying to build something strong enough to survive it?
It was the most hopeful thought he'd allowed himself in twelve years.
And it was almost immediately drowned by the sound of the forbidden door's hum, rising through the decks, louder than he'd ever heard it.
The curse had heard it too.
The curse knew she loved him. And now, like a hunter catching the scent of blood, it was coming for her.
Anatole dressed without sound, slipped from the cabin, and descended to the lowest deck. The corridor was dark and cold, the wood damp beneath his bare feet. At the far end, the door waited. Ancient wood, warped hinges, the faint golden glow leaking from beneath like ichor.
He pressed his hand against the wood. It was warm. Alive. Pulsing with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat.
"You can't have her," he told it. Told the curse. Told Morvenna's ghost, wherever it lingered. "I won't let you take her."
The door didn't answer. But the hum shifted, took on an almost mocking quality, and somewhere inside, he could swear he heard the dead brides laughing.
He'd heard that laugh before. Six times.
Always right before the end began.
He climbed back to the cabin, back to Jeanne, and when she turned in her sleep and reached for him, he gathered her against his chest and held on tight.