Chapter 28
That should be the end of it. I should be so embarrassed at having been caught that lust is the last thing on my mind.
But the warmth low in my stomach flares.
There’s an insistent, needy ache pounding between my legs that makes me press them together.
Even the back of my neck feels hot as my heart races.
Roiven’s eyes are still on me, burning. Bright and nearly red, not the familiar gold. Not accusing. Not anything but hungry.
His gaze slips down my body, and all of a sudden I understand why him staring at me made the feeling stronger instead of making it go away.
It’s his lust, too. Whatever forbidden feelings I accidentally shoved into his brain…he’s showing me they’re mutual. That it wasn’t just the sight of me on my knees before. That maybe he wants me like I’ve been wanting him.
He rounds the pool, to the other side where the stone is smoother and the entrance looks easier to manage.
For the moment before he steps into the water, I can see how hard he is.
Roiven covers himself with one palm pressed to his length, as if a hand could cover that, and the fact that he’s trying to at all just makes it look like a joke, because I can still see both the base and the tip of his erection.
As he sinks into the water I finally free my eyes from him and stare up at the sky. The clouds are dark overhead, no stars visible. The sun has just sunk below the horizon, but there’s still a little light left.
If we both want each other, can’t it be simple?
We’re never going to be lovers. He’s a witch and I’m a knight, and no matter what I’m coming to believe, we’re opposites.
Sworn enemies. He killed the people on my Hellion and I killed the witches who came to rescue him, and before that we both killed hundreds more.
But sex can just be sex. And we’re alone on a barren island for the night, with no witnesses except a dragon who’s currently hunting out at sea.
I grind the ball of my foot against the stone.
The lust pounding through my body hasn’t calmed down, and I know a fair share of it is mine and mine alone.
But this isn’t a tavern or even a ship’s berth, and I’m not sure what the rules are, between a witch and a confused knight.
Asking if he wants to fuck feels… stiff.
Especially given our history. I’m sure he still hates me, no matter how he’s been acting.
I glance back down at the pool. Roiven has turned his back to me, resting his elbows on the far lip of the stone.
I’m not afraid of the water, which means it’s fresh, not salt, and fine to wade in.
From his casual pose, one shoulder a little higher than the other, he’s standing, not treading. Good. It isn’t a deep pool.
Before I can think twice, I remove my sword, strip my clothes, and stride naked across the rocky ground. Where Roiven lounges, his back still to me, is the only easy way in. The stone on my edge of the pool looks painfully jagged, and it’s higher, too, with a two-foot drop into the water.
I wince as I walk across it, find a smooth spot to place my palm, and slip into the water with a splash.
It’s deeper than I expected, so deep on this end I can stand and be mostly underwater.
It’s warm, and the parts of my body aching after the long day’s flight—my thighs, chief of all—feel immediate relief.
Roiven spins to look at me, eyes hard and jaw tight. He doesn’t say anything. The water rocks between us, covering me up to my neck for a moment before baring the swell of my breasts.
His disbelief cuts through me like a knife.
Just because he was feeling lust didn’t mean he wanted me naked in the pool with him. This was wrong of me. Not bold in the way I’d intended, but downright wrong. My shoulders stiffen as my cheeks burn.
“This was a bad idea,” I say tightly, as he keeps staring, and staring, and staring, like he’s making an accusation. “I’ll get out. Do you want to turn around first?”
Roiven’s eyes, fixed tight on mine, slowly break away and slide down to where the water laps against my chest. Then back up. The swells soften as the water settles. I can feel his eyes as clearly as if he’d reached out to touch me.
“...And if I want you to stay?” Roiven says. His voice is a low knife that cuts right through me. My mouth falls open.
“Do you?”
He nods.
I push off the wall to float toward him. It’s only ten feet or so wide. But Roiven immediately skirts to the side, away from where I’m pointed.
“That’s a bad idea.”
“What?”
“You’ll regret it.”
“I’ll what?” I wave my arms under water to stop me from drifting any closer to him.
Not ‘we’ll regret it.’ But that I will. Does he think I’m a virgin or some aristo’s daughter? He really is a prude.
“Sex doesn’t have to mean anything,” I tell Roiven. The water’s deeper here. I reach down for the bottom with my legs.
“I know,” he growls. “But we’re bonded, Cai. That changes things.”
“I’m not going to chase you.” My toes point.
There’s still nothing beneath my feet. The water laps higher as I sink into it.
Up to my chin, then just over. I swing my legs, but if I could stand at the edges, surely the bottom isn’t far below me now.
When I sink to find it, I can push off hard toward one of the walls of the pool. It won’t be a problem.
“Let's just enjoy the water,” Roiven says.
I’m not exactly at a good moment for some quippy response. The water laps up over my lips and I thrash my legs harder. Because pushing off the bottom is fine in theory, but I’d much rather just not sink in the first place. I manage to pop a few inches up out of the water before I sink down again.
“Caiteven?” Roiven asks sharply.
“M’fine,” I snap. The word isn’t all the way out when I slip below again, and in an idiotic burst of panic I gasp a mouthful of water.
The water’s up over my nose now and I thrash, and it would have been fucking nice if I remembered how to swim, but as I refused to get in the ocean there had been little point.
Whatever hazy memories I have of knowing how to as a child are better left ignored.
And if somehow I’d always survived anyways, if there had always been something there to push me back up to the surface…
Roiven’s arms close tight around my waist and suddenly I’m flying to the side of the pool.
My feet drag on the stone floor and I stumble, coughing, my head and shoulders free now.
My lungs ache. He’s holding me, pushing me up against the wall until I can reach up to grab the stones with my shaking hands.
Roiven’s warm, hard body brackets mine. I cough, and cough, and cough.
His still-hard length is pressed against my lower back, his arms are around my shoulders and waist, his warmth envelopes me.
I shiver.
“You can’t swim?” Roiven asks, outraged, his voice nearly shaking.
I cough harder, spitting up water, and then cling to the rock with a shudder.
“So what?” I mutter. My throat hurts.
“You’re bound to the kraken, and you don’t even know how to swim? What were you thinking, stepping into the middle of a spring without testing you could stand there? By all the gods—”
“Haven’t I humiliated myself enough for one night?” I growl, chest heaving as I gasp. The aftershocks of the panic shudder through my body. “I’d have hit the bottom eventually—”
“Do you have any idea how deep this spring is?”
“The edges—”
“Drop off. A thousand feet.”
“Oh. Well…” My throat tightens. It was stupid of me to try to go after him.
Stupid of me to think that just because the physical attraction between us was blazing, because his lust crackled through me like lightning and fury, that he’d want anything to do with a knight at all.
And now not only do I get to stomach that rejection, he thinks I’m an idiot, too.
“Good sense be damned,” Roiven hisses.
He grabs me by the shoulders, spins me around, and crushes me between the smooth rock side and the hardness of his body. Taking my head in both his hands, he tilts my face up to his and claims my mouth.
The witch’s mouth is hard against mine, desperate.
It’s not a gentle kiss. I buckle against him as pleasure chases out the rest of my fear, but my heart keeps pounding just as fast. It’s fire running through my veins.
It’s lightning, and stormwinds, and the sea itself.
It doesn’t matter that he’s a witch and I’m a knight; that he’s the enemy I was raised to destroy. It’s Roiven. I want Roiven.
Nothing else matters.
His tongue pushes into my mouth. I lift my hands up to run them across his firm chest. Beneath the warm surface of his skin I can feel the crystal singing to me, waiting to respond to my command. But that’s not what I want, not right now.
One of his hands slides around my neck to cradle my head.
The other slips down, around my waist, to crush us tight together.
His stiff length presses against my stomach.
I slide my living hand down and palm the tip.
His body jerks against mine as I touch him.
Roiven moans into my mouth, then catches my bottom lip between both his teeth.
“Cai,” he growls.
It’s hard not to smirk at how sensitive he is to my touch. I wrap my hand around him and stroke slowly all the way down his length. He feels furiously hard and searingly hot. His hips shudder, like he’s fighting the urge to thrust into my grip.
Roiven steps back, breaking his mouth away from me. I let go instantly and try not to let the disappointment ruin me.
Maybe he’s right. We aren’t meant for this. We’re opposites, and maybe still enemies, and definitely nothing more.
But then Roiven’s hands grab my hips, fingers digging into the skin, and my breath hitches.
Effortlessly, he tosses me up into the air and seats me on the side of the pool, the smooth, sloped entrance he’d taken in.
The wind bites at my skin, stiffening my nipples as Roiven grabs my knees and spreads my legs wide.