Chapter 36 #2
He leaned against the cabin door, completely at ease despite the threatening stare Corra had levelled at him, dark hair as wild as his sparkling eyes.
Somehow, being near him always made me keenly aware of how I was female, and he was male.
It was disconcerting. “Afraid I might decide to take her now?”
Corra pointed an accusatory finger at his chest. “Lisia’s not going anywhere near you.”
His tone was amused. “Everything Lisia and I did together last night was entirely consensual. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”
What fresh hell was this? What had we done last night?
“Lisia’s cabin will be next to mine,” Corra insisted, squeezing my upper arm where she still held onto me. “Where she’ll be far away from you.”
Dark eyebrows pulled together on Zevrial’s face. “Her cabin will be beside mine, where I can keep her out of trouble.”
“I’m the last person who would try to keep Lisia away from a good night of fun,” Corra sounded like she was winding up. “She’s long past overdue.”
Gee, thanks. She’d made me sound sex-starved and like something forgotten in the back of the pantry. I wasn’t desperate. Yet.
“But she was running away from you last night. No point having her cabin near yours, since she rejected you,” she argued.
I blinked, digesting this new tidbit.
“Lisia would like to decide where her own cabin is,” I muttered. Two determined gazes swung to me while I rubbed my eyes. “After I hear the rest of what happened last night.”
“Lisia, are you sure that’s a good–” Zevrial started before Corra cut him off.
“Oh no you don’t. She’s going to hear all of it.
And me too, if she’s even considering staying near you.
” We were out in an open hallway, where anyone could hear whatever came next.
And Corra was too fired up, there was no stopping her momentum.
“After you asked him to take you, Zevrial whisked you away to the owner’s back office. ”
“To try to sober her up,” he said.
Corra continued as if he hadn’t even spoken. “Five minutes later, you ran outta there with your dress half off, giggling like a maniac. With him,” she jabbed her thumb at Zevrial. “Stalking after you screaming for you to get back there, with his pants unbuttoned.”
“Consensual,” Zevrial said with easy confidence.
And everyone aboard the Shadowtide had just heard all of this. Why hadn’t I literally died from embarrassment yet?
“Inside, now,” I demanded, pointing at the cabin behind Zevrial.
We went inside, Corra closing the door behind us.
This had to be Zevrial’s cabin, not a single one of Corra’s possessions were present.
Most of his things were shades of gray and green, developing a nice contrast against the dark red of the Arcs wooden planks.
The sheets and blanket on his bed were tucked in carelessly.
In fact, most of the room was disordered, but still somehow neat.
Stacks of books lay haphazard across his desk, bits of thread and loose fabric piled on the corner.
Tall rounded windows lined the wall, affording us all a stunning view of the miasma’s shifting surface.
“Okay.” I seated myself at his desk, pushing aside a stack of books about navigating by starlight and identifying wreckage. “Continue, if you must.”
“You came back with me into the office willingly,” Zevrial leaned up against one of the windows, the reflected glare from the sun illuminating him from behind. He really was unreasonably handsome.
“You didn’t leave that way,” Corra argued.
He tapped his knuckles on the windowsill. “When we got to the back office, I had us both sit down to try to calm her down. But Lisia had other ideas. She sat on my lap and started groping me.”
I lowered my forehead to a clear spot on the desk, banging it against the hard surface.
He continued, amusement plain in his voice. “I pushed you away, and you started trying to flirt, telling me how ‘subductive’ I was.”
And the crazy keeps coming.
I’d give myself a concussion if I kept banging my head. I leaned back, staring at the ceiling and trying to disassociate from my physical body. “Subductive?”
“Pretty sure you meant seductive,” Zevrial clarified. “You were very drunk. You threw up in the bin.”
The tale of last night didn’t have a happy ending. There was no way it could. It just kept spiraling further out of control, getting worse and worse.
If comedies were tragedies given time to foment, then comedies that dragged on too long became tragedies. If this retelling kept humbling me, I wouldn’t have any self-confidence left by the end of it.
“Then you started asking about your Skinscript.”
I straightened up in the chair, glancing at Corra. She didn’t know about our illegal Skinscript. And Zevrial didn’t know she wasn’t Sarina. This whole situation was messy, and this conversation had just veered into dangerous waters. “Sarina, can you wait outside?”
“So he can convince you he was a perfect gentleman and persuade you to bunk next to him? I think not.”
“No, so that I can hear anything else humiliating I did in that back office without an audience.”
Zevrial’s smile was self-assured, as if to confirm that there were in fact more humiliating truths from last night I had yet to hear.
She huffed, but moved to the door. “Fine.” The cabin door creaked as it swung shut.
I gestured with my hand for Zevrial to continue with his story.
“You were asking when I’d give you the Skinscript you wanted. I told you that I didn’t have any Starshell ink with me,” he said. “You weren’t convinced. You tried to frisk me. That’s how my pants wound up unbuttoned.”
I doubted that even drunk I would have believed he’d hide Starshell ink down his pants. “And then?”
“You tried to kiss me again.”
That I could believe. I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten it, even in a drunken haze.
“I didn’t feel like tasting your vomit, so I stopped you.
But you were unruly,” he explained. His eyebrows lowered, voice lowering an octave.
“I don’t take advantage of the vulnerable, and you were completely wasted.
But I’m still a man, and you were on my lap, trying to kiss me with your hand down my pants.
Even if you were being quite clumsy.” His gaze pierced straight through me.
“That’s around when you found my father’s knife and decided that if I wouldn’t take you, you’d take it instead, and run. ”
Why would I take his knife? Yet another unsolved mystery of the intoxicated brain. “Did you get it back?”
He held up a jagged knife, flicking it with his thumb to make a snicking noise. “I would have outrun you even if you hadn’t had that ridiculous dress on. You really don’t remember?”
Soupy fragments of the night before flashed before me.
“I remember singing on the table. And you grabbing me off it.” That memory stood out between the gaps of nothingness, his large warm hands wrapped around me as he pulled me toward him.
The bartender yelling something at me. “Not much else.” I leaned back.
“Sarina’s right though, I shouldn’t bunk close to you. ”
He shook his head. “We both know what this is. You’re lying to yourself if you think a few extra cabins between us is going to make a difference.”
“I don’t even know you,” I gestured around the room. “I don’t know your favorite food, what kind of music you like, or even how old you are.”
“Braised pork, anything with a catchy melody, and twenty three,” he said.
“But none of that is what matters. You know me, just like I know you.” He held up his fingers and began ticking them down.
“You’re determined, stubborn, and absurdly curious.
Have a low endurance for running and a high endurance for squabbling.
You can’t handle your liquor, you’re anxious just about always, and you care deeply about those closest to you. ”
“I’m not anxious all the time.”
Zevrial raised an eyebrow, tapping his chest above his heart. “Beg to differ. Your fear tried to strangle me while you were crossing the gangway.”