Chapter 2
Two
Far on the horizon, a thick wall cloud sparks with intricate webs of lightning. I pull the hood of my black silk cloak over my head.
Fewer and fewer people stroll down the shore, hurrying to leave before the rain. This works to my benefit. Nobody is paying attention to me.
Nestled within the rolling dunes and discarded driftwood, a blue cottage stands on a raised portion of the coastline among a collection of ramshackle homes. It’s only large enough to accommodate one or two people. Yet despite its minuscule size, the home is sturdy, like its occupant.
His boots rest outside the weatherworn entrance.
I knock—just a tiny rap.
The floorboards in the house creak, and the door opens.
Captain Lir fills the threshold, smelling of salt water and citrus.
Muscled from his work in the shipyard and many journeys out at sea, he’s easily three times larger than I am and so tall that he ducks under the doorway to greet me.
His cropped sandy-brown curls frame a handsome, freckled face.
Small lines appear at the corners of his honey-colored eyes, which gaze past me.
Eyes never focusing.
Never seeing.
“I hoped you would return,” Lir says, his expression relaxing.
“How could you tell it was me?” I ask breathlessly, noticing the few gray sprigs of hair around his temples that weren’t there before. He can’t be older than thirty, but aging doesn’t care when it claims you, bite by bite.
“You have quite the habit of arriving on this day.”
I laugh nervously. “Maybe my family drags me from the countryside to be a spectator each year.” The last thing I need is for him to know who I truly am.
“Likely story, love.” His arm encircles my waist and pulls me into his cottage as the storm slams the door shut.
As we enter, the cozy room unfolds, bathed in darkness.
No candles are lit, but two gleaming cutlasses rest on the nearby table, pinning down the curled edges of a tactile map of the Kingdom of Ashland—its mountains, roads, and villages raised off the scroll.
A reminder of his dangerous profession and his part in the ongoing war.
He stumbles backward and sinks into the worn, upholstered chair by the dead fireplace, pulling me into his wide lap. I drop my basket of books on the floor with a satisfying plop.
Fae above, he’s so comfortable.
So warm.
I kick off my boots and melt into his forbidden embrace, my palms caressing his chest over his linen shirt. Wrapping my arms around his pillar of a neck, I twirl his soft curls between my fingertips while the summer storm intensifies outside.
He gives a startled chuckle. “Your hands are burning hot.”
I pull away, but he stops me, placing my hands back on him.
He murmurs in my ear. “Today’s voyage was delayed.
My ship leaves at dawn now.” He touches my hairline and along my jaw.
“And to think—if I hadn’t postponed, I’d be sailing the seas for months without this fiery touch to remember on the cold nights ahead… ”
“It must be hard,” I tease, hiking my skirts up and flipping my leg over to straddle his waist, “being captain of an oh-so-dangerous mercenary crew. Aren’t there safer employments on land?” I nuzzle his neck as butterflies flutter in my stomach.
“I know my vessel better than the land, so it’s a relief when I return to sea.”
“And which are you more familiar with right now? Your ship or my body?” His rough hands rest on my hips, stirring wicked memories of what we did last summer. Guilt tries to prick at my heart, but his touch keeps me in the clasp of unbridled pleasure.
“At one point, I would have said my ship. But these fingers remember every curve of you.” He travels the space of my bodice and the rise and fall of my breasts like an explorer going over familiar roads.
It sends gooseflesh across my skin. He clears his throat and adjusts himself under me. “Did you bring me books again?”
“Of course.” I sit up a bit straighter. “Shopping for you is almost as satisfying as buying for myself…” A half-giggle escapes my tingling lips as I think of the stacks of unread novels waiting for me in my bedchambers.
I love bringing him books because books are what brought us together in the first place.
I can’t believe it’s only been five years since I spied on him as he inquired about a novel he placed on special order.
It was a peculiar type of book I hadn’t heard of before.
Created with a touchable system of raised letters, it allowed him to read with his fingertips.
But according to the elderly shopkeeper, the shipment had been lost, and I watched Lir leave, silent and disappointed.
Many hours later, and to my absolute delight, I found the missing item at a traveling merchant’s stall. After coaxing Lir’s location from the reluctant shopkeeper, I set off for the first time on a daring adventure of my own choosing.
When I arrived on his porch with the wrapped parcel in hand, Captain Lir was quite eager to thank me. But I’ve never told him I’m a Lady Courtesan. In fact, he knows nothing about me except my body, and I desperately wish to keep it that way.
He whispers into my hair, “Would you like to hear my theories on why you return to me on the same day every year?”
No, I wouldn’t.
My lips crash into his, and he tightens his hold as I lean into him, our bodies pressing together.
He grips my rear, cupping the flesh under all my layers.
I shift on him, grinding my hips, and feel the swell of his arousal harden under his trousers.
Lir devours my mouth until fervent desire coils through my pulsing center.
I’ve been starving, but—
Gasping for air, I retreat. “If you wish for me to stop coming here, please be honest with me.” This thought plagues me, and now, with everything going wrong with my Keeper, it complicates the knot I’ve tangled myself in even more.
“I would never ask you to stop coming,” he says suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows, a playful smile on his face. “I’d be a fool to refuse a gift at my doorstep…” His voice trails off in a steamy gust of air against my cleavage.
My hips move with his words, and he groans under my pressure. I whisper, “As long as you still hold to our agreement that our pleasure is only temporary. I’m only temporary.” I almost didn’t seek him out today because of it. The guilt is almost too much.
Almost.
“Keep coming, and I’ll keep giving.”
I smirk. “Give me what? A hard time?”
Quick as a bolt, he throws me onto the iron bedstead.
Surprisingly soft, the mattress—filled with gull feathers and piled high with patchwork quilts—supports me as I land.
He chuckles darkly before announcing, “Oh, it’s definitely going to be hard.
” His belt buckle clinks as he removes the leather strap through his trouser loops.
My heart jumps, and my legs tremble with gleeful spikes.
His pants fall a few inches, revealing the deep V of his muscled abdomen as he yanks his shirt over his head in one fluid motion.
I gulp.
He lowers himself over me, running his fingers along the features of my face, tracing every bone, every crease, every soft detail.
“You are so beautiful,” he moans.
“If only that were true.”
A beautiful shell.
A rotten core.
“You are more than what eyes can see.”
He focuses on my breasts, pulling them out of the top of my bodice, pinching my aching, peaked nipples, and kissing them in many fluttering movements.
I could get lost with him for hours, days, weeks…
But I don’t have that time.
I squandered precious hours earlier, debating whether I would show up at all. And honestly, I know it isn’t fair to use him this way. This is turning into lovemaking—much to my dismay—and with that comes a yearning that makes people unbearably stupid.
What Lir and I have—what I need it to be—is selfish, raw, and fleeting. I’m well aware love is a luxury Lady Courtesans can’t afford.
“I have to,” I breathe, “go soon…”
He pauses before barking out a laugh. “You got a husband to run home to?” His honeyed eyes spark with mischief.
“Something like that.” I grimace, not wanting to think of my Keeper.
“I’ll always be at your service, love.” His hand trails up my thigh. “If you should ever call upon me, I will come, whatever the reason.”
I roll out from under him but stay on the bed. Nervousness steals my breath, but I manage, “Thank you, Lir.” His expression changes slightly when his name crosses my lips.
The fury of the storm-laced wind makes the cottage walls seem as if they will cave in at any moment. My eyes are dry as I stare at the rain lashing the window.
“I know you hesitate for good reasons…” He pauses, sitting up as he tips my chin back. “But you can trust me with your name.”
“I—I can’t.”
“Because of the Bidding?”
I push my palms against his chest, and he backs up the slightest amount, but it’s enough. We face each other on his creaking bed frame, and I realize I can’t do this anymore. He can’t fall in love. His desire for more than my flesh would be disastrous.
A tense silence, broken only by our breathing, settles between us. Tucking my breasts back into my bodice, I flick a lock of hair off my forehead. “I have to go.” As I rise from the bed, my satin skirts cascade to my ankles in a rush.
“Stay just five minutes longer,” he pleads, his voice soft and patient.
Grabbing my discarded shoes, I shift to face him, gazing at his muscular frame as he sits on the rumpled quilts.
I wish for nothing more than to hide away with him and count the freckles across his shoulder blades.
But—I’m already lacing a damp boot as I reply, “I’ll get in trouble if I fail to return in time. ”
Lir yanks his trousers on and kneels before me while I try to cram the other foot into the remaining boot. “Pick a new name then. There’s no need for the old one,” he insists.
“Don’t—”
“Quit hiding behind the people in your books and start living your own life.”
“I cannot—”
“You can.”
“You do not know the consequences…”
Nor is there enough incentive for such a high risk.
“I’m a mercenary,” he says, almost as a warning. “There are no repercussions that I fear. Besides, you already break the rules. What’s a little more?”
I try to argue in vain, but he doesn’t let me get a word in.
“Sure, there are those who will be furious, and it might be complicated at first, but what in life isn’t?
” His brow furrows, raw emotion bordering on anger splintering across the fine features of his angular nose and high cheekbones, turning his usually warm countenance into something I don’t recognize.
I can’t help but wonder how the man before me compares to the mercenary he presents to the world.
“It’s not that easy.” I withdraw farther across the room as he turns his face to follow the sound of my voice.
“If you want to get away, I’ll buy you a home in a different port city where you’ll be safe. It’d be much bigger than this shack—”
“Lir.”
He takes a large breath and whispers, “There’s no point in trying to argue, is there?”
“No.”
“All right then.” His voice rings with a quiet finality.
I drop a tactile book about sea monsters I commissioned, and it hits the table with a thud.
Hooking my handbasket over my arm, I stop in the doorway to look at the man who deserves better than my pitiful excuses. His sun-kissed smile would make some woman feel very safe and loved someday.
But it wouldn’t be me.
Because the minute the veil of mystery lifts and he learns of my manipulative ways, every bit of warmth would disappear from that gaze. His feelings only grow because he knows nothing. I give him one last glance to remember him, promising myself that I will not come back.
On the other side of the door, the whispers rise from the waves crashing on the shore. They intensify as they mix with the slowing rain. Oddly familiar, like voices from a distant dream, they have always accompanied me. I run out of the cottage and into the unknown the Bidding Ceremony will bring.