27. Captivating （Host）age #2
His other arm wrapped around my chest, holding me closer, pressed back against his beating heart. In the quiet, we breathed in sync, unspoken words screaming between us. The scent of his burned skin still lingered in the air, and thorny vines wrapped around my heart.
“Sorry about the shock collar,” I said quietly, trying a new angle to get him to open up. “If I hadn’t dropped it, I know they wouldn’t have been able to take you—”
“Silence, Ravenal.” He cut me off. “Thou do not know everything.”
I stiffened and tried to sit up and pull away, but it was a weak attempt. His intense dark cherry scent spiked with notes of . . . homicidal tendencies? I inhaled deeper. When did he start to smell less like danger and more like safety? Peril mounted by the second, my defenses flagging.
“Do not hurt yourself,” he ordered.
“I have to save my mom,” I said, reminding myself of my goal, desperately searching for a barrier to put between us. I didn’t know where my body ended and his began. He’d shifted, and his long legs were intertwined with mine.
“Thou . . . were never going to make this journey alone.”
What an odd thing to say.
“Don’t pretend you’re on my side.” I shook my head, trying to dispel the intimacy. “You serve the Empire.”
“I serve myself.”
“Exactly. We both know they’re the same, so don’t pretend to care about me.”
Fingers tucked a wet lock of hair behind my ear. “Who says . . . I am pretending, Ravenal?”
“Then what are you doing right now?” I asked.
He cocooned me protectively with his body like I was precious. His warm lips glanced across my forehead in the most innocent and tender of kisses. I struggled to breathe. Why does he keep kissing my forehead?
“I think,” he said quietly against my temple, “we both know what is happening here. Do not play obtuse. Thou art far too intelligent.” The sharp scents of magic and man intensified, burning my lungs, everywhere he shouldn’t be.
“You can’t do this.” I struggled to organize my incoherent thoughts. “We’re not on the same side.”
He notched his chin over the top of my head. We fit perfectly together. Chills multiplied. It’s all just from the fever.
“But . . . what if we were?” he asked solemnly.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Dreaming about the impossible . . . doesn’t make it so.”
“Says who?” He nuzzled the side of my face, pressing delicate kisses against my icy skin.
“Hoo?” Squire chirped.
Tarantula nodded. “The ugly, minuscule bird gets it.”
I bristled. “Don’t call him ugly. It’s offensive.”
“Perhaps that is our problem. I find great pleasure . . . offending thee.”
“You serve the Empire,” I repeated, needing to find strength in hatred that was suspiciously absent. “You serve tyranny.”
“I think I may have found something else that I want to serve.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He chuckled darkly. “Thou keep telling me how I feel, Ravenal . . . ’Tis very unbecoming of a woman.”
“So, loathe me.”
He pressed another kiss to the side of my face as we rocked together with the ship. “I don’t think I will anymore.”
“You must.”
“I shan’t.”
“Be quiet and hate me,” I snapped, losing all pretense of control.
“No.”
“Screw yourself.”
“I’d prefer to fornicate with thee . . . Thou taste exquisite, Ravenal.” He inhaled with masculine satisfaction. “Nothing in all Antichthon is sweeter.”
He really has to stop saying stuff like this.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a prude?”
“People can change.”
“Stop playing games. Did you forget the part where I knocked you unconscious?”
“No. I pretended to be asleep . . . ’Twas just a lovers’ quarrel.” He shrugged. “I have read about them. These things happen when emotions are running high.”
“I bludgeoned you.”
He stroked his thumb slowly down the front of my neck. “Thou see me for what I am. ’Tis endearing.”
“You’re mad.”
“Exactly. It runs in the blood. Thou comprehend me. Let me take care of thee . . . Let me be yours, Ravenal,” he whispered against the shell of my ear. “I beg thee, take mercy on a yearning man, princess.”
“You’re the princess,” I grumbled, flushing as I remembered arguing with him while he thrust into me. He chuckled huskily like he’d had the same thought.
I shook my head, eyes closing. How wondrous it would be to let someone else handle everything.
For some odd reason, he seemed to mean what he was saying.
Protection had never been so tempting. Soul aching, I reveled in the tender heat of the moment because I’d never tasted safety before, not like this.
He was like the Barren Forest. Beautifully dangerous. Soul-corrupting.
Turning my head so our faces were inches apart, I lost myself in the steely depths of his emotion-filled eyes. Lashes fluttered as he smiled insolently.
He thinks he’s winning.
He always did.
“You don’t make peace with evil,” I said as I leaned so our noses were pressed together, needing him to understand. “You destroy it.”
He flinched, and the ship pitched violently forward, but he held me tighter. “Just because a dead poet wrote it down and thou recite it—” his voice sharpened, his accent disappearing “—does not make it true.”
I bared my teeth. “That’s something that only evil would say.”
He stiffened and pulled away from me. “It does not have to be like this. Thou could be accommodating.” He turned his head, glaring up at the rocking fishing nets. “Thou could have been mine.”
My lips pulled up, cheeks aching. I tried to fight it, but a laugh burst from me. He had the audacity to look insulted as he glared down at me with confusion.
I patted his thigh.
“It was always going to be like this,” I said. “You ensured it the moment we met.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What do thou mean?” he asked slowly.
“You attacked me in the woods.”
He went rigid.
“You killed Aurora and kidnapped my mom.”
He relaxed beneath me, breath whooshing from his lips. “People can change,” he repeated.
“No—they can’t.”
His expression transformed in the blink of an eye; it was downright hostile. “Thou art right.” His arms tightened around mine.
“I know. And this lust you feel, it will pass.”
“Shall it?” His expression turned cruel.
I nodded with conviction. “Yes.”
“So ’tis just infatuation,” he purred darkly as he reached for my face. “And thou feel nothing.”
“Nothing.” My voice hitched as he stroked down the front of my throat.
“Thou art a disastrous liar, Ravenal.”
“So are you.”
His smile turned cold. “No—I am not.”
“Hmm.” It took every inch of training I possessed to keep my face blank because he thought he had me deceived. You poor fool. As if he couldn’t help himself, he resumed rubbing my forehead tenderly like the motion soothed him.
Eyes closing, I turned my head and cuddled against his wide chest, leaning into him as the ship careened.
We were sailing toward certain doom, but unlike him, I wasn’t lying to myself.
The chessboard was spread between us, and I saw his strategy.
It was only a matter of moves before everything crumbled. For now, we would both pretend.
Until it was time.
To fight to the death.