Chapter 3 Dining with the Beast #2
I tell her about the villages—Pyrgos with its medieval fortress, Megalochori with its wine caves, the black sand beaches on the south coast. What I don't tell her is she's not seeing any of it.
That she's not leaving this resort until the threat walking this island has been put down.
That every recommendation I'm making is designed to keep her interested in places I can control.
"You really love it here," she says. Not a question; an observation. The kind that comes from someone trained to read people.
"I do."
"Why Santorini? Out of everywhere?"
Because it's remote enough to hide an alien facility. Because the woman who saved my life bought it for me. Because I needed somewhere to stop being a weapon and learn how to be a person.
"The light," I say instead, and it's not even a lie. "The way it changes through the day. Dawn is blue. Noon is white. And sunset—" I gesture at the caldera, where the sky is bleeding colors that don't exist in any language I speak. "Sunset is this."
She follows my gaze, and the light paints her. Gold across her cheekbones. Rose along her jaw. Her hair catches fire at the ends. The freckles on her shoulders darken to copper.
"What about you?" I hear myself ask. "How long is your sabbatical?"
Her fork freezes halfway to her mouth.
The change is instant. Her heartbeat accelerates—I hear it, that telltale jump in rhythm. Her pupils contract. A micro-tension appears in her jaw, and the hand holding her fork develops a fine tremor she tries to hide by setting it down.
"Sabbatical?" Her voice pitches up, just slightly. "Oh. Yeah. Just a few weeks. MediVista can survive without me for a while. It's just paperwork. Boring technical writing stuff."
Every word is a lie, and she knows I know it, and she's telling it anyway because the truth is worse. Her voice is too bright. Her breathing has changed. She reaches for her wine glass like it's a lifeline.
She's not on sabbatical. She doesn't know if she has a career to go back to. She thinks she's lost everything for doing the right thing, and she's sitting here in a blue dress trying to pretend she's on vacation while a pharmaceutical company pays people to find her.
I want to tell her I know. That I've read the filing. That what she did took more courage than anything I ever accomplished in the arena, because at least in the pits I had claws and armor and the option of violence. She had nothing but the truth and the willingness to say it out loud.
"Paperwork can wait," I say instead. Raise my glass. "To freedom, then."
She looks at me—really looks, the professional mask slipping for just a second to show something raw underneath. Surprise. Relief. Gratitude that I'm not pushing.
"To freedom," she echoes, and her glass rings against mine.
Her heartbeat slows. Her shoulders drop. She picks up her fork and takes another bite of lamb, and the crisis passes like a cloud across the sun.
She thinks I believed her. The dramatic irony of it sits in my chest like a stone.
* * *
The meal stretches. She eats; I watch and pretend to eat and try not to catalog every sound she makes when something tastes good.
The octopus earns a groan. The bread with honey gets a full-body shiver.
The lamb makes her close her eyes and tip her head back in a way that belongs in a bedroom, not at a dinner table.
By the time we reach the cheese course, the wine has softened her edges. She's leaning forward more, laughing easier, touching things—the tablecloth, the stem of her glass, her own collarbone. Her guard is down. Not all the way; she's too smart for that. But enough.
"You know what's funny?" she says, rolling an olive between her fingers. "I've been running for so long, I forgot what it feels like to stop. To sit somewhere beautiful and eat incredible food and not—" She catches herself. Smiles, but it doesn't quite land. "Not worry."
"You don't have to worry here."
"Everyone worries."
"Not here. Not tonight." I lean back, giving her space. "Tonight, you're on a terrace overlooking the most beautiful caldera in the world, eating food I made with my hands, and nothing bad is going to happen to you."
"You can't promise that."
"I can." The certainty in my voice surprises us both. "Trust me."
She studies me for a long moment. The candles are burning lower now, the light more amber, more intimate. Her face is half shadow, half gold. Her eyes are green in this light; I hadn't realized they could do that—shift between hazel and green depending on what's reflecting in them.
"You have a lot of scars," she says quietly.
The pivot is so sudden it takes me a second to catch up. "I do."
"The ones on your hands." She reaches across the table and turns my hand over, palm up.
Her fingers are cool against my skin, and the contact sends a jolt up my arm that's part electricity, part terror.
"This one." She traces the silver line across my knuckles—the one from a blade that got through my guard in the arena, back when I was young enough to be careless. "It's deep."
"It was."
"Did it hurt?"
"At the time."
"What about this one?" Her fingertip moves to the starburst scar on the back of my hand. The one from a Korthian pulse weapon that burned through my armor and melted the skin underneath. I told Morrison it was a kitchen accident.
"Different kind of pain." My voice has dropped to something barely above a whisper. Her finger is still moving, tracing the map of violence written across my skin, and each point of contact is a lit match. "That one was... heat."
"Like a burn?"
"Exactly like a burn."
She looks up from my hand. Our eyes meet over the candles, and the air between us changes. Thickens. She's still touching me—her fingertip resting in the valley between my knuckles—and neither of us is pulling away.
"Do they bother you?" she asks. "When people stare?"
"People don't usually touch them."
"I'm sorry. Is this—"
"Don't stop." It comes out before I can filter it. Raw. The words of a male who hasn't been touched with gentleness in five years, who has forgotten what it feels like to have someone trace his damage with curiosity instead of revulsion. "Please."
Something shifts in her expression. Not pity—thank god, not pity. Understanding, maybe. The recognition of someone who knows what it's like to carry wounds nobody can see.
She doesn't stop. Her finger continues its slow exploration, tracing scars I haven't thought about in decades, bringing each one back to life under her touch. The silence between us is thick with things we're not saying, and I let it be. Let the warmth of her skin against mine be enough.
"Kaz." Her voice is barely audible. "You're burning up."
She's right. My skin is radiating heat—not dangerously, not enough to hurt her, but enough that my hand under hers must feel like sun-warmed stone.
The contact is doing something to my regulation, pulling heat to the surface where she's touching me, like my body is trying to reach her through every centimeter of skin.
"I run hot," I manage.
"You said that." A small smile. "Is it always like this? Or just—"
"Just tonight." A lie so transparent we both pretend not to notice.
I pull my hand back before the heat becomes something she can't ignore. Before the skin under her fingers shows anything other than human bronze. Before I do something irreversible, like turn her hand over and press my mouth to her palm.
"Dessert," I say, because I need a word that isn't her name and a task that isn't touching her.
I reach for the plate of figs. She reaches at the same time. Our hands collide again, and this time neither of us pretends it's accidental.
"I've never had a fresh fig," she says. "Just the dried ones. From Trader Joe's."
"Then you've never had a fig."
I take one from the plate. Hold it for a moment, feeling the give of it—ripe, yielding, the skin warm from the evening air. Then I tear it open with my thumbs, slow and deliberate, splitting the skin to reveal the ruby flesh inside. Seeds glisten in the candlelight. Juice runs down my thumb.
The inside of a fig looks indecent. There's no other word for it. Crimson and glistening and built for pleasure.
I hold it out to her.
"Try it."
Her eyes move from the fig to my face. Something passes between us—a question and an answer that neither of us speaks aloud. Then she leans forward across the table, close enough that I can smell the wine on her breath, and takes the fig from my fingers with her teeth.
Her lips brush my thumb.
The contact lasts less than a second—the soft press of her mouth against the pad of my thumb, the faint scrape of her teeth, the wet warmth of the fig's juice between her lip and my skin—but the sensation drops through me like a depth charge.
My vision sharpens. My hearing telescopes.
Every nerve ending in my hand lights up and sends signals straight down my spine to a place that has nothing to do with combat readiness.
She chews. Eyes closed. A sound comes from the back of her throat that's closer to a moan than she'd probably want to admit.
"Oh," she breathes, opening her eyes. "Oh, that's—"
"Good?"
"Obscene." Her pupils are wide, dark, the green almost swallowed. "That's the most sexual fruit I've ever eaten."
My thumb is still wet where her mouth was. I lower my hand under the table and press it against my thigh, trapping the sensation like evidence.
"Kaz." Her voice has dropped to something softer. More careful. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"The blade. In the nightstand drawer."
My breath holds. Not because I'm afraid of the question; because I'm afraid of how much truth will come out when I answer.
"It's real," I say. "Not a replica. Not decoration."
"I thought so." She doesn't flinch. "The handle's worn. Someone used that blade a lot. Was it yours?"
"Yes."
"Why do you keep it?"