He waits until he’s elicited another pitiful whimper from my throat before he relents, palming my breast with expert attention, kneading and caressing until I am reduced to a squirming storm of want beneath him.
“Soren.” My breath hitches. My fingers dig into his skin. “Please—”
“Please what, Rhya? What is it you want from me?”
He’s enjoying this, the great tease.
He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth at the exact moment my nails score across the raised pattern of his Remnant, where the skin is excruciatingly sensitive. The effect is instant. His whole body shudders. He exhales against my lips, a pant of pure desire I feel in every corner of my body. All playfulness sweeps straight out of the cabin, replaced by a ferocious need that arises inside him with the swiftness of a summer squall.
When he kisses me again, it is with such unflagging passion, such savage desire, I know his control is hanging by the thinnest of threads; when he touches me, it is no longer with teasing caresses or playful swipes, but with a barely leashed ardency that turns my bloodstream to pure starlight. He grips my body with bruising need, clutching me close. And I do the same, equally brutal in my eagerness for him.
Time slips out of focus as we touch and gasp, peeling away layers with shaking hands. I get his shirt unbuttoned and push it impatiently off his shoulders, revealing his perfect chest. He uses his teeth on the laces of my pants, groaning low in his throat when I thread my fingers into his hair. When he presses his mouth to me through the thin leather, my whole body spasms.
Skies, if he kisses me there again…
I nearly come apart just thinking about it.
His hands are at my hips, peeling down my pants, when a fist pounds at the door to the cabin.
“Brother!” Godsdamned Vaughn. “The island is in sight! Whatever you’re doing in there, wrap it up, would you?”
Soren groans, a sound of frustration, and drops his head against the crook of my thighs. “Fuck. Not again.”
Sucking in a shaky breath, I force my fingers to dislodge from his hair. My body thrums with untapped passion. My heart is a riot beneath my rib cage. Just beside it, my Remnant is stirring awake, its momentary slumber cut short by the crashing sensations that rack me head to toe.
We climb off the bed, both breathing hard, and set our clothes to rights. My fingers shake as I do the laces of my bodice and comb through my mussed mane. There is nothing to be done about the redness of my cheeks, nor the sheen of lust in my eyes.
Soren is hardly better off. I have never seen him so unbalanced. He looks shockingly young as he buttons his shirt and rolls up his sleeves, his face a portrait of boyish inhibition. The polished facade is askew, knocked off its orbit by everything we have just done.
Everything we havealmostdone.
“We should go,” I force myself to say, hardly able to look at him without my heart stumbling or my breath catching. “They’re waiting for us.”
I make it only a few steps toward the door before he stops me with a hand at my nape, pulling me around to crush his mouth against mine one last time. As I kiss him back, I memorize everything about him, committing the moment to the deepest recesses of my mind in case I never get another like it. His scent, his strength. The way we fit together like two halves of a broken plate, every jagged, ugly edge somehow perfectly aligned to create something whole and strong and healed.
The pounding comes again. “We’ll miss the tide!”
“There will come a day when I have the luxury of kissing you without interruption,” Soren murmurs against my lips, a ghost of his usual humor in his tone. “And, I hope, a day when I have the luxury of doingmorethan merely kiss you.” His exhale is resigned. “But today does not seem to be that day.”
Chapter
twenty-nine
I avoid everyone’s eyes on the top deck, but it’s no use. They all seem to know exactly what happened inside the captain’s cabin. It is there in the teasing edge to Yara’s grin, in the knowing light of Jac’s stare. Mostly, though, it is there in the dark resentment I feel emanating from Penn clear across the ship.
I swallow down my guilt and my embarrassment. This is hardly the most pressing issue facing our crew at the moment.
We gather at the wheel to discuss our strategy one last time. Deke is at the helm, the deckhands hovering nearby. Vaughn towers between Melité and the Paexyrian by the steps up from mid-deck. Penn is sandwiched between his men on the starboard side. I sit on the stern rail, one hand on the backstay to keep from pitching overboard into the rough swells. Soren stands near Alaric in the very center, addressing everyone at once as he walks us through the plan.
I try to focus on his words, but my eyes keep shifting out over the sea to the island in the distance. It is a foreboding sight, even from here. What little I can see of it, in any case. The dark stone walls are shrouded in a pervasive mist that makes it difficult tospot, even at midday. Now, as the sun disappears over the horizon, it is hardly more than a shadowy smudge.
Hopefully that will make it harder for anyone inside keeping watch to spot our approach. The success of our plan hinges almost entirely on the element of surprise; they won’t know we are coming until it’s too late to mount a proper defense.
Get in, get Arwen, get out alive.
Do not engage if it can be avoided.
The isle itself is not large. A fraction of the size of Hylios, at first glance it appears more like a large rock than a notorious fae prison. Dark stone walls, black as the sands of the Husk Desert, designed to blend into the natural cliff formations. There is no harbor to put into, no calm inlet in which to drop anchor. The sea directly around its perimeter is particularly violent, sending huge plumes of foam up into the air with each crash.