Did I want it? More than my next breath. “I do.”
He plucked one from the top and set it on my plate. “Then take it.”
“That’s your motto, isn’t it? If you want it, take it.” With aflickety-flickof his wrist, Rían got whatever he wanted.
He sipped his wine. “If it was, we wouldn’t be sitting here eating tarts.”
“No?”
He shook his head.
I wasn’t sure if it was the wine or the magic of the night or my impending death or the terrible fae prince—perhaps a combination of all four—but the cautiousness that had lived within me for twenty years just . . . snapped.
“What would we be doing instead?” I whispered, tracing the rim of my wine glass with my fingertips.
“It would involve fewer clothes and more screaming. Unfortunately for me—and for you,” he added with a wink, “I don’t bed maidens.”
My innocence hadn’t seemed like an issue for him the night we’d shared a bed. “What makes you think I’m still a maiden?”
He adjusted his position in the chair, throwing one arm over the back and his ankle over his knee. “‘It’s not appropriate for a man to enter a lady’s private quarters,’” he mimicked in a high voice. “‘You mustn’t speak so improperly.It wouldn’t be proper for me to be alone with a man who is not my husband.Getting caught with you would ruin my reputation.’”
Hearing the things I’d said thrown back at me left my face ablaze with embarrassment. So many rules I’d been given. All of them broken for the man sitting next to me.
“Shall I go on, or would it beimproper?”
We’d passed improper the day he’d saved me from the Dullahan.
I guzzled what was left of my wine, drowning my nerves with notes of oak and alcohol. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I wasn’t a maiden.”
His eyes widened as he inhaled, easing forward to hover by my lips. “Have you given yourself to another?”
Caden had been the captain of a ship docked in port visiting from Iodale. Four years my senior and so ruggedly handsome, he’d brought me up short when I first saw him in the market. Since fuchsia weren’t in season, I’d been collecting daffodils to decorate for my nineteenth birthday.
Caden had sun-kissed blond hair tied back in a leather queue. Eyes rich and brown like fertile soil.
He had acted nothing like the gentlemen I’d known my entire life.
I had believed every one of his lies.
I love you, Aveen.
Lie.
I’ll sail back for you come summer.
Lie.
I’d give up the sea, give up my life for you.
Lie after bloody lie.
I’d gone to the market every day that June, searching the port for those black sails. June melted into July. July slipped into August.
As August faded into September, my hope faded as well.
Robert Trench had been the first man to break my heart.
Caden Merriweather became the reason I’d given up on them all.