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“Something else.”
Rythos was watching me closely, eyebrows pushing together and mouth flattening to a thin line. Those dark, starless eyes dragged me in, making a calmness flood through me as if I were floating through an endless abyss.
“Good girl,” Helion soothed, rewarding me for taking comfort in another man. “Now something you can smell.”
I breathed in.
Rythos overwhelmed my senses, bleeding into me and stilling everything that was raging. Fresh night air clung to his skin beneath something darker and sweeter I had never been able to name.
I released a long, trembling breath, and beneath us, the ocean exhaled with me.
The violent rocking eased. The groaning timber quietened. Waves that had been battering the hull moments before softened against it.
A silence settled in the cabin, and I laid my head back down on Rythos’ chest.
Rythos shifted beneath me, grabbing my hips and lifting me up until his cock slipped out of me so he could push me off him.
“You allow him to speak into your mind.” There was no harshness in his voice, yet it ripped into my soul all the same. “Yet I am not allowed.”
“I didn’t—”
“I should not have said that.” He moved away from me and sat on the edge of the bed, dragging a hand through his dishevelled hair before gripping the strands at the roots. “That was unfair.”
He remained there for another moment before standing.
“No it wasn’t,” I sighed, but he had already stood and started pulling on his trousers, his abdominal muscles shifting with every movement.
My eyes shifted down to the two bond marks on the backs of my hands that seemed to be pulling me in two separate directions.
What a mess I had made between us.
“I need to reassure your brother and Solas that you are well, before they decide to kick the fucking door down. I can smell their anxiousness from here.”
He walked towards the door, but I was already moving.
“Wait,” I pleaded, fingers closing around his wrist.
Rythos stilled under my touch.
“I don’t think I can stand to be apart from you right now.”
The tension in his shoulders loosened, and when he looked back at me, the crease between his brows had disappeared.
As though, beneath all that darkness and jealousy and hurt, he'd needed the simple reassurance that I wanted him.
He pulled me into his arms, and I melted against his embrace, trying to ignore how cool his skin felt to touch.
“Wait here,” he murmured against the top of my hair. “I will find you something to wear.”
“Don’t take long,” I whispered, holding on to him for a heartbeat too long.
He brushed his lips across my hair, kissing me with a tenderness that made my heart swell.
The door creaked softly on its hinges as he closed it behind him and stepped out into the narrow hallway. Leaving me alone.
I glanced around the room, marvelling at the way the ocean gleamed like glass beneath the red moon. Large windows curved around one side of the cabin, offering an endless view of that unnatural crimson light spilling across the water. The sea had calmed so completely that the moon's reflection barely trembled, and for the first time since stepping aboard, the ship felt almost like solid ground beneath my feet.
My gaze drifted back towards the bed and caught on the mess scattered across Rythos’ bedside table.
