We leave the bodies in the cottage. Enough hungry creatures are in these woods to clean them up for us. Exhausted and dirty, we ride Myst through the woods, parallel to the river in case the raiding band has more members. The moon is high by the time Basten finally stops Myst so he can listen through the trees.
“There’s a waterfall close by,” he says. “Just over that rise. We’ll be safe there. The water will drown out our scents and sounds. Maybe we can even bathe.”
My muscles are wrung to the bone as we ride the final stretch. Soon, I hear the falls, and then glimpse the silver moonlight reflecting off its water. It’s a tall and narrow waterfall that tumbles off the edge of a shallow cave, crashing below onto rocks before reforming into a meandering valley stream.
Basten leads Myst into the shelter of the shallow cave. We begin stripping off our blood-soaked clothes, so we can wash. The waterfall’s roar fills the silence as our bared flesh catches the moonlight. Basten has seen me naked a thousand times, but suddenly I feel shy. When he extends a hand to help me over the rocks, I cross my arms over my chest.
“I can’t hide behind my hair anymore,” I say quietly, knowing he can hear me despite the waterfall.
Basten pauses, keeping his eyes pinned squarely on my face out of respect, pretending the night hides everything below shoulder level. “The raiders cut it off?”
I nod. “To disguise me. I don’t miss it—only the cover it gave me.”
He tucks another strand behind my ear. “I like you this way. You weren’t meant to be weighed down.”
Gingerly, I test out the falls by extending one foot, shrieking from the burst of cold—but it’s a welcome shock to my system. I dip my hand in the falling water, then my head, then fully stand under the crashing water and tip my head back, letting it scour me clean.
Basten joins me beneath the falls, scrubbing his scalp in the frigid onslaught. He turns his face skyward, letting the water pound his face. It has to hurt, but he doesn’t flinch.
The roaring water is too loud for us to talk much, but he sees me struggling to wash blood off my back and comes up behind me to help. His hands cup my shoulders as he guides me to stand beneath a water stream. His hands work to wash away the blood, kneading my tense muscles until they melt under his deft touch.
After bathing, we wash our clothes and lay them out to dry, then I bundle up in a blanket while he slings a towel around his waist and builds a fire in the lee of the cave. A light mist floats off the waterfall, making me shiver despite the crackling flames.
“Come here,” he barks, patting his knee. “You need to be closer to the fire.”
He gathers me in his lap, securing the blanket around me so I’m bundled up tight enough that a wolly worm couldn’t slip through. I don’t know which is more comforting, the blanket or Basten’s arms. I let myself relax against his chest, watching the fire, as my mind dulls to match the waterfall’s steady roar.
A long time passes in silence.
I don’t think either of us wants to break this moment. We’re safe. We’re clean. We’re together. One wrong word could topple this delicate house of cards, scatter us to the wind, when all I want is to be in his arms forever.
Somehow, his hand finds its way to mine, and it feels good to do something as simple as holding hands. The firelight flickers over his busted knuckles. I run my thumb lightly over his damaged skin, recalling how charged he was during the fight. How charged I was watching him. He made the fight look effortless—like a game. He brought down four powerful raiders in minutes.
What would he do to the Sisters who beat me?
On impulse, I bring his knuckles to my lips and softly kiss the scrapes.
A moan rumbles in his chest. “I like it when you do that.” His mouth is close enough to my ear to hear him over the waterfall’s roar.
“Do what?”
“Treat me like one of your animals. So damn tender.”
For a second, I wonder about kissing him on other places on his body. Bathing in the falls reawakened me, charged me again like during the fight. My breath feels shallow. My teeth keep hunting out my bottom lip, seeking the grounding bite of pain. The bath reinvigorated Basten, too—it’s more than evident. I don’t need heightened senses to perceive the attention of his stiff cock pressing against my ass through the blanket.
My hips shift in his lap like they have a mind of their own. His breath catches briefly. Then his hand moves from the chaste position holding my hand to my bare shoulder, exposed from the slipped-down blanket, his thumb rubbing in long strokes.
My vision blurs. I’m breathing too shallowly. My head fills with fantasies of what could happen in this cave behind the waterfall, where we might as well be the last two people on earth.
Quelling a rash of nerves, I whisper, “I realize now it was never about Adan, only what he offered me.”
Basten is quiet before he asks, “Love?”
“Freedom.” I swallow a bundle of nerves lodged in my throat. “That’s what I want. Not jewels. Not a high lord. Not a castle. I want to feel like I do when I ride Myst at a gallop. Like the only path ahead of me is the one I make.” I hesitate. “With whom I make it.”
He doesn’t reply with words, but his body answers for him. His thumb glides along my neck, working out the tight muscles there for a long time, like it’s his own knotted thoughts he really needs to untangle.
“You’re to marry Rian,” he says.
There. It’s spoken now. At least it’s out in the open, this thing we’ve been circling. The topic of my impending marriage hasn’t come up as often in the past few days as it did at the ride’s beginning, and I can’t help but feel that Basten has been fighting to put it out of his head as he and I grow closer.
I turn in his lap to face him, the blanket still wrapped around my chest, my legs dangling over his right thigh.
“I don’t want to marry Lord Rian. I want to go with Myst to Salensa and see the ocean.” I hold his gaze with every ounce of my courage. “I want you to take us there.”
I nearly lose my voice as I ask the thing I’m terrified to ask. My heart knocks around in my chest in an attempt to escape the possible sting of rejection. I understand that he’s devoted to Lord Rian. In fact, I’m so damn sick of hearing about his loyalty to that man that I could scream. But Basten has killed for me, he’s sinned for me—is it so different to betray for me?
Yes. For him, it is.
And that terrifies me. Myst advised me to flip Basten’s loyalty from Rian to me, but I’m not sure I can. I offered him a bribe in the woods—he wouldn’t take it. I offered him my perfumed body on the inn’s soft sheets—he still wouldn’t kiss me.
His voice is grave when he answers, “Sabine, you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking.” I hold my locked gaze steady. “I’m asking you to break your vow to your master.”