His throat bobs. “I made a promise.”
“So did your heart.” My voice breaks. “It made a promise to me.”
His jaw falls open, at a loss for words. I can see the torment traveling through his eyes. He rakes a hand through his damp, dark hair, tangling his fist in the long strands.
He finally moves me off his lap and unfolds himself, standing up to pace in front of the fire, securing the towel around his waist. At each turn, he throws me a guarded look like I might stab him in the heart. Is he wrong? Will I?
“Sabine—” he entreats.
“We’ll pose as husband and wife on the road to Salensa so we can travel freely,” I interrupt in a rush. “Once there, I can get work on a farm tending to livestock. You can hunt.”
He gapes in disbelief that I’m serious enough about this to have thought it out. He repeats in a distant voice, “Pose as husband and wife?”
A portion of the question hangs there, unasked. I glance down at my hands clasped in my lap. “If it’s about sex . . . ”
He barks a hard laugh. “It’s about sex. Gods, yes, it’s about sex. But it’s about so much more than that, Sabine. You know it is.”
A catching sensation snags in my throat. My body alone isn’t enough to tempt him, but can I dare offer him more? My heart is all I have left to give, and if I surrendered it, I’d have nothing. I made the mistake of falling for Adan, and I’m terrified of thinking I might be in love again, only to be wrong.
I start, “I know you feel loyalty to Rian—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know what you think. That my loyalty is blind and unmerited, but it isn’t. Rian is like a brother to me. More than that. I’d be in the gutter if it weren’t for him. Hell, I’d be dead.”
“He’s not a brother, he’s your master! He pays you!”
He continues to pace as our voices rise to a shout above the waterfall’s roar. Myst just steadily munches on grass while she watches us trade barbs. Basten readjusts his towel. His chest heaves. Every one of his muscles is on edge. He looks more frightening now than he did facing off against Volkish raiders.
Finally, he stops. The firelight casts shadows over the smooth dips and rises of his muscles, making him look inhuman, like one of the fae gods themselves. “I need more than sex. I need more than a few days with you, or however long it takes us to get to Salensa and for you to grow bored of me. No. I need everything. Not now, not yet. But I have to know there’s a chance this could be more.”
My lips part. He’s turned the ultimatum back on me, and I’m even more nervous now than when I first proposed we run away together. What exactly is he asking? If I could fall in love with him? If one day, pretending to be husband and wife will become real? How am I supposed to answer that? I’m not even sure I know what love is. The last person who showed me unconditional love died twelve years ago.
“I can’t read the future,” I whisper helplessly. “I can’t make any promises.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps. “Well, I can’t betray Rian, if you can’t give us a fucking shot.”
By the Immortals. What does this man want from me? Weeks ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to lie to him, but we’re far beyond that. The least I owe him is honesty.
Can I see a future with him?
He stares me down with more heat than comes from the fire.
My heart opens like a cracked door, letting in the faintest rays of light. “I—I want this, Basten. I want you. Now—maybe forever. That’s the best I can give you.” Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. So many maybes I’m drowning in them. So many maybes I’m terrified.
He stills. A strange calm comes over his face, like he’s given into a battle he didn’t know he was fighting. “Okay.”
“O—okay.”
And it’s done. It’s sealed. My mind can hardly process the fact that after so many days of wanting to escape my fate of marrying Rian Valvere, I’m getting my wish. Not only that, but so much more. I’m getting freedom. I’m getting the sea. And gods—gods—I’m getting Basten, and that’s the best part of all. I can’t predict what the future holds for us, but as terrified as I am of letting that door in my heart open wider, the light is pushing through.
The waterfall pounds steadily behind him, so I can’t hear his heartbeat, but I imagine it’s thudding as hard as mine. He takes a jolting step toward me like this isn’t real. Like it’s a dream. He sinks to his knees next to me. His eyes drink in the sight of me in the blanket and nothing else.
My body turns on like a star, blazing for him. I grab him by the shoulders. My voice catches as I whisper huskily, “All those things you said you’d do to me at the inn? I want you to do them to me. Now.”
How many times have I fantasized about that game of pretend? How many times has he?
His hot palm rests at the base of my neck, heavy like an iron necklace. “We both know that if this happens, everything will change. If we start, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
I whisper, “I don’t want you to stop.”
He has a single moment of hesitation, then his eyes spark as he stands up and gives the order, “Lay back.”
I’m shaking as I lay on the cave floor, still wrapped tightly in the blanket. Basten looks me over from my head to my toes like a present he can barely keep from tearing into. He stands on either side of my hips, then lowers to his knees to straddle me.
My pulse scrambles like buzzing bees in my veins. His body weight on my hips feels good, but my stomach is roiling, my thighs trembling.
He places his hand flat on the base of my neck again, slowing my breath. “Let your body relax. I’ll go slow. I’ll take care of you.”
Of course he can hear how wildly my heart is beating. How I’m both excited and afraid of what’s to come. Once I’m fighting for steadier breaths, he moves his thumb to my mouth, dragging it over my bottom lip and letting the fingertip graze the hard edge of my teeth.
“I’ve thought a million times about how I’d fuck you.”
In the inn, he never kissed me, only touched the burning places he would want to. Now, my breath stalls in anticipation as he lowers to close his lips around mine. True to his word, the kiss starts slowly. He’s taking his time, savoring this. His lips guide mine toward deepening the connection, and then his tongue pushes against my lips’ seam. They part for him, and he slides his tongue over mine in long strokes that I instinctively match.
He groans into my mouth as he pulls back. His index finger moves down my neck to settle in the hollow at the base of my throat.
My skin is already snapping, craving his touch, before he plants his lips on my neck. He breathes hotly onto my skin, then licks the hollow at the base of my throat with the tip of his tongue, like lapping up honey.
I moan.