“Besides,” he says, “the guards don’t know where we’re headed. These horses are better suited for the carriage. Not a chase. They’re no match for Siron’s southland pedigree.”
That’s true as well—?Siron is a far stronger and faster horse; however, Cohen doesn’t know of the conversation I had with Captain Omar. I chew my lip. Study the pile of hay. “They don’t need to track us. Captain Omar knows we’re headed to Celize.”
Cohen’s hand slips from the horse. “What? How?”
“I was trying to reason with him,” I explain. “You were unconscious, and I thought they might kill you. I was doing what I could to plead our case, hoping he’d understand, perhaps let us go. Or at the very least, let us live.”
His jaw pulses under the wild twining of his short brown beard.
I lift my chin. “I did what I thought was best. Captain Omar is a man of reason. He’s bound and determined to see justice served. That’s why I explained we were looking for the murderer. It wouldn’t make sense for us to go to Celize if you were really a murderer on the run.”
Eyes on the stable’s rafters, Cohen stretches his neck side to side, and lets out a slow exhale. “I understand your rationale, though not sure I agree with you about Omar. He’s delivered plenty of cruelties, regardless of justice.”
He reaches out and grasps my wrist. My focus immediately shifts from his face to his hand as his thumb slides over my skin, tracing the raw marks left by the manacles. “This, for example,” he murmurs. “He could’ve kept you restrained without causing injury. He let you sleep in them when they were too tight.”
There’s not enough air in the stable. My entire body is attuned to the connection where his fingers linger, shooting my veins with liquid fire.
I shrug out of his hold and push my foot back. Then another. “It’s nothing. Certainly not the worst the captain’s given me.” This is said to change the subject.
But then Cohen is in my space, hands seizing my upper arms. “What do you mean?”
The alarm and worry he usually keeps hidden from his tone are bold and bright as Shaerdan’s clothing. It traps me in place. His eyes scan my body from head to toe. The attentiveness unsettles, like he can see through me and into me, and everything I don’t want him to see.
“Tell me,” he urges.
“It’s nothing.” Scant more than a whisper. “I was a prisoner for a week. Broke a rule. So the captain punished me.”
“How?”
Shame at how I was tied up and whipped fills me. I struggle to move away from him, but his fingers hold tight, pressing into my skin. “How, Britt? Tell me, please.”
He won’t let this go. It’s too difficult to look him in the eye and explain how foolish I was to run off after Tomas shot the fawn. Instead, my sight sticks to the knuckles of distance between his toe and mine as I recount the entire awful story. When I reach the end, explaining how the captain gave me only five lashes, Cohen’s grip is nearly bruising my arms.
“You’re cutting off my circulation,” I jest, and pull away from him.
“I—I’m sorry.” He blinks. A dark cloud of fury and remorse shifts over his earthy eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you all right?”
“I wasn’t being serious. Don’t start treating me like a weak girl now.”
Cohen steps around me and is lifting the back of my tunic before I realize what’s happening. I leap forward and cross my arms tightly against my waist to pin the material down. “Are you trying to undress me?” My pitch squeaks up.
He doesn’t even seem chagrined. Same old straight-faced Cohen. “May I see?”
I hesitate, fingers kneading the clenched material.
“To make sure it’s healed and see that you don’t need anything for it.”
Perhaps that would be all right. It’s not as if I can see behind me. Holding my hands tight to my ribs to keep the tunic in place, I turn around, remaining a statue as Cohen takes his torturous time peeling the material up.
“Dove,” he says as though the nickname breaks him. His ragged exhale hits my bare back, enticing a shiver to dance through me a moment before his fingers connect with my skin and make mincemeat of my thoughts.
His hands tremble behind me. “I’ll kill the bludger.”
The sentiment does flipping acrobatics through my core until he abruptly drops my top.
“It’s healing fine,” he says with a slight rasp while staring at a spot above my head when I turn to face him.
He speaks the truth; I feel it. Though Cohen cannot even look at me. Is my back that repulsive? His reaction increases my shame tenfold. He must think me a fool to have earned the lashing.
Chin up, I take a big step back and, forcing indifference into my voice, I say, “No need to kill the captain. It’s in the past. We should get going and make use of the next eight hours.”