“Aye, and what a coward I’ve become. You,” he said. “You’ve made a coward out of me.”
“What do you mean? Are you all right?” she asked, stepping toward him. He took an answering step back into the shadows. “It’s so dark,” she said. “I can barely see you.”
He said nothing, but seemed to be waiting for her to speak. Waiting for something; his body radiated tension like a sun. When it was clear he wasn’t going to answer her, Selena mustered the will to say what she had to say.
“I have ended the lessons with Accora but I still need her to bring me to Bacchus. She won’t tell me where he hides until we’re under sail. To protect herself. She has nothing to fear from me—yet—but it seems she does from you.”
Julian crossed his arms tightly across his chest as Selena often did when she was trying to keep herself from shivering. “And?”
“We will sail to Isle Huerta,” Selena said. “There, Accora will return Svoz to you, I will pay you what was promised…and then I will take another ship.”
He stared at her for a moment, his gray-green eyes glinting coldly.
“It’s better this way,” Selena said. “You and the crew. You’ll be safe. It’s…better.”
“Better.” Julian barked a harsh laugh and then released her from his stare to brace himself on the railing. His fingers clutched it so tightly; she could see the whites of his knuckles even in the dimness.
She stepped closer to him, her heart thudding behind the icy chasm of her wound.
“It is Accora’s edict that I end your commission, not mine. I’ll miss the Storm. And the crew. And you, Julian. I’ll miss you. I don’t know what happened or how…” She swallowed with difficulty. “I don’t want things to end badly between us.”
He made a small, strangled sound. “Gods, Selena…”
Pain twisted his features as Julian suddenly withdrew a dagger from some catch on his wrist. The blade glinted in the starlight, wicked and cold. Her gaze flickered to it and back to his eyes, but before she could speak, he knelt swiftly at her feet. He laid down the dagger, then his flintlock beside it. He unfastened his sword belt and laid his scimitars beside the rest.
“I pledge my blood and steel to your cause,” he said, his head bowed. “I will sail you to Bacchus and I will help you kill him, or die in the attempt.”
A life oath. Selena shook her head, stunned. “You don’t owe me this.” She thought of their argument in his cabin after she’d fallen in the water. “You told me we were settled.”
“I was a bloody fool.” He looked up at her. “About everything.”
“Julian, I…I don’t know what to say.”
He got to his feet and turned away, carving his hand through his hair. “You can tell me what happens to me when you sail away on the deck of another man’s ship.”
The words sent a shiver down Selena’s spine, only this time it was a pleasurable sensation, and she found she had no words.
“It’s too bloody dark out there,” Julian muttered, facing the shadows of the jungle, his back to her. “So bloody dark.” He turned and walked passed her, stepping over his weapons. “I should go.”
Selena followed him inside. “Julian, stop.”
“Selena—”
“Less than a week ago, I trekked into the jungle while you stayed behind,” she said. “Now you pledge your life to me? I don’t understand. What changed?”
“Not a damn thing,” he said. “Not one bloody godsdamn thing. I could have laid my swords at your feet the moment I met you. I should have. Instead I lied to myself, every day. Every hour.”
Selena felt a warm tingling in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Please,” he said. “I’m not…Let me help you. That’s all I ask. Say yes, and then I’ll go.”
“I don’t want you to go.” Selena stepped closer to him, her heart pounding so loud she was certain he could hear it.
“Just say yes,” he begged, looking as he had when the merkind’s maelstrom was breaking his ship apart. “Helping you…it’s the only thing I can do. The only thing worth doing.”
He was so tall; she tilted her chin up and leaned in. She could smell the sea on his black leather longcoat. “Julian…”
“Let me,” he whispered, his lips brushing against hers with every word. “Say yes. Please.”
“Yes.” She parted her mouth and he kissed her hard. She felt it in the pit of her stomach and clung to him lest she melt out of his arms. “Yes,” she whispered, when he buried his face in her neck, kissing her ear, her chin, her throat. “Yes. Gods, yes.”
She said it again and again, until she had forgotten why. She said yes to him, to the feel of his arms around her, to the salt of his skin, the sound of his breath rasping in his nose as kissed her. It had been ten years. A decade. She couldn’t fathom it. The last time she’d known the touch of a man, she’d been eighteen years old, newly ordained and about to be shipped off to war. They all were being sent, the young Paladins in the Temple. The last of the Paladins, each wanting to experience one of life’s pleasures before their own lives were corrupted by war or stripped away entirely. She and Isaak—he also barely eighteen years old—had taken their months’ long flirtation from the training grounds to his bed, to fumble awkwardly but sweetly until the dawn came and the bells tolled that it was time to set off.
Now she had Julian and he was no untried boy. She pushed his black coat off his shoulders and then tore off her Aluren overtunic and sword belt. The sword clanged to the ground and the tunic fell away, crumpled and forgotten. They embraced again, crushing their lips together, and in the confusion of aching need, they simply fell to their knees.
He pulled her onto his lap so that she straddled him, his mouth moving over hers, his hands reaching around to grasp her thighs, to pull her closer. She ground her hips against his and lifted his shirt over his head. She reveled at the feel of him, his muscles hard beneath smooth skin. He was scarred here and there, but free of inky black tattoos but for one on his shoulder. Mina in small, flowing script. His sister, she thought and then his hand found her breast, his fingertips brushing the wound, jarring her. She took his hand away from the cold draft.
“It must…repulse you,” she breathed.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t. It won’t.”
He’s brave, she thought. That is why he is unafraid. Accora was wrong. Wrong about everything.
“It must stay on,” she said of her linen undershirt, “to protect you.”
He nodded and kissed her again, kissed her as though he were drinking her in. They fell back onto the rushes and the weight of his body on hers was a kind of ecstasy all its own. Their need grew frantic and he tore at the catches on his belt, and pushed his trousers down just enough. He was hard and hot, and a fresh swell of desire crashed over Selena at the thought of what was coming next.
“The bed?” he asked, his voice raw with want.
“No,” Selena breathed. “Here. Don’t stop.”