“Of course,” Aerity said quietly. Her palms rested on the side of the bucket, her fingers dipping into the water as her heart sank, and she felt as young and foolish as Vixie. “Just . . . wash while the water is hot.”
“I will. You can go.”
Aerity bristled. “I should stay until Mrs. Rathbrook gets here. You look as if you’re about to fall over.” He finally looked at her, with hard eyes that made Aerity feel as if he’d struck her. Indignation burned through her. She was tired of this. “What cause have you to hate me so? It seems the more kindness I show, the more bullheaded you become!” Aerity threw the cloth back into the water with a smack. Paxton’s jaw clenched.
“Why do you care?” he asked.
“I’m beginning to wonder that myself.” Aerity frowned up at him.
“Well, you won’t need to worry about my bullheadedness getting in your way another day, Your darling Highness. The moment my hand is healed, I’m leaving.”
Aerity flinched. “Leaving?”
“Yes.”
Their eyes searched each other, seeking something she couldn’t explain.
“Why?” Aerity whispered.
“For reasons you wouldn’t understand.”
Aerity’s eyes burned. He was right: she didn’t understand this man or his reasons. She believed he was acting out of hurt, but she couldn’t figure out what could possibly have hurt him so deeply, or what it had to do with her.
“I don’t know what’s happened to you, Paxton. I want to help you, but—”
“You wouldn’t want to help me if you knew.”
Aerity stared up at him. Did he have a criminal past? With his sort of temperament, it was a possibility. Even so, he seemed the type to act out of a sense of honor and justice, not petty reasons.
Aerity stared into the depths of his dark eyes, searching for answers. “I think you underestimate me, hunter. But I cannot stop you if you choose to go. I can only tell you with all honesty that I wish you would stay.”
As she moved closer, she swore she felt Paxton soften, though his face remained impassive. She moved closer still, fully expecting him to back away, but he didn’t.
“I must leave today,” he said in a low voice.
Aerity, knowing this could be the last time she saw him, went up on the tips of her toes and placed her lips against his. She watched as his eyes fluttered closed. When he didn’t stop her or push her away, she brought her hands up around his neck and pulled herself higher, tasting the fullness of his salty lips, like the seas.
“Princess,” he whispered in a guttural tone against her lips. “You don’t know what you do.”
“I do know, hunter. I know exactly what I do.”
His head pulled back and his eyes bore into hers, filled with a mix of punishment, anger, and desire. “You’ve no clue who I am.”
Her skin pebbled with gooseflesh at a sense of foreboding. “Then tell me. Who are you, Paxton Seabolt?”
He slowly took her wrist from around his neck with his good hand and moved his bloodied, dirtied hand to the edge of the bucket, nodding toward it. He watched her, inviting her to wash him now. Aerity, flustered by the intensity in his eyes, as if he were inexplicably daring her to do this, reached into the bucket with a shaking hand and began to wash his wrist and top of his tightly fisted hand. She gently turned his hand and coaxed open his fingers, dunking his open palm into the water. He didn’t flinch, but it had to hurt as she gingerly wiped away the grime to reveal a gaping slash in the middle of his palm. Blood seeped out, coloring the water in swirls of red.
Aerity wound the cloth around his palm and set to cleaning the caked-on dirt from his fingers with her bare hands. When Paxton tensed, Aerity glanced at him. His jaw was set in hard lines as he watched her work.
She gently continued, trying not to cause him further pain, using her small nails to scrape away the dirt edged into his cuticles. The bit at the very bottom was particularly difficult. She splashed more water on his fingers and rubbed again, staring, then scratched harder, pushing at the dirt, willing it to budge. But it was too straight, too uniform, too smooth.
Her stomach dropped. She looked at his next finger, and the next. All the same.
It wasn’t dirt at all.
Aerity went still as she stared at the purpled lines. She stood still, but the room seemed to be moving. For a moment she forgot to breathe. She couldn’t look at Paxton’s face, but she could hear his quickened breaths close to her ear. In a moment of denial, Aerity scratched lastly at his thumbnail, only to reveal another line.
Almighty seas . . . Aerity felt a sob rising up inside her as the truth flooded her system.
“Paxton . . .”
“Now you know.” His voice was resigned. “Now you can let me be.”
But she couldn’t. She knew he had not received those lashings from hurting another person, unless perhaps it was self-defense. No matter his outer temper, she had always sensed the man underneath this secret—a secret massive enough to warrant his anger and hurt. Aerity knew in her gut that he would have only used his power as a last resort.