Страница 32 из 86
I cast my gaze out over the horizon, toward the red, sinking sun. I tried to school my features, steady my breaths. The ship pitched and swayed, and even I knew that the crew would need to return to their posts soon to keep us on course. One last deep breath of salt air. “Another day and this bond will settle. Then we can both enjoy some space from one another,” I said, gaze stuck on the last dash of sunlight. Without glancing back at him, I started for the confines of the stateroom. His warm hand wrapped around my wrist. I glared down at it, then up into his eyes.
They bored into me with a fathomless expression. “An embrace,” he said.
“A what?”
He tugged on my arm, forcing me a step closer. “Lachlan said an embrace—closeness—might help ease things.”
Had he not had the direst look on his face and a patch of red creeping over the top of his collar, I would have thought the suggestion was in jest. I might have laughed at the ridiculousness of it had my chest not felt like it were caving in.
I gave my head a confused shake. “You hate me.”
His brow pinched. “I don’t—”
“You called me a gnat.”
“Imogen.” His grip tightened on my wrist, and I stopped breathing. “I would like to find a way to make you feel better right now.” His voice was all warmth, curling around me. “This is what I can offer.”
I thought of our escape, when he’d held me to calm my shaking body and how the bond in my belly had glowed. I remembered the outline of him, the feel of his heart beating against my spine. The memories alone filled me with frisson.
There were many misguided things I desired, and I suspected it would always be so. Just as sure as I was made of flesh and blood and bone and sea, I was also made of want. Excising it, draining it like a bad humor, would never do, but this one time, with this one man, I could stop myself from being the fool.
“I don’t want an embrace,” I whispered. When he released me, my wrist was cold.
Head high, and with Theodore trailing in my wake, I made my way across the deck. There was an emptiness, a hopelessness, that rankled, but I tried to let this truth soothe me: Nothing good had ever come from me taking what I wanted.