I was suddenly shy. “You first.”
One side of his mouth twisted up. “Very well.” Angling his eyes away from mine, he said, “I finally realized why it wouldn’t have worked when I first tried to kiss you.”
I crossed my arms. “Because I’m not the kind of girl who kisses boys she just met the day before yesterday?”
“No. Well, yes. That too.” His voice was steady and serious. “All my life I expected people to respect me because I was the son of the Emparch. But you didn’t. At first that made me mad. Infuriated me, really. You have no idea.”
I had some idea.
“But now I know you better.” Hesitantly he wound one of my curls around his finger. I didn’t stop him. Emboldened, he brushed his hand over my hair. It tickled, but tiny fireworks lit up all over my body.
“Now I see.” His voice dropped low. “You respect people who take care of other people. People who are bold. And brave. I couldn’t figure it out at first. Why you thought more of common wherrymen than you did of me. You respect people because of the things they do. You were different from everyone I’d ever met. You knew what I did not—that it’s the things we do that make us who we are.”
I knew what I wanted to say, but I also knew what would happen if I said it. “Markos.”
He braced himself in the doorway, trying so hard to appear casual that even I was nearly fooled.
“I think you’re the bravest person I know.” I stepped backward into the cabin.
“You’re going to bed. Of course. You’ve been through a lot.” He stuck his fingers in his hair. “I mean, you were dead. I’ll just—”
I placed my hand on his shirt, spreading my fingers wide. The solid heat of him made me feel bold. “When you kissed me in Casteria, I didn’t know if it meant anything.”
His chest lurched under my fingers. “As if I would kiss someone like that and not mean something.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you?”
“Not,” he said, clearing his throat, “like that.”
“Perhaps you just wanted to kiss a girl before you died.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps I didn’t want to die without kissing you.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You know it isn’t. Not at all.” He whispered, “Can I please stay? I swear, I won’t do anything.”
He backed up, putting the length of the cabin between us, to prove his intentions. But the cabin was tiny and he was too tall for it. I felt his presence, a warm physical thing, taking up the whole room.
“Why do you say it like that?” I asked. “You won’t do anything. When if we were to do anything, and I’m not saying we will, it would be the both of us doing it.” I licked my lips. “Like, maybe I might want to do things. But then you talk like it’s up to you and take me right out of it.”
“I’m sor—do you?”
Realizing I’d gone slightly too far, I prepared to come about. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Are we talking about … I just want to make sure we’re referring to the same kinds of … things here.” Tension yawned between us. He stepped closer, as if there were a string connecting me and him, and I’d just tugged on it.
“Are there other kinds of things that happen between a girl and a boy?”
He gave me a sly grin. “Are you asking?”
I shoved him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”
He kissed me.
A girl who, at the age of seventeen, captains a pirate cutter she seized as a prize ought not to let her head be turned by kisses, even if they are from a boy who is the rightful Emparch of a whole country. Particularly not if the girl knows embarrassing facts about said Emparch that should make him wholly unattractive. Such as, he doesn’t know how to load a pistol or properly stow a sail, or in fact do anything of use except look good holding two swords at once.
I didn’t care. Everything went right out of my head, except how greedy I was for his lips and his tongue, even if I did have to go up on tiptoe to reach them. He smelled and felt and tasted like Markos. I simply couldn’t have been kissing anyone else.
It was all him. The silkiness of his hair as I finally twisted my fingers into it. The catch in his breath as he dragged his lips down my neck. We wrapped ourselves around each other until there was no space between us. Until I couldn’t tell whose throbbing heartbeat I felt.
He laughed softly into my shoulder. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Tomorrow we can go back to not liking each other.”
“You think we don’t like each other?”
“I think I find you maddening.” I tangled my fist in his shirt.
“Well. That’s different.”
His voice was irritatingly smug, so I kissed him some more to shut him up.
“It’s most likely because,” he said, breath tickling my neck, “we spent so much time on that damn boat together. That’s all it is. A natural … mmm … thing,” he finished absently as if he couldn’t be bothered to think of the word. “Reaction,” he said several moments later, kissing his way up my ear. So much later, in fact, I barely remembered what he was talking about.
“I agree,” I said. “It’s definitely nothing.” I tried to climb him, wrapping my legs around his waist. His back bumped the wall, causing something on the shelf to shift and topple.
Eventually we found the bed, which wasn’t hard even in the dark because the cabin was so small.
“Markos.” I hesitated, unsure of what he would think. But it had to be said. “This isn’t … my first time. If that matters. Which it shouldn’t. It’s just—I thought you ought to know. In case—”
“Caro. You’re talking too much.”
Relief loosened the tension in my shoulders. “I almost expected you to make a rude remark about girls from the riverlands.”
I felt him freeze. “I was a pompous ass when I said that.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that. “What do you want to do?” I whispered.
My heart hammered with unvoiced fear. I was scared he would come to his senses and remember that this was a terrible idea. That the two of us together was something like what happens when flint strikes steel.
“Take off more of your clothes,” he said roughly, and that put paid to my worries.
His jacket hung from his left arm, where it had gotten stuck and we’d both forgotten about it. For my part, my hands were inside his gaping shirt. I’d always admired men’s shoulders, and his were particularly fine from all that sword fighting. I wrapped my leg around his, my bare toes making a trail down his calf muscle. I hadn’t ever imagined his weight pressing down on my body would feel so good.
“I meant, beyond that.”
“I hadn’t thought beyond that.” He tugged lightly on one of my curls, watching it spring back into a corkscrew. “I love your hair.” Casting his eyes down, he swallowed. “Caro … You know I can’t promise you anything. I … just can’t.”
“What—what do you mean—‘promise’?” I stammered.