Page 67 of A Wrecking of Salt and Fire

The whole room began to blur as he grazed his lips along her hip bone, a soft breath tingling her skin. “Do you want me to take these little things off you?” he whispered, staring back up at Katrin through his dark eyelashes.

Once again the sight of the captain on his knees before her had her legs trembling. A low moan was all she could manage. But this time she felt no shame as he slid the lacey garment off, dropping it beside the bed. His gaze seemed to take in every inch of her naked body. Every dimple and scar reveled in it. “Beautiful.” Ander’s tongue grazed along his bottom lip.

He circled his thumb around her center, sliding one finger inside gently, coaxing her into a sweet abyss of darkness and pleasure. Katrin’s breathing labored as she tried to grind herself against his palm. It wasn’t enough. Even as his finger pulsed in and out of her.

He clicked his tongue again. “Oh no, Starling. I can’t have you come before I’ve tasted you.” Her breath caught in her throat as he trailed his lips across her stomach. Nibbling his way to her core. Gliding his tongue up her center as he kept the other finger inside her. Working her again and again as she writhed against him, tiny beads of sweat formed on her skin.

“Please,” she groaned, “I need—I need—” It was there, just beyond her reach, the sweet release she craved all these weeks with him.

Ander swirled his tongue again, sucking gently as his finger stroked inside her. Until she was spent, until he pulled his finger out and licked what remained of her off of it. His brow kicked up. “Delicious.”

Katrin did not know why, but her mind flashed to Kohl. His dark features, the goofy smile he would always give her on their runs in the morning. A smile much like Ander’s right now. She had not thought of him in days. But now all she could see was the betrayal on his face when she came back that day from the cabin. The hurt and longing and utter cracking of his heart to see her in another man’s clothes.

What would he think now? How quickly the tides had turned away from his favor. How fickle Katrin’s words to him had been. Even after the gods take us. Those words meant nothing now. She had forgotten them. Forgotten him.

Her eyes widened. “I can’t—I can’t do this.” Katrin’s hands shook as she tried to shimmy away from Ander, pushing him off her with a greater force than she intended. Kohl was probably out searching the seas for her, while she was what—lying in another man’s bed?

Kohl who she had decided not to return to. She was overreacting, she knew that, but also—maybe she was moving too quickly. Maybe she had gotten too wrapped up in emotion and not thought this through. Thought about who Ander really was and why she was here in the first place. Gods, why did she do the things she did?

“Do you want to talk about him?” Ander asked as he shifted away from her, hurt plastered across his face. Katrin could not blame him. She had all but thrown him off his bed.

Behind the hurt, though, was compassion and empathy. Ander was too good to her. Like he knew the way it felt to have this other love lingering in the back of one’s mind. And even though it was entirely irrational in the moment, Katrin felt a pang of jealousy hit her square in the gut. Because he had been in love. There was still some woman out there he pined after, the reason he longed to return home. The love he sacrificed by trying to rescue her.

Katrin curled her legs up to a seated position, wrapping her arms around them. Staring for a second out the window into the ever-knowing black sky. “I just wonder sometimes if things would be different.” Her voice was so soft it was almost a whisper. “If I had told Kohl about the nightmares earlier. If I had told him about all of my scars. If I had let him in from the start, maybe he would have understood. Maybe he wouldn’t have broken earlier that night you took me. Maybe I wouldn’t have stabbed him in the woods. Maybe I would never have needed to meet you—” Katrin regretted the words the moment they left her mouth.

Ander recoiled at her confession, his eyes turning a deep silver, not the lustful kind they had just been, but menacing. “You would still pick him. After everything I’ve told you, after this, it will always be him.” The way he spoke, it was not a question, it was a confirmation.

“Ander, I didn’t mean it that way.” Katrin shook her head in her hands. “I don’t know how I meant it. Don’t you ever think of the woman back home that you loved once? What might have been if you hadn’t come for me?”

His jaw ticked, lips thinning to a line. It still was not anger lingering in his emotions, what Katrin could feel radiating off him was more like betrayal. “I never said the woman I loved was back home, Starling. If you listened to a single thing I have told you since you came aboard my ship you would know that.”

Katrin’s face went sheet white. He did not mean—he could not mean—but she thought back through their time on The Nostos. Every delicate phrase he gave her day in and day out. The kiss he had given her when he said goodbye in Lesathos. The way he had wiped away the blood and bathed her after she was attacked. Gods, the way he looked at her right now, like someone had driven a bronze dagger through his chest.

“For me—you are the stars, the sun, the entire galaxy and I am the moon that will forever be enchanted by your light. But what am I to you? A distraction? Someone to keep you occupied until you return to that—that man who would turn on you so quickly?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Katrin whispered, too stunned to say a single word more.

“I’m sorry too.” Ander turned away from her. “I’ll sleep downstairs. I’ve gotten quite used to not sleeping in my own bed since you.” The words punched her in the gut. She had wounded him and he had come back at her in full stride.

Katrin could still feel her skin tingling, the bubbling nausea that crept up her throat. For letting him think what just happened meant nothing. For second guessing what she felt. For telling him the truth.

He loved her.

The man on the seas.

The pirate.

The Prince of the Lost Isles.

Alexander loved her.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ember

The castle had been in disarray since Kohl had left, and Ember was questioning more than ever why exactly he put his father in charge. King Athanas had done approximately one thing the past week, staying cooped in his room smoking some vapid black drug from Anatole. The princess could smell it every time she walked by the guest wing, getting a face full of the thick smoke. She was not sure how he could continuously inhale it, even just the small secondhand effect had her gasping for fresh air.

It had been a week and Ember was growing tired. If the king had given her such a hard time about not knowing the politics of the isles enough to act as regent while Kohl was on the seas in search of her sister, the least that man could do was lead. Or take a meeting with anyone besides those lithe women that snuck into his room each night.

---