Page 49 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

After listening for only a moment, she pulled her hand away from him. “You’re bluffing,” she said, both annoyed and relieved. “What kind of test is this?”

He glowered down at her. “It’s not a test. It’s a reminder. You own me. Don’t pretend to respect me. Don’t tell yourself you think of me as an equal just because it makes you feel less guilt. We’re not equals. We are not friends.”

She stared at him, shaken, as he went around to the far side of the bed, as far from her as he could get. A cold, hard lump formed in the back of her throat.

The silence stretched long and heavy as they made their separate preparations for sleep, and both got into the bed at the extreme end of either side, facing away from each other.

* * *

She was not especiallysurprised when she awoke to Vaara tossing and turning. She waited to see if he would stop, and it only got worse. He began murmuring incoherently, half in one language and half in another, but she could hear his distress in every word.

When it became too much for her to bear, she reached over to touch his arm through the blanket. “Vaara,” she hissed. “Vaara!”

He awoke with a start. Then he seemed to realize where he was, and he went still, breathing hard. He stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed.

Crow sat up. It was even worse this time than it had been before.

He was older than she was by perhaps a decade—maybe more, when you accounted for the fact that full-blooded elves aged so slowly. But somehow, lying there in the dark, he looked much younger. He’d removed the strip of fabric that usually covered his missing eye, and his hair was wild and tangled, falling over his face and brushing his shoulders.

She blinked.

Brushing hisbareshoulders. He’d taken off his shirt, too. And he was in bed with her, arm’s reach away. And she wasn’t wearing much more than he was. Her eyes raked over the lean but unmistakably masculine planes and angles of his body, worn and hardened from a life spent outdoors and in combat.

He shot a sharp look in her direction, but then his gaze dropped to her neck and shoulders and chest and below, covered only by a thin white undershirt.

When he realized she was watching him the way he was watching her, however, the muscles in his jaw tightened defensively. He folded his arm over his body, hiding the line of scars on his forearm—as if he thought she’d been staring out of morbid curiosity rather than thirst.

She closed her eyes, trying to rein in her inappropriately libidinous mind. Not much time had passed since they’d gotten in bed. Maybe an hour or two. A few hours of sleep in two days was not enough.

“Another dream?” she said. Her voice, breaking the silence, sounded too loud, even though she’d spoken quietly. Vaara didn’t answer.

She hesitated to speak again, already knowing what he’d say if she offered her help. His eye closed as if to try to go back to sleep, and then quickly opened again to look around the room, as if fearing something lurking nearby that would strike him as soon as he let his guard down.

“If you let me try to help—”

“No. Please don’t.”

She watched him silently. Sitting there with him in the dark, it felt a little like they were on another plane—a secret, liminal space that would be forgotten again the next day. Like this might have all been a dream. Like they were different people here in this quiet, enclosed space, and they might be forgiven for acting out of character and without inhibitions.

“Tell me what I would have to do in order for you to let me try,” she said.

He gave her a long, tired look. She thought he was going to make some sarcastic remark, but none came.

“You’re right not to trust me,” she said, feeling the corners of her lips pulling down. He didn’t deserve what she’d done to him. No one deserved that. “But I promise you, I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want you to suffer. You saved my life the other day. Let me do something to pay you back for it. Please.”

His brow twitched with anger. “Is that a command, mistress?”

“No. Did the binding make it feel like one?”

“If you word it like one, it will feel like one.”

“It’s not a command,” she amended. “If it pleases you, will you let me try to help?”

After a beat, the anger drained from his face. He didn’t answer at first. But his misery was plain on his face.

“What would you do?” he asked.

“I’d think of what calm feels like,” she said, “and then send that feeling to you.”

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