Page 21 of Dauntless

I raised my hand and touched my fingertips to Eddie’s temple, close to the healing cut.

Eddie held my gaze as the air around us shifted and grew quieter, heavier.“So, what would our great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers think, Joe Nesmith?”His lips quirked.“Do you think George Hawthorne, rope around his neck courtesy of Josiah Nesmith, figured we’d be kissing on a couch one day?”

“We’re not kissing on a couch though,” I pointed out, and suddenly I had a lapful of Eddie, and wewerekissing on a couch.I carded my fingers through Eddie’s hair, mindful of his wound, and Eddie curled one hand around my shoulder, cupping my cheek with the other.His knees dug into the couch on either side of my thighs.I slipped a hand down his back, fingers sliding against skin where his shirt had ridden up.

God.

The rush of pure want made me almost giddy.I tightened my grip in Eddie’s hair and groaned as we kissed.Closed my eyes, savouring every moment, until at last our urgent, heated kisses trailed off into gentle pecks, feather light.I opened my eyes.

Eddie laughed, breath warm and gaze sparkling, and lifted himself off my lap to slump beside me.

“There.”He sounded breathless and satisfied.He reached for my hand, twining our fingers together.“What would our great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers think ofthat?”

I pretended to consider it.“Well,” I said at last, “they were both in the navy, so I’m guessing they wouldn’t be completely shocked.”

Eddie laughed so loud that Hiccup woke up, her tail thumping on the floor.

Chapter 6

EDDIE

It just seemed natural that we ended up in Joe’s bedroom.There was no discussion about it, no awkwardness, no moment of “Are we going to, or, um...?”Just, at some point, Joe got up and let Hiccup out for her final pit stop of the night, and when he came back to the living room, I was standing there waiting for him.He took me by the hand.Raised his eyebrows in a silent question I answered with a smile, and then led me down the hallway.

Joe’s bedroom was what I’d expected.It wasn’t very big, and the space was dominated by a plain wooden bed with square posts and a slatted backboard.The bed was neatly made, the doona navy blue.Folded over the end of the mattress was a cream throw rug covered in black dog hair.

An old wardrobe stood against one wall, a dresser against the other—big, solid pieces of furniture that would have an antique dealer salivating.The scuff marks and slightly battered edges told me these weren’t statement pieces, though.These were items weathered with use, embodying function over form.I liked it.I remembered visiting a historical house when I was a kid, where you weren’t allowed to touch anything or open any drawers.I’d always been drawn more to history’s everyday items instead of art or knick-knacks.Old irons and book presses, boot scrapers and coal scuttles—things people had used, rather than things you could only look at.

Joe had a framed map on the wall at the head of the bed.It looked to be a reproduction of one of Cook’s charts—the Great Pacific Ocean, with New Holland on the left, South America on the right, and a lot of little islands dotted in between.One of those tiny specks was Dauntless—though it wasn’t yet named here.That wasn’t the only startling omission to modern eyes: underneath the rectangular map was a circular one, with the South Pole at the centre.The lines of longitude radiated out like the spokes of a wheel.New Zealand featured, and so did the curling tail of South America and a very misshapen lower half of New Holland.But where Antarctica should have been, there was nothing at all except the empty ocean.

“It was in the living room when I moved in,” Joe said.“It belonged to the last lighthouse keeper, but he didn’t have anywhere to put it in his new cottage.I moved it in here because I figured I needed something on the walls.”

“I like it,” I said.“It fits the theme of the place, that’s for sure.Sailors in those days...Going to the places they did, places that weren’t even on maps yet, it must have been like setting out into space, you know?And stepping onto an alien planet every time you found land.You never knew what you’d find.Like, I know they were complicit in exploiting and enslaving indigenous peoples and stealing land.Not trying to glorify any of that.But it must have taken a hell of a lot of courage to get on a ship in those days.”

“You think so?”Joe asked, tilting his head on an angle.“I don’t know.If the sea is in your blood, then that’s where you have to be.”

Of course he wasn’t just a hot ginger lighthouse keeper—he also had deep, poetic thoughts that stopped my rambling in its tracks.And okay, maybe his words weren’t that deep or poetic.But at this point he could have recited the operating instructions for my camp stove, and I’d have thought it the most profound thing I’d ever heard.God, if I’d been falling for him before, I’d just picked up speed on my downward plummet.

“Is it in yours?”I asked, closing the space between us and cupping his jaw.His beard was softer than it looked.

“It’s Dauntless,” he said with a soft smile.“Saltwater runs in our veins.”

I kissed him.His hands found my hips, and mine found his shoulders.It had been a while since I’d gone to bed with someone—pale, nerdy history students whose idea of a good time was talking about British naval regulations in the 1800s didn’t do so well on the pick-up scene, funnily enough—but the flutter in my stomach was all down to anticipation, not performance anxiety.I might have only had two previous boyfriends and a moderately disastrous one-night stand where we’d agreed we’d be better off playing Scrabble instead of going for a second round, but me and Joe?It felt good.It feltright.

Our kiss ended, and I stared at him, wondering if I looked as shell shocked as he did.In the low light from the lamp on his bedside table, his eyes were wide.His mouth hung open a little, though one corner quirked as he looked at me, in his typically non-demonstrative smile-that-wasn’t-quite-there.

“Wow,” he said, letting out a breath.

“Wow?”I echoed.

A flush darkened his cheeks and made him ever redder than usual.He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck.“It’s been a while.”

“For me too,” I said.“My last relationship ended eight months ago when I came home and found my boyfriend in bed with a theology major.”

“Oh my god,” Joe said.

“That’s exactly what the theology major said.”

Joe snorted.

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