Page 23 of Dauntless

Joe flushed all the way to his temples, which really only made him more adorable.My heart did a somersault, and holy shit, I wasn’t just falling for this guy.I’d already landed—splat—right in the middle of some emotional state that I didn’t want to put a name to, because the more perfect Joe got, the more impossible it was going to be to leave next week.

So I smiled at him and drank my hot cocoa and read my book while he fell asleep beside me and Hiccup snored beside the bed.

* * *

Iwoke sometime in the middle of the night when Hiccup leapt up onto the bed.She seemed delighted to discover me there, her tail lashing the doona as she flopped down on me and breathed heavily in my face.

“Hiccup,” said a low voice from over by the window, which confused me, since I’d expected Joe to still be in bed beside me.I swept an arm down his side of the bed and no, it was definitely empty, and he wasn’t throwing his voice.

I wheezed from underneath the dog, who rolled off me at last.

“What are you doing over there?”I asked.

I heard the rattle of a curtain.“Just looking at the weather.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“There’s weather then too.”I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Well, obviously.But it’s not like you can see?—”

He pulled the curtain open and flooded the bedroom with moonlight.

“Wow.”I blinked.It felt as brilliant as neon after the warm darkness I’d woken to.I pushed the doona off and climbed out of bed.The floor was cool under my feet.I joined Joe at the window—I hadn’t put my glasses on, so I leaned close to the glass to peer outside.It was cold against my nose.

Joe stood behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.He rested his chin on my shoulder.“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Joe’s bedroom window overlooked the cliffside.From here, the land dropped away into an ocean that shone like molten silver.Above it, the moon blazed in a cloudless sky dotted with stars.It was beautiful.I couldn’t see the lighthouse from here, but I could see the beam cutting through the night.

“Wow,” I said again, as eloquent as always.

Joe pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

“You can almost imagine the tall ships,” I said.“TheHMS Dauntless, sails billowing, sailing right towards the island.Wait...would they have had their sails out this close to the island?I don’t actually know anything about how tall ships work.”

“Well, neither did they,” Joe said, “since they wrecked.”

“That’s a very unfair assessment,” I said.“Lots of ships wrecked.”

“Lots of shitty drivers back then,” Joe said.

“I know I said I don’t know anything about how tall ships work, but even I know they didn’t havedrivers.”

“Well, I’m not pretending to be an expert, unlike some.”

“On the mutiny, not the ship itself.There’s a difference.”

“I don’t know.It feels like you’re just trying to save face at this point.”

I elbowed him.“Itisbeautiful, though.”

“Some nights I grab a chair and a blanket and go outside and just wait for the dawn.”

“That might almost be worth freezing your balls off,” I said.

He laughed silently, his body shaking against mine.“Yeah, almost.”

“Saltwater in your veins, huh?”

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