Page 21 of Enamored
In the next moment, he drew a line up my arm, his touch searing me through my sleeve.
It was my turn to grow motionless. Clearly, he was testing the power of his touch upon me in equal measure. It was only fair. Yet I feared he would be able to win me over much too easily, just as he had when we’d been children. Then when he was tired of me, he’d cast me aside once again.
The hurt of the past prodded me, and I started to slide away from him.
Before I could roll out of the crevice, Maxim lifted and deposited me within the confines of the interior so that my back was pressed against and protected by the rock while his body shielded me from the cleft opening. If the draco returned and aimed a breath at us, Maxim would suffer from the scorching while I remained untouched.
“Maybe we should return to our previous position,” I suggested. Even if the close contact had stirred up strange new feelings, at least we’d both been safe.
With his broad shoulders blocking out most of the sunlight, his face was shadowed. But I could still see his brows rise and his forehead pucker.
“You’re too exposed.” I looked pointedly at the opening behind him.
“This is for the best.” He didn’t move closer but instead straightened his shoulders to shield me even more.
I started to protest, but when he tugged at my belt, the words got lost. He slid my knife into the sheath slowly, almost languidly. I didn’t know how he’d ended up with the weapon, and I didn’t care. Instead, my lungs once again ceased functioning until the knife was firmly in place. Even then, I couldn’t draw in a full breath, not with his hand lingering on the hilt.
How was it possible Maxim could walk back into my life and upend my thoughts and emotions in just hours, but none of the noblemen had moved me in the slightest after an entire week?
After several heartbeats he withdrew his hand and rested his head on his arm, which exposed the blood-slickened wound on the opposite side.
His injury. How could I have forgotten about it so quickly?
I wrenched at the piece of my shift dangling by threads. It tore away, and I lifted it to his head. He didn’t stop me as I pressed the wound. The only sign of his discomfort was a minor change in the rhythm of his breathing. It was almost imperceptible. No one else might have noticed it. But I’d always been attuned to his every nuance, and apparently that hadn’t changed.
What was it about him that had always been my undoing?
In the dimness of the cleft, I studied his face, taking note again of the maturity in his features, the defined lines of his cheeks, the angular strength of his jaw, the purposeful tilt of his chin. And his eyes... they were a bottomless abyss that even now beckoned me to lose myself there. I could lie beside him and look into his eyes all day and never tire of it.
If only I could dive past the defenses he’d erected and discover what he was truly thinking and feeling.
“Maxim?”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
I wanted to give him leave to drop my title and address me by my given name as he always had when we’d been children. But we’d had little occasion to speak to one another since his return and had yet to become reacquainted. I couldn’t assume we would renew our friendship where we’d once left off, although my keen longing to do so took me by surprise.
“Why did you leave without saying farewell?” The question was out before I could stop it. Yet, once spoken, I sensed it was the right approach. We might as well stop ignoring the chasm between us and instead labor to bridge it.
His blue eyes searched my face in turn as though he, too, was trying to acquaint himself with my changes—for surely ten years had altered me as much as it had him. As his gaze skimmed my cheek, temple, and then brow, a strange warmth pooled inside, almost as if his fingers were doing the tracing and not just his eyes.
“I wanted to say farewell.” His eyes connected with mine, and this time the barrier was lowered. I could see the hurt and sorrow and angst clouding the depths. “But I was forbidden to do so.”
“Forbidden?” I nearly recoiled but had no place to go with the cold stone against my back. “By whom? And why?”
“Why do you think?” An edge of bitterness laced his voice.
My mind spun in an effort to respond. But I had no answer now any more than I had in the days following his departure when I’d wondered what had happened—what I might have done—to drive him away. “Was it me? Did you leave because of me? Something I said or did?”
He held my gaze, intently probing as though he needed to see the truth.
I had nothing to hide from him. “You had to leave on account of me?”
He didn’t deny it. In fact, his silence confirmed it.
“Why?” I asked.
“The day before I left, do you remember what happened?”
