Page 29 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
It’s not an answer I expected. There is so much about Orion that’s unexpected. So much that seems to throw me off kilter every time I think I know what’s going on with him. He’s sweeter than I thought, kinder, less the stereotypical noble.
He’s also sitting very close to me.
This close, I can smell the scent of him, masculine and strangely sweet. I can hear his soft breathing. I look him in the eyes, and it’s like I want to get lost in them.
It’s easy to close the gap and kiss him.
He tastes the way I imagine the moonlight would taste, clean and pure and beautiful, but there’s strength in him too, and as his arms go around me, pulling me to him, I can feel all that strength. I can feel every muscle beneath his tunic.
A part of me wants to pull off his tunic right there and then.
I almost do. I almost turn this into exactly the moment we’re both pretending it is. Somehow, though, I pull back from him.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he says. “That was… good. At least, I hope it was?”
I nod. “That’s kind of the problem.”
I get to my feet. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to. You could stay. Nothing has to happen.”
I laugh then. “We both know that isn’t true. If I stay,everythingis going to happen.”
He gives me a look as if to ask if that would be so bad, but he doesn’t push the issue, doesn’t call me back as I slip away.
Everything between us is meant to be a pretense. It has benefits for both of us, but the wholepointwas that I was the one person who wasn’t pushing him for more. Now, I’m not surewhatI want, what I feel. A part of me still wants to head right back into that clearing, tear Orion’s clothes off, and see where we go from there.
I ignore it.
I head back to the bay instead. I sit by the water, willing the seraphin to come to me. Wanting that peace, that distraction. For a moment, I think I see its scales glittering in the moonlight.
Then it’s gone, the turmoil of my emotions plainly too much for it.
Chapter FIFTEEN
“I can’t believe the Hall is really letting us cut out for two days just to visit your family,” I say, standing with Orion near the prow of the ship that is carrying us to his family home. And itisa ship, a huge vessel powered by a mixture of triangular sails and banks of oars.
Orion shrugs. “They care about the challenges. It isn’t some school for wayward children who must be kept in line. So long as we’re there for their tests, so long as we’ve done the work we need to do to pass them, they don’t care.”
He makes it sound so easy, but I suspect that it’s only easy because he’s both wealthy and powerful, and because Nautica is on land that his family owns. If I wanted to go off alone, I don’t think it would be so easy.
“There’s a gift for you back in the cabin,” Orion says.
“A gift?” That catches me by surprise.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the kind of thing a boyfriend is meant to do at a time like this,” Orion says. “Besides, in this case, it’s practical.”
That catches my attention. We head back to the cabin where I find, laid out neatly on the bed, the kind of dress that I have never even dreamed of wearing. It is the shifting blue of the sea, edged with lace, with pearls sewn into it. There are jeweled slippers and small bangles made from what appears to be coral. It’s the kind of thing that probably cost a small fortune to have made, but Orionhasthat fortune, so it’s probably nothing to him to do this.
“It’s… beautiful,” I say, although then I realize why he’s giving it to me. “All this, because your parents wouldn’t want me at their estates in what I usually wear?”
“They won’t want to see either of us like that,” Orion replies. “Swimwear is fine on Nautica, but maybe not for a formal supper. I’ll have to change too.”
The difference is that he’ll be changing into the kinds of things he normally wears at home, while I’ll be dressing to play a part, because going there dressed as a commoner would be too much of a shock for his parents. I almost say no… but itisa beautiful dress, and it’s obvious that Orion has put a lot of thought into it.
He turns his back while I change into it, and when he turns to me, the light of surprise fills his eyes.
