Page 9 of Conquering the King of Storms

“Okay.” I stood up quickly, ignoring my many screaming muscles that responded to the movement.

His hand slipped into mine, and my stomach clenched as our fingers intertwined and we started walking away from everyone else.

Why did it have to feel so good every time he touched me?

I glanced at my shoulder and watched the group forlornly as we went. Tariq, Ivy, and Dove were moving to the other side of the fire, picking up a few of the strange, funnel-cake-looking root vegetables that apparently only tasted good after being roasted. They grew in the sand, which was strange to me considering I didn’t know of any other vegetables that only required sand to grow.

But then again, we were in a magical world, and I was nowhere near being a vegetable expert.

“Dove has missed you,” I told him, not wanting to talk about whatever he was probably walking me down the beach to talk about.

My eyes slid down my front and focused on my legs so I wouldn’t look at Storm or obsess over his stupidly-attractive qualities.

The dress I wore had started out as a light purple color, but now it resembled a bruise thanks to the stains left by the swamp. It was made in the elemental fae style, so it barely covered the important bits, and did so using only a few strappy pieces of connected fabric. The bottom part was light, flowy, and open, with four different slits in the damn thing. It really didn’t do much to hide my skin, but I had grown sort of fond of it.

Minus the bruise-like stains, of course.

“Thank you for looking out for her. She told me how you protected her when Quake’s land was falling apart, and how you’ve made a constant effort to talk to her when she’s sad.” His voice was soft, and I could no longer hear the anger within it that I’d heard earlier.

My face warmed. “She’s a little girl; she deserves a lot more than just protection and company. It’s the least I can do.”

“I hope to discover how to keep my magic at bay so I can get her back home.”

“Well, you seem plenty controlled right now.”

“Every moment is a struggle,” he admitted. “Flame tells me the control is like a muscle. Supposedly, the more I continue fighting my power, the stronger I’ll get at beating it into submission.”

I grimaced. “Sounds fun.”

He chuckled. “Extremely.”

We kept walking.

When I glanced over my shoulder again, the rest of our company was a fair distance away from us. Though I knew I should feel uncertain about walking with Storm, our conversation had put me at ease. It was kind of… nice.

“That’s not what I intended to talk about, out here,” the king finally said, breaking the silence again.

Was it just me, or did he sound nervous?

I bit my lip, praying he wasn’t about to bring up mating, or Steven, or… anything I didn’t want to talk about.

Which was most things.

Really, my affection for Dove and my hatred for the swamp were the only things I actuallywantedto talk about.

“What do you know about my land’s version of mates? Or marriages, as I’m told your people call them?”

Dammit, hedidwant to have one of those conversations.

“Most of it, I think. Ivy isn’t really shy. Even if she was, we share information here. It’s the human chick rule.”

When I glanced over at Storm to see how he was going to take that information, his gaze on me was intense. It made my toes curl a little. “Then you know of my people’s tradition with names.”

Oh.

Well, names were a much safer topic than a lot of the other mating shit.

I could do names.

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