by Nicole Locke
‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to be away from you! You should have just left me in the tree. Should have just let me bleed out from the back wound instead of stitching me. Should have let me face him on my own as I should have done a long time ago.’
Snarling, she swung and elbowed him in the stomach, then rapped her knuckles where she’d jabbed before. That time, air rushed satisfactorily out of him. ‘Felt a bit of that, did you! Good! Maybe you’ll feel this as well.’
She locked her ankle around him, grabbed his arm. A simple move would have him flipped to the ground where she could pummel him. Pummel him so he’d stay still, so he wouldn’t put her sister, himself, in danger.
She twisted and jerked back.
Eldric hummed in satisfaction. ‘Not going anywhere, Archer.’
She wrenched again. Nothing. He held fast and now she was locked with him. A manoeuvre she’d executed a thousand times didn’t work because Eldric was a thousand times larger.
Gritting her teeth, she screamed in frustration. He whipped around until her back was to his front again. And she was bound! But not her feet. She kicked, and kicked, feeling every strike of her heel against his shins.
‘Enough!’ he growled against her ear which sent shivers down her spine. ‘You think you want to fight me. But that’s not what you want. There’s something else we—’
‘He’ll kill her. He’ll kill you and all the years I spent saving you will be for nought. The one good deed I ever did will be undone. And she’ll never get to her family. To be happy again.’
She folded her legs into herself, to land one telling kick that was sure to fell any man. Mountain or not.
‘I don’t think so, Archer,’ he bit out, clasping her left leg and pinning her lower half to his.
Defeated. ‘No, let me go.’ She squirmed. ‘You have to let me go.’
He hissed. Spanned his fingers against her thigh to secure her and stopped them both. The rock-hard heat of his frame, the thick band of his right arm leashed across her chest, his hand secured on her opposite shoulder.
His left arm dropped firm along her body and locked on the juncture of her left thigh. And higher. Her squirming, his fingers, the grip slipping. His palm cupping now at the juncture and not moving.
‘I won’t let you go. Neither one of us wants that. It’s not a fight you want from me, Cressida. I was a fool, but even I know that now. I know what I want: it’s you. It’s you.’
Words when she felt the thickness, the insistent heat of his fingers. Could feel the slight tremor there that vibrated through her core.
She couldn’t breathe as something akin to shock, then blinding need, flamed through her. Her body acted as it always did. On instinct. She flung her head back against his collarbone, dropped her legs and let Eldric take her weight.
At her capitulation, he groaned, seemed to collapse against her, his cheek rubbing against the top of her head.
‘There you go, but not yet, Archer. Not yet, there are words that must be said between us. Words I want to say to you.’
Words! Soft words. Endearing words! ‘No!’ she cried, jammed her feet into his thighs and kicked off, until she landed on her feet, her hands balanced on the wooden planks. Her eyes darted to her left and right, looking for a way to escape.
The only exit was behind him. She straightened. Readying to dash. She’d fling herself over the side!
If possible, Eldric seemed larger, almost feral. ‘The ending of this will be the same, Archer. It was always going to be the same. With you and me. You made me yours when you marked me.’
‘To make you go the other direction. Why didn’t you go another direction?’
‘No more. There are no enemies on board. The babe is safe; you are secured. We begin tonight.’
He lunged, she darted. Not fast enough. His grip like iron around her waist, he strode to the entrance to the below deck. When he got to the doorway, he clasped the ledge above and swung them down into the tween deck.
Another few steps and he got them into their room, the door closed, the latch lowered. Locked. Then he set her down, slowly, steadily, as if he was reluctant to let her go.
It was that, that difference. The tenderness, the just-under-the-surface edge that changed everything for her.
Everything.
‘You bastard.’ Cressida seethed with hate, with want, and all it was aimed at the infuriating warrior who locked the door and stood in front of it. Trapped again. Why did he keep trapping her?
And worse, all of it worse because he held her as if he wanted her. For a moment, she forgot, she forgot. Never again. ‘Let me out of here.’
‘You know I won’t do that.’
Wishing she had a dagger, she slashed out with her hand. ‘What are you doing? I was gone from you. Isn’t that what you wanted? A killer like me away from your precious life?’
She threw words instead of arrows, but it didn’t feel like enough. The fact he flinched was no relief. She needed more. Spinning, she spotted a candlestick, threw it at him. He dodged and it thunked against the thick wooden wall.
She grabbed the other.
He held up his hands. ‘I was wrong!’
‘You were wrong finding me and bringing me back here.’ She hurled another candlestick.
He darted, but she anticipated it, and the spin got him across his temple.
‘My words were... I was wrong.’
He widened his stance, his hands still up. A trickle of blood at his temple. She’d caused that. She’d caused that and was all the madder for being concerned about it. She turned again—the room wasn’t full enough with weapons. She didn’t care, the act of throwing things helped. So she reached for the wooden basin and chucked it over her head.
He caught it and threw it behind him.
She threw the pillows, the quilt. The chair padding. All of it he caught and set beside him.
Until everything was behind him and she had nothing left, and he carried on watching her. Then slowly, keeping an eye on her, he lifted his foot to his knee and began to unlace his boots.
* * *
‘What are you doing?’
Eldric’s entire focus was the woman in front of him. It would take every bit of thought and reason to get her to stay.
But he had none. Once he knew she was safely on this ship, that her sister was taken care of, his usual ease with the world stripped away, leaving him nothing but a man before a woman. Full of need to hold her, to make sure she suffered no further injuries. The possessiveness inside barely contained. But first, first he needed to tell her, show her, how utterly wrong he had been.
‘I am done being a coward.’
‘Put your clothes back on.’
Chapter Eighteen
He loved the imperious way she spoke. So different than when they first met. He knew that fire was in her while she hid it under her lies. Then the trip here, the unsure silences as if she wasn’t used to talking. Now he was beginning to know why.
‘They’re just my boots, Archer.’ He tossed the one to the corner of the room. ‘Getting nervous?’
‘You said—’
He threw his other boot to the wall with a resounding thud. ‘And now I’ll say just the opposite of all those asinine words that had you rushing out into the night.’
‘So you can take me to the Tower.’
‘You know I’m not doing that now.’
‘I haven’t changed.’
‘It’s me who has. I don’t want you to change. Not one freckle off your nose or scar on your body erased. Because you’re perfect. Perfect.’
Another mutinous look around him. No doubt calculating how to gain access to the candlesticks behind him. ‘That’s rather sudden,’ she said. ‘No time has passed since you thought me a murderer and most of that time you were—’
‘Wearing off t
he draught you gave me, yes.’
She stilled. ‘You heard. That’s what it was. You heard my father and I.’
He nodded. ‘This is what I wanted to tell you. I heard everything. Everything. I understand now and—’
‘That’s why you’re holding me. That’s why we’re here again and you’re taking off your clothes.’
‘Only boots, yet.’ He reached behind him and yanked off his tunic, felt the curve of his lips as her eyes widened. She wasn’t thinking about throwing things at him now.
‘Put that back on.’
‘No. You’re not getting away this time. I heard everything, but that wasn’t what made me rush to you. Think, Archer.’ He backed up, unfasted the belt around his breeches and pushed them down.
‘I was already there. If you hadn’t poisoned me and run off, you would know. I understood what you told me before I heard your father’s confession. Before I knew for certain you didn’t release the arrows that ended Michael’s and Peter’s lives.’ He stepped out of his breeches, until he stood before her only in his braies.
She wasn’t saying a word. Not one. He wasn’t sure she was breathing except the odd hitches that happened with every bit of clothing he removed.
‘Eldric,’ she said.
‘There you are.’ He took a step closer, relief easing his movements when she didn’t run away, when she didn’t throw things or rail at him. Cressida before him. The Archer. She was fierce, but right now there was that bit of vulnerability in her. That uncommon fragility that made him want to wrap her in the finest of blankets and protect her with everything he was.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What I should have done when I had you in my arms the first time.’ He knelt before her, his head bowed, showing her what he didn’t say adequately before. That he was hers, that she could do what she wanted with him. Even walk away.
‘No!’ she cried and took the remaining step to him, her two hands on the sides of his cheeks. ‘Please get up.’
‘Not until you forgive me.’
Her hands trembled. ‘Eldric, please.’
He liked her saying his name. He raised his head. ‘Please what, Archer? You still demanding to leave? I can’t stop you.’
‘You just did!’
He stayed on his knees, she stayed touching him. ‘I can’t now. If you run out of here, how could I dress quickly enough, reach you in time? I’m baring myself to you, for you. I want you to stay because you want to stay. When I have said everything, if you still want to go. I won’t stop you then.’
‘And if I leave with Maisie?’ she said.
‘She’s your sister. I’d even tell you where her family is. I just...want a chance to tell you everything.’
‘You’d really let me leave?’
He wanted to say no, but this woman knew her own strengths, believed in herself. Was a far better human than he was. Who was he to tell her anything?
‘If you...needed to go, I’d let you go.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You wouldn’t want me to.’
‘I love you...so, no.’
Her expression went from some crumpled confusion to a frustration that lit everything in her. He wanted to pull her down into his lap and just hold her for the rest of time.
‘These are the words you say to me,’ she said. ‘Out of all the words you could choose.’
‘These are words you could say as well.’
He said that too easily, as if he already knew the answer. ‘If they were true. You can’t love me. You’re angry at me.’
As if that would stop him. ‘Furious. So many ways I’m furious at you, my hair will be grey by the time I’m finished listing them all. But now, now, you’re on this ship, you’re safe and I’m dying to hold you in my arms again.’
‘You pursued me. You hate me.’
‘I hated you before I knew you. Once I caught you, I wanted to keep you.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t like me then either.’
‘Cressida, you’re breathtakingly beautiful.’ Didn’t she know? He wanted to laugh at her mutinous expression. ‘But there also was that familiarity which drew me to you. I didn’t want to want you, but I did. Very much.’
‘That’s lust. Doesn’t mean—’
‘You have to know, after what we shared here, that what we have goes beyond lust. You threw that dagger into the mercenary’s chest to protect me.’
‘That shows what my feelings were before, not yours.’
Her phrasing hurt, but he deserved it. Her love, her care was so sweetly given. Everything between them new. He’d do anything to earn her trust, her love again, but he knew the Archer and she wouldn’t make it easy for him.
‘You poisoned me and I came after you before I knew any facts,’ he said.
‘All these emotions, all this love, and you’d still let me go after your confessions.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to go, but, yes, I would if it’s what you want. Contrary to reason, yes. But I am your enemy you protect. We have numerous contradictions when it comes to us, Cressida, but not how we feel.’
* * *
‘How we feel? How dare you presume I feel anything for you other than anger.’
Cressida took a step back, wobbled. Her legs wouldn’t hold her, but all this room had was the small bed, a chair behind Eldric and the strewn bedding on the floor, none of which would do her any good right now.
The bedding especially since Eldric had told her he loved her. So...easily. As if it was a foregone fact and not one she had whispered and prayed for in all her childhood prayers at night.
He loved her and she wasn’t sure if what she felt was love any more. What she felt inside her wasn’t what she grew up with. That had been some beacon inside her. A lodestone to keep her focused.
But he’d taken that away. Made her doubt and question to the point that her father, for just a moment, had almost convinced her to return to his fold.
She couldn’t be trusted with feelings of love, not when Eldric knelt on the bedding where he’d whispered such fervent words. Not when he was almost naked and far too close to her. He knelt, but with his size, he wasn’t that much smaller than her. It would be so easy to feel the roughness of his beard, the softness of his lips. To claim a kiss of her own.
She stepped back. His eyes took in her weakness and the slight curve to his lips distracted her.
Everything about him distracted her. It hadn’t been that long since she had touched him, kissed him. It hadn’t been that long since she had bared her own body to her father for forgiveness. Eldric knew this.
‘Put some clothes on. You can apologise, but do it clothed.’
His eyes swept over her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. ‘You know what I meant.’
‘I’m taking it that way. Just—’ She grabbed his tunic, handed it to him. ‘Wear this. Say your words. Then I’ll see if I can accept your apology.’
He pulled the tunic over his head. ‘I have one more request.’
‘I didn’t know those who begged forgiveness could make demands.’
He held out his hands.
‘You’re shaking.’
‘I’m trembling because my body hasn’t caught up with the fact that you’re safe. You’re safe and alive, and I never want to see a dagger at your back again.’
‘Why are you showing me this?’
‘I’m kneeling and baring myself. I’m showing my fear because my words, or maybe my lack of words, caused this. I hope my body could tell you more of how I truly feel.’
‘Eldric, stand.’
He shook his head.
‘I need you to—’
He grabbed her hands and pulled her down to the bedding on the floor. ‘Better.’
He said the word as though it wasn’t a question. She was uncertain it was better. Eldric s
eemed larger than he usually was and sitting on the bedding only made her think more about the kisses they had shared, a blush beginning across her chest.
He was a calculating warrior, no doubt he’d use her weakness for him to his advantage.
‘You can’t sway me this way,’ she said. ‘I can’t trust you again. It’s not safe for me.’
He closed his eyes. Swallowed hard. ‘Very well. But would you stay long enough to hear me?’
She crossed her legs, her arms. If she had to sit on the bedding, had to look at him, she would do it with the least amount of contact. She couldn’t trust herself around him.
‘Talk,’ she said. Eldric inhaled, but then stopped. ‘You won’t now?’
‘I don’t know where to start. My words weren’t good before. Do I tell you my feelings or the facts? What do you want to know?’
Eldric was always at ease with the world. His laughter, his friendships. To see him like this...she rather liked it. He deserved any bit of uncomfortableness. As for the feelings...
‘Why are you giving me these choices?’
‘I never gave you choices before. Tying you to that bed, locking you in this room. Not consulting you about staying at the French port a day longer. So when you poisoned me, I know it was because I gave you no choice but to do that rash act. I hadn’t shared everything that motivated me to capture you and I certainly never told you how I felt.’
Her father hadn’t given her choices before either. Her father who had betrayed her far worse. Who had made her believe he loved her when, in fact, she had always been a weapon. And that look he gave her, that one that she could only now interpret. How long had he looked at her that way? Cloistered, she had no references to know if people were good any more.
‘How can I trust you again?’ she said.
‘I will tell you everything and then you can decide my fate.’
He shifted, but didn’t move away. A part of her knew it wasn’t his fault. The room was far too small for two, especially since Eldric was so formidable. She wished there could be more space between them as Eldric’s expression turned grave.