Page 14 of A Pirate's Pleasure
“Corrupted!” Lief laughed. “Right. Like none of your men have ever touched them during the months you spend at sea.” He sat on the bed and unwound the sodden bandage from his hand, grimacing at the stitches my surgeon had put in while he’d been unconscious. “Shame, you’re not a healer.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d gotten that throughout our childhood. Every time there was something that magic could solve, Lief would comment on my lack of magical prowess in that area, even calling me Rain Boy on occasion. How I’d never struck him down with a lightning bolt, I had no idea. But then, when someone completely bewitched you, you let them get away with murder. If only the authorities were as enamored with him as I’d once been.
Worried some of what I was thinking might show on my face, I stalked over to my desk to pretend something important required my attention. In reality, I was doing nothing more meaningful than leafing through the ship’s log.
“This shirt smells like you.”
I closed my eyes. That didn’t help. It just served as a reminder that there was a half-naked Lief on my bed. A bed that I was going to have to share with him, seeing as Whitby had drawn a blank on coming up with any alternative accommodation. Although I had my doubts that he’d even tried. While my crew had nothing but simmering antagonism toward our newest shipmate, Whitby seemed to find his presence on board hugely entertaining. Almost like he took great delight in seeing me suffer.
“I need another bandage. One that’s clean and dry. Unless you’re hoping I’ll get an infection and die. In which case, you should have just let them hang me. At least that would have been quick. Now, you’ll have me suffering a lingering death in your bed.”
I swung away from the desk. There was no point in pretending Lief wasn’t there. Not when he wouldn’t shut up for long enough to make that possible. “Not if I kill you first.” I grabbed the linens West had left behind and stalked over to the bed. “Arm,” I demanded.
He held it out obediently, and I set about covering the wound. Him being right about the possibility of infection annoyed me. It was hard enough to keep things clean and sterile at sea, without me making it worse. It would have been far more sensible to fill a barrel and let Lief wash himself. But I’d let him get to me as usual.
“You keep threatening to kill me,” Lief said. “A man could get a complex.”
“A man should.”
“Look, I get it,” Lief said. “You don’t want me here. You’ve made that abundantly clear. You don’t want me here. Your crew doesn’t want me here. Nobody wants me here. But I am here. And I’m here because you saved me, so the least we can do now that I am here because of your decision is to get along. All this anger. All this antagonism. It’s tiring, don’t you think?”
I made the mistake of lifting my gaze to his. His blue eyes were swimming with emotion, and my position hunched over his arm as I secured the bandage left our faces far too close together. Almost like we were about to… I wrenched my gaze away and shoved his arm back his way. “There. Done. You can stop complaining about it.”
Lief sighed. “Anger it is then. It’s like we’ve gone back to when you were fourteen. You were always angry then.” After a quick inspection of the bandage, he wriggled his way beneath the sheets and lay his head back against the pillows. “We should probably sleep. It’s been a long day and we’ve both been awake since dawn. I’m sure things will seem better in the morning.”
I sincerely doubted that, but at least if I slept I’d get a few hours, which wouldn’t feel like walking across a minefield. I blew out the lantern before undressing. The last thing I needed was Lief’s eyes on me while I did it. Watching. Scrutinizing. Considering. Would he think I’d changed that much? Did I care?
Despite his silence, it felt awkward as I threw the covers back and crawled in the other side of the bed. I left as much space as I could between us, laying on my back and staring up at the ceiling, just enough moonlight filtering through the small cabin window to give me something to stare at.
“Are you naked?”
My fingers curled into my palms, and I dug my nails in. “Does it matter?”
“Just curious. I kept your shirt on. For modesty’s sake.”
“Bit late for that when you already paraded naked on the deck of my ship.”
“Whose fault was that?”
“Yours. I didn’t make you take your clothes off.”
“You pelted me with freezing cold water. I don’t think there’s a judge in the land who would see me as wholly responsible given the extenuating circumstances.”
“Is that before or after he’s hung you for murder?” I smiled as Lief fell silent. “Go to sleep, Lief.”
The mattress gave as he turned on his side. And for a few precious moments, there was no sound save for his breathing. I should have known that it couldn’t last. “Zeph?”
“What?” I’d given up on getting him to stop using the shortened form of my name. I might control the weather, but Lief was a far more difficult prospect.
“There’s something I want you to know.”
“Is it how annoying you are, because if so, I’m fully versed on that?”
“No.” Silence. It stretched on for so long that I thought Lief might have fallen asleep before he finally spoke. “I want you to know that leaving Glimmerfield… leaving you… was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Something thick and cloying settled in my throat, momentarily robbing me of speech. I swallowed it down. “Harder than being on the run from the authorities?”
“Much harder.”