“What?” Aydra asked.
“You smell like sex,” Lex muttered. “Let’s talk a walk outside before Ash comes pouncing.”
A brow raised on Aydra’s face. “Let’s hope he knows better than to think I would allow him anywhere near my bed after his display after the battle.”
Lex almost laughed. “Men are stupid. He probably has no idea.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“IS THAT WHAT you do?” Draven asked the next morning.
They were on the beach, tucked away around the bend where she usually liked to take her swim. Aydra stripped to her underwear and the lace fabric triangles over her breasts that corseted down around her waist. The surf came up and tickled her as she grinned at Draven over her shoulder.
“Take your clothes off,” she told him.
His brows raised. “Shouldn’t you be doing Queen things? Like taking care of your people? Seeing the Ambassadors and the Council off?”
“I have never been the one to send them off. Rhaif usually deals with that. I am the security commander. I deal with criminals, which lets be honest, there aren’t a lot of those here. So therefore I am allowed a few hours a day of peace should I choose to take it,” she said as she pinned her thick hair up into a messy bun with a strip of fabric.
His arms crossed over his chest. “Is that actually true?” he asked.
“Not at all.” She sighed upon looking back at him, seeing him watching her apprehensively. “Come on, Draven. Get out of your head. Have a bit of fun. You’re allowed indulgence once in a while.”
His feet hit the edge of the water, and she noticed his hesitation.
“You’ve never been in this ocean, have you?” she asked.
“These are the bleeding waters of my giver’s enemy,” he replied with a nod towards the waterfall coming down beneath Arbina’s roots high on the cliffside. “So no, I’ve not been in this one. Only Lovi’s waters.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Lovi’s water doesn’t try to kill me.”
She grinned and walked out of the water towards him. Her lips pressed to his, kissing him deeply and chilling as his fingertips tickled her bare skin. She pulled back after a few moments, biting her lip as she met his gaze. “You’re with me,” she promised. “The creatures like me. Nothing will hurt you.”
“Except you?” he asked, eyeing the blade on the garter attached around her thigh.
She almost laughed. “Only me.”
The water lapped at their chests moments later as she wrapped her legs around him, unable to keep herself from kissing his lips as the sun cascaded onto their bodies. Him. In her home. In her waters. The sun glistening and reflecting back to her in the pale of his sage eyes. Her core felt full when she would pull back to stare at him. The look he would give her, the one that he’d shed on his face the day before, as though he were confused about her presence, unbelieving of her in front of him, made her entire body warm, and not from the sunlight.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she whispered.
He swallowed hard, his hand pressing to her cheek. “I didn’t expect you,” he admitted. “You. This person. This… amazing, fearless, stunning, compassionate woman… Each time I look upon your face it is as though my first time seeing it. These years before, when we would hate each other, I feel as though I was hating a different person.”
Her hands wrapped behind his neck, and her nose nudged his. “As do I.”
“Do you know what I used to do when I came out here?” she asked later once they’d settled onto the sand.
“Talk to the fishes?”
She huffed amusedly under her breath. “No. The fishes don’t really talk back. They just stare at me like I’m crazy.”
“Maybe they have a point.”
She nudged him in the side and then stared back at the ocean, allowing a long sigh to leave her lips before she spoke again.
“I used to hold myself beneath the water,” she admitted. “Stay there until I began to panic. To feel my own lungs struggle against the current over my head, wondering if I’d be enough to bring myself above the water again.” She looked down at her hands and shook her head again. “I know it sounds stupid. Childish—”
“It’s not stupid,” he interjected.
She glanced sideways to see the sincere expression on his face. “After so many years here of just… nothing. Being told by my olders and the Council to sit beside my brother and keep quiet. To listen behind closed doors as men discussed things they thought me not capable of comprehending. To have to be numb of feelings I should have allowed my core to sink beneath. That no matter how special our mother may have treated me, that I was still nothing more than the simple princess. I have craved so much more for so long. To feel something. Anything.” The squeeze of his hand around hers made her heart constrict. “Don’t coddle me, Draven,” she begged in a soft voice. “Don’t agree with me for the sake of agreement.”
“You should know well enough that coddling is not exactly my strong suit.”
“I mean… what I tell you. Don’t pity me. I have lived a grand life here. My core simply craves more. To feel my heart beat at a faster pace than this resting rate. To feel adrenaline in my bones. A restlessness in my muscles. Being out there on the field with you, with those soldiers… I’ve never felt such life as I did in those few days. To live life rustling through the trees, combating each other with swords and laughter. To be adventurous. It’s what I was meant to do. Not sit here on a throne in pretty dresses.”
Draven didn’t speak.
