Chaos (7 page)

I mentally cringed at his reference to me as an assassin but laughed at his facetiousness nonetheless. He had told me he’d forgiven me for that particular deception in Garrett when he’d asked me to return to Pleith with him. I believed him or I would not have agreed otherwise. Still, that insecure place within me that we all possess to some extent periodically whispered that he would never fully trust me. The fact that we had gotten so beyond it that we were able to casually reference it and laugh about it was like a victorious kick in that insecure place’s teeth.

“Sooo speaking of our…sleeping together…we have only one room with one bed.”

It was another topic of conversation we purposely avoided, but as the evening of our first night on the ship came to a close our time to not have that particular conversation had run out.

I fought the urge to stare into the glass of water in front of me as I spoke. Seeing as how I had in fact tried to jump his bones in the middle of the woods, it was a topic I should have been comfortable discussing. I forced myself to maintain eye contact with Zander to prove as much to myself as to him that I could handle talking about the subject of sex without turning beet red.

"I'll sleep on the floor. You can have the bed," he said giving me an easy out.

His offer endeared him to me even more though I shook my head at the absurdity of it.

"That's ridiculous. If we can be betrothed we can sleep in the same bed with each other. It's not like we haven't slept together before."  

I imagined that was his logic when we secured passage on the leisure vessel and its captain had told us there was only one room left. He offered to inform one of the other passengers that they would have to relinquish their accommodations, but Zander told him the single room would suffice. Most individuals would preen at the special treatment Zander was offered all of the time, but he always refused it. He only pulled rank and used his title to get special treatment in times that required desperate measures. Otherwise, he was content to live the same way a person not of royal lineage would.

He studied me for a long moment to be sure that I meant what I said. He finally nodded once he was satisfied that I had.

"Okay then
Betrothed
." He grinned across the table at me. "I never planned on using that word ever but now that you're in my life I can’t fathom not using it. I don’t want to call you anything else.”

Those were definitely not the words I needed to hear after we'd just decided to sleep in the same bed together. The way our relationship was going that next step in it would eventually happen between us, but the smart thing would be for it to occur later rather than sooner. Zander's logic the night I tried to prematurely take that next step still held true, but for different reasons. We already had enough to deal with, and it would only complicate things.

I loved him. I had no doubt about it. Still every time I had a vision of or thought about the pair of lovers that resembled us, a tide of emotion that was both bitter and resentful welled up inside me. I knew the feelings weren't my own, but what I hadn't admitted, not even to myself, was that they sometimes left me unsure about what the future held for Zander and me.  I lied to myself in the woods outside of Garreth when I’d said it didn't matter. It did. If we took that step and then Zander left me or worse was taken away from me it would crush me beyond repair.

"You say that now, but maybe one day you will leave me," I said in a small voice finally confessing my deepest fear. 

Zander's expression hardened. "The pair in the vision isn't us."

"Are you sure?" My voice came out stronger than it had before. "Because I sometimes feel like it is and I think maybe you sometimes feel it too. You've certainly said things before that have hinted at that."

I think it may be me who should be seeking forgiveness from you
, he'd said to me after our shared vision.

He sighed and ran his hand through his short, dark hair like he did whenever he was particularly worried or upset about something.

"You're right. I do." His words came out strained as if he were forcing himself to speak his own deepest fear aloud. "Gods I hope it is not Skyler. If I did that to you I could never live with myself. It was a selfish, reprehensible act."

His expression twisted into one of self-loathing.

I entwined my fingers with his. "Even if it was you then, it's not you now. You are the antithesis of selfish. Furthermore, you and the word reprehensible don't even belong in the same sentence, much less the same sphere of existence. You are the most thoughtful, selfless, noble person I have ever come to know."

I wasn't lying to him or reciting pretty words to make him feel better. I spoke the truth. The only other person who might have come close to him was Darrien, and while he was the picture of chivalry, standing and fighting for a noble cause, he could never be described as good or compassionate or even kind. He was merciless in his pursuit of what he believed was just cause and wouldn't hesitate to cut down anybody that got in his way. Torture, murder, extortion were all fair game if the means justified the end. His definition of morality was the outcome that yielded the best results for the most people.

Zander possessed more concrete notions of right and wrong. There were some lines he would never cross, no matter the consequences. I figured that out when he requested my assistance to help find his sister after she was taken. Darrien would have skinned me alive for the betrayal, regardless of what may have been developing between us, and my cooperation afterward would have never been a choice. 

"I want to dance."

I stood up and gently tugged on Zander's arm urging him to stand with me. In truth I would have been content without doing so, but I remembered the look of pure elation on Zander's face when he spun me around the ballroom in the High Palace. He made every attempt to cheer me up when he saw shadows move beneath my eyes, and now I understood why he was so persistent in doing so. It felt like a knife to the gut to see him in angst.

The couples dancing in the open space in the middle of the room bowed to us then shuffled off to the side at our approach. I would never become comfortable with people reacting to me as if I were royalty. My betrothal to Zander had technically made me so. The thought unsettled me. I wasn't royalty, I didn't come from any haughty bloodlines, and though I'd lived in a palace from eight to seventeen years old, I had never been wealthy or treated with any type of importance. Belial called me his ward, but I was more like a slave forced into servitude.

I shook off thoughts of Belial. Now was not the time. Zander always chased the shadows away and I wanted very much to return the favor. His effort started off half-hearted.  I decided he needed a little prodding.

"I thought you had better skills than this," I teased him.

I spun myself out and back into his arms. When our bodies connected I flung my arms around him then pressed my lips to his. It wasn't a chaste kiss. I filled it with every bit of love and every bit of passion that I felt for him. When I pulled back to study him his warm amber eyes had deepened into a golden blaze.

"Skyler you are a walking conundrum. You blush at the mention of us sharing a bed then you follow it up with a kiss like that. It's not fair you know. To kiss me like that so close to us retiring to our room for the evening. I think I may end up on the floor after all."

He was right. I was a walking contradiction. I fought back the blush that wanted to color my cheeks. It was the first time he had so openly admitted to desiring me that way. It sent little fireworks exploding through my body. I mentally shook my head, admonishing myself for the direction of my thoughts. Now was not the time.

Chapter 14

I
stood in the oversized bathroom that connected to our sleeping quarters staring at myself in the mirror. The girl looking back at me wore a white dressing gown and had her hair pulled into a messy ponytail.

Zander waited for me on the other side of the door, in a room, with a bed that I was supposed to sleep in with him. Logically, I should not have been as nervous as I felt. We had already slept together inside the makeshift tent on our way to Garrett and I had tried to seduce him. But when matters of love and the heart were concerned, logic flew out of the window. This was the first time we would be alone in a room together and we were now betrothed whereas we weren’t before. The new level our relationship had ascended to made things feel far more intimate and intense than they had been before.

“Are you alright?” Zander called from the other side of the door. Worry rimmed the edges of his voice.

First seconds, then minutes, one after another, ticked by while I hid closeted away in the bathroom. Every time I worked up the nerve to leave my breath hitched in my chest as my hand closed around the door handle to open it. Then I ended up back in the mirror staring at my reflection trying to calm myself all over again.

“I’m alright,” I assured him.

You’re only sleeping Skyler,
I said to myself.

“What?” he called back confused. “I didn’t hear you well.”

“Nothing,” I shouted back.

I looked at myself again in the mirror. I tugged at the ribbon holding my hair. My full curls fell around my face in a wild mess. I ran a quick hand through them and decided I liked my hair better down. It gave me a sexy, tousled, just getting out of bed look. Not that my hair would get tousled tonight or the word sexy had any business being in my vocabulary at the given moment. I took a final deep breath to steady my nerves then forced myself out of the bathroom that had evolved into my sanctuary.

An emotion I wasn’t used to seeing much of moved in Zander’s eyes when he saw me. He was usually far too noble to look at me in the manner in which he did. As his heavy gaze traveled the length of my frame chills ran down my spine as heat flooded every nerve ending in my body. I felt the need to fan myself even as I shivered. I made a beeline for the bed. He remained standing by the door.

“Maybe I should sleep on the floor after all.” His voice came out more rugged than usual.

I quickly slid beneath the covers then turned to look at him again.

His gaze remained fixed on me and just as intense as when I first exited the bathroom.

I swallowed a small gulp of air then chided myself for acting so silly.

“It’s no big deal,” I lied. “And I thought we already decided that it is ridiculous for you to sleep on the floor when there is a perfectly good bed in the room. It’s humongous. There is no reason we cannot both sleep in it. It can be like in the tent. I’ll take one side and you can take the other.”

I scooted as far over to the left side of the bed as I could get without rolling out of it.

What I did not say but what we both knew was that when we tried this in the tent we went to sleep on opposite sides with our backs turned away from each other but we awoke in a much different position. While we slept, he made his way to me and I made my way to him until I was tucked against his body in a spooning position with his arms wrapped around me.

Zander still stood rooted to the floor.  It was then that I thought maybe this moment was as awkwardly intense for him as it was for me. I’d had my mini anxiety attack in the privacy of the bathroom. He seemed to be having his right then as he fought for control over his emotions.

“Truth or dare?” I shot across the room at him.

The abruptness of my words helped him collect himself. He blinked in confusion then grinned back at me.

“Dare,” he answered in mirth hinting that he already knew where I was headed.

I patted the empty space beside me. “Sleep with me.”

The heat that never really left his gaze flared back up.

“That dare is much more dangerous this time than it was the last. Do you know how hard it was to
just
sleep next to you?”

“Actually I do not,” I said using laughter to mask the depth of the insecurity his comment caused. I had felt more than a little rejected by the fact that he hadn’t tried anything.

Zander saw through the façade. It was what finally made the tension drain from his muscles and caused him to relent. He crossed the space that stood between us and sat on the bed beside me. He curled an arm around my shoulders.

“I am as physically attracted to you as I am mentally.”

When I eyed him skeptically he sighed and slid closer to me. He leaned down snaking his arm from my shoulders to around my waist. The moment his lips connected with mine I forgot how to breathe again.  Not that it mattered. Even if I had remembered there is no way I would have broken the kiss for something as trivial as oxygen. Zander kissed me like he never had before. It was akin to a raging wildfire. Raw and uncontained and without an ounce of self-control. I kissed him back just as fiercely, greedily accepting and reciprocating what he offered. He pulled back, not me.

“We’re supposed to just be sleeping together,” he whispered against my lips. As he did so, his lips temptingly brushed against them.

I couldn’t help it. I reached up, entwining my arms around his neck and crushed his lips back to mine. He just as greedily indulged me until my hands began feeling for the smooth planes of his warm, solid abs beneath the dressing shirt he wore. He stopped them in mid grab, gently placing a kiss atop my forehead. He brought his other arm around my waist, effectively encasing me in his embrace.

“Sleep Skyler,” he whispered into my ear.

When I went to protest he gave me a smile that was equal parts facetious and regrettable.

“Sleep,” he told me again. “If you don’t stop trying to disrobe me, I’m going to sleep on the floor. I only have so much self-control.”

I let out a little huff that sounded slightly childish, but I obliged. I didn’t want him to have to sleep on the floor and for all of his noble sensibilities I knew that he would make good on the threat.

To help me better control my hormones I turned on my side so I faced away from him. Zander turned on his side too, pulling me into his chest in a spooning position. I was all too aware of his presence behind me. Forcing my mind and my hormones to mellow out was no easy feat. I wrapped myself in the security of his warm arms and comforting scent. I forced my eyes shut and my breathing to even out. Instead of counting sheep, I let a thousand and one fantasies play out before my closed lids. They carried me into the land of dreaming.