But the flirty grin she expected didn’t flash across his face. Instead, his eyebrows came together, shadowing his eyes, bringing turbulence to his expression. “How long?” he asked, his voice rough and salty, older than she’d ever heard it.
Taking a step back, she wrapped her arms around herself. She was chilled, whereas before she’d felt loose and easy. “I don’t know. A year, maybe two? It’s not long to wait.”
“I could say the same to you and science would be on my side,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
A strange pressure filled her lungs, making her breath come thick and heavy.
“It’s just not a good time. There is the royal wedding, and my mother will expect a full wedding before we start announcing grandchildren.”
“We’ll elope,” he said, as if that made everything easy.
Hel’s head began to throb, the sensation of tightening, an ever-intensifying squeezing spreading throughout her whole body, familiar for all that she couldn’t place it.
“My mother will want a wedding.”
He scoffed. “It’s not your mother’s nuptials. What she wants is irrelevant.”
And then Hel knew. She knew where she’d felt this before. She knew why she had the urge to fight—to kick and scream and do exactly the opposite of what he wanted from her. His words were an echo of her father.
“I want a wedding. I want to wait until the timing is better beforeIhave children. That means after the royal wedding, and after our wedding, and maybe even after a honeymoon,” Hel retorted, her hands coming to rest on her hips as her temperature kicked up with each word, despite the cool sea breezes. “You’ve asked me for my entire life, to abandon my own quest for justice, to have your children, and I have, in a matter of days, which is a remarkably quick turn of fashion, I’d say. I’m just asking you for a year, at most, two. I gave you my word.”
“In my experience, the word of a d’Tierrza isn’t worth a lot.”
She lifted an eyebrow, danger slipping into her voice. “I am not my father. You either trust me or you don’t.”
His eyes narrowed, equal ferocity coming to his expression. “I can’t say that I think much of your conviction, based on my personal experience. In fact, in my experience, you’ve only been able to hold out, for what was it you mentioned? A matter of days.”
The color drained from her face. “Excuse me?” she asked, her head cocked at a stiff angle, her body rigid with the pain each successive word launched.
She had been so mature. So reasonable about the whole thing. She had been flexible and open, willing to alter her course in the name of honor.
She made choices with her eyes open, knowing what and why he wanted. So why did his words feel like darts? Why did she feel such a deep aching in the center of her chest?
It couldn’t simply be sex, could it? Yes, he had been her first and she knew how easy it was to entangle sex with emotion, but they were both adults. She was mature enough to realize the two didn’t automatically go hand in hand.
So why did it hurt when he threw what she’d given him at her like that? Why did it hurt, that he dictated careless of her needs, wants and desires? Why did she feel like a child all over again, simultaneously wanting to strike and to please him? Why did she feel like ten times a fool at the same time, blithely walking into her mother’s fate—that of the tragic, foolish and abused woman—when she’d sworn to herself it would never be hers?
“I’m just saying the evidence of your ability to keep your word is sadly lacking.” His words were flat. Dismissive. Distinctly unimpressed.
The rising heat in her body dissipated like a popped balloon.
He had gone past anger.
Lust and longing would not make a pawn or a slave out of her—she wouldn’t allow it. She had been caught up, ensnared and foolish enough to falter once, but never again. And it started immediately. She would never let a man dictate to her, no matter what she’d given him. Never.
She stood still, her body’s readying itself reminiscent of the surf being pulled out to sea before a tsunami. It was quiet, eerie, all wrong, though it would have been hard to immediately pinpoint why. “Take me home. Immediately.”
For a moment he just stared. She couldn’t be serious. She had broken her vow. She had agreed to his plan. She was dedicated and honorable. She wasn’t backing out now. “What? That’s absurd.”
“Take. Me. Home. Now. I say no and it’s over.”
His ears roared like the inside of a conch shell. This was not happening. She’d already given up her vow. She couldn’t go back now. They’d gone too far. The roaring took on a tunneling quality. “Did it occur to you,” he said, proud of how steady and even he kept his voice, “that it might already be too late?”
Horror filled her eyes, transforming into two bottomless pits of sapphire, and the expression was a knife in his gut. “The odds of human conception in any given encounter are rather low, so while, yes, it occurred to me, I was not so naive as to jump to that conclusion.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to assume averages would apply to the two of us,” he said, the words tasting bitter on his tongue. She, like everything else in her hands, became a weapon.
She rolled her eyes. “Right. I might be pregnant because the big bad Sea Wolf looked at me. That’s a pretty high opinion you have of yourself. But why should I be surprised?”