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“Damien … Damien, wake up.”
A whisper of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before I tightened the knot, causing those lips to part with a baring of teeth.
“Havin’ a good dream, were ya?” I asked, placing another whiskey-soaked strip of fabric, this one folded into a square, against the exit wound on his side.
A hiss followed.
“Ya said my name.” That small smirk returned, melting some of the ice that had formed around my heart before Damien’s features went slack and his face rolled to the side.
“Oh no. Stay with me. Come on.” I slid my hands between his head and the ground—careful to avoid the scabbed-over gash on one side—and lifted. “Ya need to sit up. I found water.”
Without opening his eyes, Damien pushed himself to a sitting position, and I guided him back to his original spot against the opening of the hatch. The buckets were too heavy to carry, so I’d filled two empty whiskey bottles with water.
Holding one dripping wet bottle to his lips, I held my breath as Damien took it from me and tipped it back. A stray drop of water slid from the corner of his mouth, down over his chiseled jaw, along the straining tendons in his neck, and through the planes and valleys of his chest and abs before disappearing into the waistband of his trousers.
The sight caused my mouth to water violently. Lifting my own bottle to my lips, I glanced back up at his face, where two haunting gray eyes took my breath away. Damien’s throat bobbed as he drank. His stare traveled to my mouth, where twin streams cascaded down my own neck and into the woolen fabric of his jacket. My nipples hardened as those streams converged between my breasts and slid down the length of my nearly naked body. After what had just happened to me at the fish market, I didn’t think anything could make me want to be touched again, but something about the way Damien was looking at me, the way my body tingled and hummed as I fed it something it desperately needed, made me realize that Damien’s touch had made me feel the exact same way.
It was a need—but I could live without things that I needed. I’d been doing it since I had been seven years old.
Setting his bottle down, Damien licked his lips and tipped his head back against the hatch, watching me with hooded eyes.
A prickly heat crept up the column of my neck as I set my own bottle down and wiped my mouth with the back of his sleeve.
“Feelin’ better?” I asked, keeping my eyes cast down as I pulled the deep V of his jacket closed with both hands.
I heard him lean forward, felt the swipe of his thumb, featherlight, as it collected a drop of water from the side of my lip, and my body froze on contact. My lungs were still as rocks in my chest, but my heart pounded wildly next to them as Damien’s knuckle lingered under my chin. Then, in a gesture so gentle that it brought tears to my eyes, he lifted my face, encouraging me to look at him. I blinked and widened my eyes out of habit, letting the sea breeze dry my tears before the first one could fall, but when I glanced up and found soothing silver staring back at me rather than bloodshot blue, I realized that I didn’t have to do that anymore. Damien might have been every bit as terrifying as Oliver and far more violent, but he’d never once lashed out at me for crying. He’d taken care of me instead. Given me the clothes off his back, drawn me pictures … held me.
The memory of waking up that morning, safe and warm in his arms, only made me want to cry more.
“Thank you,” he said, his hushed voice as sincere as his beautiful face.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, pulling away and wiping my eyes before he saw more than I was willing to show. “You’re obviously Irish—your accent, your name. How could you …” My words fell away as the sound of distant bombs rumbled over the roar of the engine.
Glancing to the right, I notice that the cliffs were gone, replaced with the wide expanse of Dublin Bay. Heavy smoke hung over the city, blocking out the summer sun as unseen fires burned and unseen missiles exploded. My eyes went wide, and my mouth fell open as I scrambled to my feet and stared out the shattered cabin window. The city was too far away to tell how much damage had been done, but the flashes and bangs were unmistakable, even from several kilometers away.
Ireland was under siege, and Damien had helped lead the charge.
I bristled as he pulled himself up and stood at my side, but the sadness radiating off of him kept me rooted to the spot. He stared at the destruction the same way I did, like someone had just reached inside of him and crushed his heart.
His gray eyes darkened. His jaw flexed beneath his stubbled skin. Then, the side of his fist shot forward, smashing out what was left of the broken window. I turned with a shriek, covering my face as he punched the glass again and again, until the entire pane was empty and our view of the nightmare happening in Dublin was unobstructed.
“Damien, what happened?” I shouted over the wind that was now whipping through the cabin, my hands shaking from his sudden outburst. “Why were you with the Russians? Talk to me, goddamn it!”
Barreling out of the cabin, like my father would have done if he were upset, Damien began to pace back and forth across the deck. I stood in the hatch and watched as he shoved a hand in the direction of our burning capital.
“I grew up there,” he growled, pointing at some indistinguishable place on the horizon. “He knew that. He knew I wanted to come home, so he sent me here to watch it burn.”
“Who did?” I kept most of my body inside the hatch, using it as a shield, but the precaution was unnecessary.
Damien’s face paled, and he began to sway on his bare feet.
Darting across the deck, I wrapped my arm around his back and guided him to sit on the wooden storage bench in the center of the boat. His body was on fire. Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his knees and stared across the bay, his mouth set in a hard line. It was as if he could see through the crumbling buildings, all the way into his own childhood home.
“I never knew who my father was,” he said, his voice as distant as his mind appeared to be. “My ma raised me alone, did the best she could. But the older she got, the harder it was to make a living”—he hesitated—“in her line of work.”
I placed a hand on his upper back in understanding.
“When she couldn’t make enough to pay the rent and support her own various addictions anymore, she finally got desperate enough to contact my father. It turned out that he’s an extremely powerful member of the Bratva—the Russian Mafia. My ma never wanted to see him again after … what he’d done to her, but she was willing to risk it to get him to pay her child support. To keep us from being out on the street.”
