Page 118 of Bound

He sighs. “Forty minutes.”

I sit up. “That is not sleep.”

“I was thinking.”

“Even worse.”

He looks toward the open terrace.

I follow his gaze.

The sun is lower now.

Gold across the water.

“What about?”

His hand finds my ring. He turns it around my finger. “Everything.”

“Specific.”

He’s quiet.

I wait.

This is another thing I’ve learned about my husband. Sometimes if I just give him time, he speaks. Sometimes he needs the silence to get there.

Finally, he says, “When I was younger, I thought peace would be boring.”

I smile. “And?”

“When there was an enemy, there was a task. A plan. A person to kill.”

“Romantic.”

He cocks a brow. “You married me.”

“I know. Questionable judgment.”

He squeezes my hip. “But I like it.” He looks at me. “The peace.”

“Me too.” I smile.

His brow furrows. “What do normal people do?”

“Normal people?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I think about it for a moment. My past. Our beginning. “I’m not sure I know.”

We spend six days doing absolutely nothing useful.

I swim.

Lucian pretends he does not hover at the edge of the pool. In the ocean, he doesn’t even try. He lifeguards me as if any one of the calm waves could swallow me whole.

We take the ‘boat’ out. We have dinner on the yacht’s terrace. I scream like a baby when a seagull, attempting to snatch a dinner roll, flies too close.