Page 143 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

His eyes snapped up from her tits—peaked nipples very visible against the silk—to her hazel stare, glinting with challenge. The freckles dotting her nose formed small constellations against her skin that he wanted to memorize.

Needy but refusing to back down, Roremar took an inevitable step closer. Emmeline’s breath hitched. The air around them charged like the strike of a match, and he was teetering on the edge of letting it burn.

Watching her come back to life today, seeing her with his family, had dragged up feelings he’d been trying to shove down. Each time she grinned at him over the dinner table pumped air into his lungs, his desperation for those smiles last night so stark in his memory. When had he started needing them so fucking badly?

And when had that need shifted into something much more dangerous? Something that tore apart realms and bled on battlefields, something even the Fates had forsaken: Desire.

Voice thick, he repeated, “I said fuck, Emmeline. As in fuck me or fuck the Fates or whatever clever iteration you’ll spin it into because you look like a fucking goddess carved from the stars.”

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, his stare memorizing it. “It’s only a slip, Roremar.”

“It’s silk woven by the damn Angel, then,” he challenged. His quickly hardening cock agreed. Fuck, he couldn’t have that. His gaze flicked to the moonlit water. “It’ll look even better in about ten seconds.”

“What—”

Emmeline’s words melted into a squeal as he threw her over his shoulder and charged into the waves.

“Hold your breath,” he said as one crested, and with her skin pressed against his, he dove.

Their legs tangled beneath the surface, her hair floating around their bodies like tendrils reaching out for him. A part of him wished they were.

He curled one strand around his finger, trying his hardest not to picture Emmeline’s hair wrapping his fist, her bent over before him.

He shook away the thought, watching the dark strand float away, an elusive thing he could never claim. Her legs continued to brush his, pulling him closer.

Something had changed between them last night. The cracks in their friendship had been forming for weeks, despite Desmond, despite Roremar trying to pull away—ever since he felt her terror the night she was attacked at the Academy and was driven by that urge to protect her. Last night, it was like someone took a hammer to that icy wall.

And now they were both left in the mess, trying to figure out what they could make of it.

Moonlight sliced through the surface of the water. The myriad of colors in her hazel eyes glowed, but differently than when they bickered. This was soft starlight igniting beneath the surface; it was dusk encasing the day, making room for the secrets of the night to sweep in.

For a moment, as it always was when he swam, everything was quieter. Easier, with her eyes on his. There wasn’t so much damn pressure lacing his bones or crushing his throat.

And in a twisted way, beneath the water with her, Roremar felt like he could truly breathe.

Gently, testing, Emmeline stretched forward, tracing the dark ink that wrapped around his left shoulder. Her eyes branded him as she explored.

Fates, please never stop touching me.

If they’d been above the water, he thought the words would have slipped out. Down here, though, it was as if they were a secret—every glide of her fingers and sinful thought of his own something they could tuck away.

Her nails scratched down his oblique, tracing the letters etched there, questions burning between them. His muscles tensed, every inch lower pure torture, his hands begging to reach for her. To press her firmly against him, to sink into her and fucking feel something good and indulgent when he spent so many days enduring numbness and overwhelm.

Emmeline’s fingers traveled lower, stopping on his hip at the waistband of his undershorts, and unless she planned on giving herself to him fully, that was all he could endure. Roremar gripped her wrist, and her gaze flashed up to his.

Her eyes widened, as if she’d been as entranced as he had.

She shook her head, and he knew what she meant. They couldn’t do this. This is all they were. Partners in an investigation, maybe friends. It was all they would ever be despite the way he was pulled to her.

When they were done with this case, she would go to Valyn to find her sister.

And he would stay here to take care of his family.

They’d both given up everything for those two goals for far too long. It was what they had to focus on. He couldn’t get lost in her instead.

So Roremar pressed his lips into a line and nodded. And he pretended it didn’t rip his heart out to do so.

He pulled Emmeline to the surface. As they gulped down air, he forced a wide grin to his lips—and it wasn’t all fake. Despite the way his chest squeezed, he had her here. For a few hours, they left the murders and threats and future behind.