Dragon Soul (Dragon Falls, #3)(44)
“Don’t. You have nothing to apologize for.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I seem to have messed things up without being aware of it. What can I do to make it right with you?”
“Well, the biggest thing is to stop trying to steal Mrs. P’s jewelry.” I touched the side of his face. He still looked tired, but there was something in his eyes, a layer of pain that I knew I had a part in, that made me forgive him. “I am sorry for thinking you were the sort of man who’d use me. I should have known better.”
“It was entirely reasonable to think so,” he said, pulling my hand up to kiss my knuckles. “If I promise you that I won’t take anything from Mrs. P without her permission, will that return your faith in me?”
I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from me and realized with a start the true depth of emotions that were tied in with Rowan. This wasn’t just a case of me needing to have a good time with a man… it was something more profound. And while it was true my emotions were tangled together, they were emotions that had lain dormant for the last few years, emotions I was happy to feel again.
Trust you to fall for the first pretty face you’ve seen since Jian died, I said to myself, the name of my deceased husband generally dousing any feelings of attraction for another man, but for the first time since his death, it didn’t leave me feeling as if I’d had a bucket of water dumped on me. “Yes, it would help if you stopped being a cat burglar. For one, I don’t think it’s very honorable, and for another, it’s bound to end badly, and I don’t want to see you end badly. I want you to end good. Er… well.”
“Thank you,” he said with another one of those little bows that thrilled me to my toes.
“And as for not telling us about our room… I don’t know whether to scream at you, hit you over the head with something heavy, or ask the captain to throw you overboard. Why didn’t you tell me that someone destroyed our things?”
“I had no way to contact you. I did what I could by ensuring someone from the hotel would find out what happened before you got back, and left it at that.”
“But you would have stolen Mrs. P’s jewelry if her things hadn’t obviously already been gone through?” I pointed out, then shook my head. “Never mind, it’s a moot point now. Not only have you just sworn not to steal anything from her, whatever she had is gone.”
His eyes glittered with humor. “For the record, it was just one item, and it wasn’t hers to begin with. She has done exactly what I tried to do—taken it from someone else.”
“Oh, is that the story now?”
“It’s the truth.” He slid a look at Gabriel, who was chatting with May and Mrs. P, then suddenly grasped my wrist and left the deck, taking me with him.
“Hey!” I protested, digging in my heels when we got to the top of the stairs that led to lower decks. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“We need to have a talk. A private talk. My cabin is on the floor below us.”
“I can’t leave Mrs. P alone. The underwear models—not that I even know if I can trust them—they’re down in the cabin, and she’s all alone. Someone will try to hurt her. Or steal her jewelry.” I put a lot of emphasis on the last sentence, but he seemed to ignore it.
“Gabriel and May will stick with her.”
“That’s just what I’m worried about,” I said, snatching my hand out of his. “Someone trashed our room, and who’s to say it wasn’t them?”
“I highly doubt if it was.”
“But you don’t know for certain.”
“No,” he said slowly. “But I trust them. They may not seem like people who have our own interest at heart, but I don’t believe they will betray our trust.”
The implication was obvious—he had trust where I had none.
“Are they the ones who are blackmailing you?” I asked, wanting to comfort him, and seduce him, and yell at him, all at the same time.
“No. Not them directly. It’s really all of the dragons collectively who are forcing my hand.”
He looked miserable, utterly miserable, and my heart begged me to wrap my arms around him and keep the world from him.
“Isn’t there any other way around whatever’s going on?” I asked, fighting my need to fling myself onto him. “Some way that doesn’t involve stealing?”
“Trust me when I say that if there was any way on this earth I could avoid the situation, I would do so. But my hands are tied. And I’ve been assured that it’s a necessary act, one needed to save not just dragonkin, but mortals, as well.”
My reservations crumbled under the stark anguish in his face and voice. I threw caution to the wind, knowing I might be making the biggest mistake of my life, but believing every word Rowan spoke despite it all. I threw myself against him, kissing every bit of his face that I could reach. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I blamed you when you’re just a victim of—”
He stopped me talking then, but only because his tongue was busy persuading mine to go visiting in his mouth. It obliged, and we remained locked in a steamy kiss until a passing waiter coughed discreetly before edging past us.
“Wow,” I said, gazing up at him, my mind trying desperately to get a grip on itself.