Roar (Stormheart #1)(108)
“He was afraid. I know it sounds insane, but I promise you he did not mean to harm us. Not in the beginning. While you were unconscious, we … spoke in a way. Images and feelings passed back and forth. When I explained that you were hurt, he felt remorse.”
“Roar, it’s not poss—”
“It is possible. I know what I felt. That storm was more afraid of us than we were of it. And I—I killed it. I destroyed it. I’m the monster here.”
“Don’t do that.”
She was crying again. She couldn’t help it. She kept remembering the feel of that soul, his fear and confusion and the way he had surrendered to her without any hesitation. He trusted her. Locke’s hands started those soothing, sweeping movements again, this time along the outside of her thighs—knee to hip and back again. “You are not a monster. You could never be.”
“You don’t know.” He did not know anything about her. Not really. If she told him the truth—not just about the storms but about who she was—he would never forgive her.
“So, tell me. Explain it to me. I’ll listen. But I promise, nothing you say could make me care for you any less.”
She stiffened. All she wanted to do was turn around and tell him that she cared about him too, far more than she had let herself realize until she’d seen him unconscious and near to death in the desert. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
His hand found her jaw, and he turned her head, tipping it backward so that she was forced to meet his eyes. “I have had days to sit by your side, praying you would wake. Days to think of everything I wish I had said and done. I know exactly what I’m saying.”
Her heart felt like it might burst from her chest, and before she could do something stupid, like tell him she loved him, she said, “I must have called the twister too. The one that killed those soldiers and destroyed all those homes. I—I have a twister Stormheart. It belonged to my brother. I keep it on a chain beneath my clothes most of the time, but on that day it was in my pocket. I cut my hand on that knife, and later I touched the Stormheart while I was thinking about those soldiers, about how a part of me wished I had hurt them. Or worse. The twister happened only a few moments later. It was me. I know it was. I took out an entire company of soldiers over the bad deeds of a few.”
His face remained stoic, and she never saw the disgust she expected to find. He said, “I would have killed those men if I thought I could do it and still keep you safe. The rest of those soldiers were in the wildlands, they knew the risk. It’s not as if you put a blade through each of their chests. You are not responsible for the actions of a storm, even if you called it.”
She jerked her head out of his grasp, turning away. “If Ransom had died, would you say the same thing? Or Jinx? Or Bait? Or Sly? You blame the military for your sister, even though they were just following orders. In a way, that twister was following mine.”
“Enough. I don’t care. I don’t care if you called that storm, if you called every storm there ever was. I would love you anyway.”
She stilled, and her breath caught in her throat as an ocean rolled over her eyes, blurring everything around her until all she could do was feel—feel his heat, feel her heart rage with joy and terror, feel the desperate grip of his hands on her thighs as he waited for her to speak. And for the briefest moment—she left behind everything she was and had ever been.
No more Aurora.
No more Roar.
For a few seconds, she was only the girl that Locke loved.
And maybe she was selfish, but she wanted to remain that girl as long as possible. She wanted to pretend that there was no kingdom waiting for her and no dangerous abilities she did not understand. So she turned and kissed him, and held on to that girl with everything she had.
*
Sweeter than wine and softer than silk—Roar’s kiss was the kind of kiss that could bring a man back to life. And in a way, that was exactly what it did. Locke had been running on instinct, on grit alone, for far longer than the few days he had waited for Roar to wake.
When Duke had offered him a way out, he had taken it to get out of Locke. But there had also been that blackened, broken part of him inside that thought surely his luck would run out in the wilds. But again, fate dealt him another hand. He was a good hunter. Very good. Again and again, he went after storms that no one else would touch. At sixteen, he’d thrown himself into a firestorm when men twice his age were running in the other direction. At eighteen, he ran away to face a hurricane on his own after Duke had declined to go after it with the whole crew.
He survived the flames and the waves and the winds.
Again and again and again, he survived.
But with each narrow brush with death, he felt a little less alive. Each scrape with devastation scraped off a little more of his soul.
Until this kiss. When she breathed hope through his lips, filling his lungs with joy and sowing dreams beneath his skin. Roar made him want to do more than survive. With each soft sweep of her mouth over his, she dismantled the frame of his world and built a new one.
Tentative hands crept up his arms, tracing into the dip of his elbows and curling around his shoulders. She twisted her body, bit by bit, trying to press flat against him, whimpering into his mouth when she could not make the position work. He took her by the hips, and as he lay back, he pulled until her smaller body rested on top of his. He’d had to remove all his weapons and magic when he visited the witch, so now he felt the full press of Roar’s body against his own with nothing in the way.