Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(29)

‘I need to see it.’ His voice was gentle now that we were alone. It took me a second to understand what he meant.

‘Fine,’ I said again, avoiding his gaze.

Very carefully, he put one hand on my upper arm and slid the other one under my khalat at the collar. His fingers were warm and familiar. Once he would’ve made a joke about getting his hands under my clothes. But now a silent tension hung between us – until I couldn’t stand it any more. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘Trust me.’ Jin wasn’t looking me in the face, though he was so close to me it was almost the only place he could look. ‘I had to learn on the Black Seagull, before this all started.’ This. I knew he meant the Rebellion. I almost laughed. It was such a small word to mean all of us and everything we’d done and everything we still had left to do. ‘A lot of sailors got hurt getting tangled up in ropes.’

He did something that sent a stab of pain through my side. I hissed through my teeth.

‘Sorry.’

‘You goddamn should be.’ Pain sharpened my tongue. ‘This happened when you shoved me, you know.’

‘You’re right,’ Jin deadpanned, fingers still prodding gently at me. ‘I should’ve let you get shot; that’s so much easier to recover from.’

‘And what would you know about that?’ We were running for our lives. This wasn’t the right time to be picking a fight, not in the middle of a war. But I hadn’t been the one to bring it up. ‘You weren’t around when I did.’

‘You’d rather I’d stayed to watch you die?’ Jin’s jaw was tight.

‘I didn’t die.’

‘But you might have.’

‘And you might’ve died off spying on the Xichian!’ Silence dropped between us. But we didn’t move. Neither of us pulled away or forward. Jin’s fingers still explored my tender shoulder.

He finally spoke again. ‘It’s dislocated. But not broken.’ He was just above me now, so all I could see was his mouth and the shadow of stubble along his jaw. My shoulder braced between his two hands. ‘This part is going to hurt like hell. You ready?’

‘Well, when you put it that way, how could I say no?’ That slight curve to his mouth that always made me feel like we were in this together appeared. ‘I’m ready.’

‘All right.’ He shifted so we were face-to-face. ‘I’m going to pop your shoulder back in on three.’ I gritted my teeth and prepared myself. ‘One …’

I took a deep breath.

‘Two …’

Before I could tense in anticipation of ‘three’, Jin wrenched my arm out and up.

Pain stabbed from my elbow to my shoulder and tumbled out of my mouth violently. ‘Son of a bitch!’ Another curse ripped out after it in Xichian, then one in Jarpoorian that Jin had taught me while we crossed the desert, the pain drawing out every insult in every language that I knew. I was halfway through a colourful curse in Gallan when Jin kissed me.

Any more words I might have had died cataclysmically the second his mouth found mine. My thoughts fell to ruins right behind.

I’d almost forgotten what being kissed by Jin was like.

God, did he ever know how to kiss me.

He kissed me like it was the first time and the last time. Like we were both going to burn alive from it. And I folded into him like I didn’t care. The Rebellion might be falling apart around us, the whole desert even, but for now we were both still alive and we were together, and the anger between us had turned into a different fire that drew us both into the middle of it until I wasn’t sure which one of us was consuming the other one.

He pulled away with sudden, gut-wrenching speed, breaking us apart as quickly as we’d come together. My own ragged breathing filled the silence that followed. It was full dark now. All I could make out was the rise and fall of his shoulders and the paleness of his white shirt.

‘Why did you do that?’ It came out in a low breath. I was close enough that I saw the rise and fall of his throat when he swallowed. I had the sudden urge to rest my mouth there and taste whether his breath was as unsteady and as uncertain as mine.

But when Jin spoke, his voice was as steady as a rock. ‘To distract you. How’s the pain?’

I realised that the screaming pain in my arm had gone silent as the rest of my body came alive in answer to Jin’s kiss. He was right; it didn’t hurt half as bad as it had when he’d twisted it back into place.

He picked something up off the ground – my red sheema, I realised. It must’ve slipped off. Jin touched my arm again, but this time his hand was just flesh and blood on my elbow, not fire invading my skin. He tied the sheema around my arm and looped it over my neck like a sling, tying it behind my neck in one firm knot before pushing himself to his feet. ‘Besides …’ His voice was light, like it was all a joke and we were just two strangers flirting with each other before parting ways again. Not two people who were as tangled as we were. Who had crossed the desert together. Who had faced death together over and over. ‘Who could resist a mouth like that?’

He stole another kiss from me so whip quick that he was gone before I even fully felt it.

I sat in the dark long after he went, not rising even when I heard the sounds of a hastily thrown together meal being eaten outside. I wasn’t that hungry anyway. I felt raw. Burned out. Scorched earth. I distantly remembered that phrase – Shazad had taught it to me. It was something to do with war strategy. I wasn’t sure if Jin and I were at war or not.