Roar (Stormheart #1)(48)
“Don’t sound so excited now, do you?”
Roar shoved hard at his chest, but he was used to holding his footing against winds far stronger than her. His lack of reaction only angered her more. “You’re an ass,” she hissed, whirling to leave him.
But he was quicker, and he snatched a wrist, tugging until she fell into him, one hand on his chest, two fingers’ width from the accelerating beat of his heart.
“And you are scared,” he said softly.
“Of course, I’m scared. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“I think you’re reckless. You get an idea, and you commit to it fully. But you don’t think through all the options. Instincts are important, but not when they’re untested and ill informed. You’ve done your best to show no fear since you left Pavan. I want to know what it was about what I just said that shook up your fa?ade.”
Roar ducked her head, tucking a dark strand behind her ear. She had tied it back at the base of her neck, but already strands were escaping to frame her face. She replied halfheartedly, “Forgive me if I’m not ready for verbal sparring first thing in the morning.”
He tracked back through their conversation, pinpointing the moment she’d first let her walls slip. “It was my mention of a twister, wasn’t it? You’ve been in one before?”
“Would you stop reading into everything I say?”
He shook his head. He would never stop. If she wouldn’t give up her secrets, he would discover them on his own. “No. Can’t be that. If you’d been in one and survived, you would have used it as a selling point while trying to convince me and Duke to let you on the crew.”
“Duke. I was trying to convince Duke. He’s the one in charge.”
“Of strategy, yes. Of this team, unequivocally. But in the field, when we’re in the belly of a storm and Duke is in the Rock reading measurements? I’m in charge. He might be king, but I’m the general that keeps everyone alive. And I need to know what you can and cannot handle. So why is it a twister that scares you?”
He still held one of her wrists, and she tugged, trying to break free. His grip was secure; but, never one to give up easily, Roar twisted her body nearly all the way around, trying to worm out of his grasp. He loosened his hold, worried she’d hurt herself. But the moment she broke free, he seized her again, wrapping his arms around her middle, arms trapped at her sides, her back to his chest.
He should let her go. He knew her well enough now to know that manhandling her would only make her fight harder. But he was too distracted by the way her body fit against his own. Her soft hair tickled his neck. Even more startling, she had stopped fighting him completely. Her body sank against his, her back pressed against his chest and abdomen. He became acutely aware of where his arms wrapped around her shoulders and her midsection. She sucked in a breath, and the rise and fall of her chest moved through both of them.
He knew he should step away, but it was like he’d been mesmerized. He stood there, stock-still, his mind filled with nothing but her. If she were a storm, she could destroy him, and he would never lift a finger to protect himself.
If he did not learn to block out the instincts she roused in him, destruction could be exactly where they both were headed.
*
Heat from Locke’s breath tickled over Roar’s ear, then her cheek, and if the thought of a twister shook her up, his closeness threatened to send her heart into convulsions. She wanted to scream and shove free from his grasp, to fall back on another argument that would give her the precious distance she needed. But it felt better than she would ever admit to lean back and let the hunter behind her be the thing that held her up for a while.
She had thought Roar would be a fresh start, a chance to be free of all the things that stifled her in Pavan, but even after days of travel in the wildlands, her life was still not rid of secrets. And those manacles had always been the tightest of all. It wasn’t just the physical toll of the torturous runs with Locke that had her drained but the stranglehold on her tongue when it came to sharing about herself.
But this … this was one secret she could shed.
“My brother,” she rasped, out of breath for reasons she could not discern.
“What was that?” Locke’s arms uncoiled, and he bent his face closer to hers. His breath touched her cheek as she answered, “I haven’t been in a twister, but my brother was.”
His grip went slack, and she decided she had leaned on him long enough. She lurched forward and out of his grasp.
“Was? Did he—?”
She did not look up as she nodded. There was no harm in admitting this. The Prince of Pavan was hardly the only person to die in a twister.
“It’s a terrible thing to lose someone you love,” Locke said. “And to lose them to a storm makes you feel all the more helpless than if you could put a name or a face to your enemy.” He moved in closer, his voice nearing a whisper in the dark. “But that’s why you’ve got to trust me with your training.” She was not sure she even knew how to do that. To trust. Especially not when lies from her mother and Cassius still shadowed her thoughts. “Trust me not to put you into that kind of situation until you’re ready. Until you’re able to do what your brother could not. You are not going to die on my watch, princess. I promise you that.”
On his last words, he flicked a strand of hair near her jaw. It flew up, then down again, settling onto a cheek that felt so deeply flushed, it ached like a bruise. She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I told you not to call me that.”