Nathan brushed his knuckles over the curve of her jaw, gently angling her gaze up to his. “That is . . . I thought you would like one.”
And in that moment, at that distinction he made, delivered in that gruff, slightly halting way, a moment where this always confident, powerful man proved uncertain, Nathan snagged another corner of her heart . . . for that consideration. For thinking of her in this way. “Thank you,” she said softly, running her gaze over his face. “I would like it very much.” She liked him very much.
A light flush dulled his cheeks, and he instantly dropped his hand. Reaching inside his jacket he withdrew something and pressed it into her hand.
Cassia stared at the cool metal key.
“Uh . . . er . . . yes, well, see that you lock the door when I leave.” And then, turning on his heel, Nathan stalked off. He grabbed the door handle, and she waited for him to go. Wanting him to stay. Wanting him to resume that—their—embrace.
Only, he remained with his fingers frozen as they were. “Cassia . . . that . . . thing that happened? Our embrace?”
Her heart pounded, and she nodded before recalling he could not see her. “Y-yes?” she said, her voice tremulous.
“That should not have happened. It cannot happen again. I . . . My apologies.”
His apologies?
Shame scorched her all the way to her toes, and she curled them sharply to escape it. “You needn’t apologize,” she murmured, wishing she’d been capable of calling forth a breeziness. “It was . . .” Just the most singularly magical moment of her life thus far. “Just a kiss.”
He nodded jerkily and, with that, let himself out.
Cassia stood there, frozen, her heart pounding, trapped by an alternate want and need to either sigh or call him back, and then her whole body sagged.
He’d kissed her.
And then been horrified by it.
Never had she known something could be like that, that the simple brush of a man’s mouth over hers could be pure magic. Though there’d been nothing simple about his embrace.
To her, it had been wondrous and gloriously splendorous and rapturous and, well, every other “-ous” word that indicated something life-altering.
To him?
To Nathan it had been a horrific experience that could not be repeated. He’d been so mortified by her and it that he’d fled her side like she’d set fire to his cabin.
He—
The door opened suddenly, and Cassia’s heart doubled its beat as Nathan’s broad form filled the doorway. She arched forward on the balls of her feet. He’d returned, after all. He—
“I told you to make sure you lock it,” he said gruffly and jabbed a finger at the door. “Do it.”
Her jaw worked. That was what he’d returned to say. “This is why you returned?”
“Yes. No.”
She stared at him.
Muttering to himself, Nathan stomped across the room, over to the mahogany dresser there. Yanking a drawer out, he fished something from within and crossed over to her. “Here.”
She stared down at his outstretched hand.
“It’s . . . soap,” he said, shaking his palm.
“I see that,” she whispered. It was a blend of sandalwood and bergamot and smelled just like him, and he’d returned because he’d share it with her. Cassia made herself take it, and she drew it close.
“And I’ve a change of garments for you there.” He pointed to the bottom drawer. “They’re garments I’ve borrowed from Oliver. They should fit you well enough.”
And a change of clothes? Her heart trembled. “Thank you, Nathan,” she said softly.
He grunted. “Why wasn’t the door locked?” he asked, as if he were unnerved by his own thoughtfulness and eager to shift the subject away from it.
“I was going to,” she explained. “You needn’t worry—”
“I think the only wise thing to do where you are concerned is worry,” he muttered.
Once again she was caught between sighing at the evidence of his concern or stamping her foot in frustration that he believed her incapable.
He grunted. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Setting aside the soap, she rested her palms upon his chest. The corded muscles jumped under her touch. “Because you care, and I think it is touching that you do.”
She waited for him to deny it.
He only grew more flushed.
Blushing.
Captain Nathaniel Ellsby blushed. Another piece of her heart fell away and into his hands.
“What now?” he said gruffly.
“You are blushing, and I think it is very”—he recoiled—“endearing.”
“I am not”—he dropped his voice to a furious whisper—“blushing!” His color rose once more, making an adorable liar of him.
Cassia touched his cheek. “Of course you aren’t,” she said in the soothing, placating tones she adopted when her youngest siblings were in a temper.
He thinned his eyes all the more, until his irises disappeared behind those slits of fury. “Are you talking to me like a babe?”
There was a warning there.
“Of course not,” she scoffed, and some of the tension left his taut frame. “More like a young child. I find it helpful when dealing with my younger siblings and cousins, and—”
Nathan growled.
She smiled serenely up.
“Lock the blasted door,” he blustered.
“As you wish, Nathan.”
He paused, some peculiar emotion parading across his oft-opaque gaze, one that she couldn’t identify from the brooding man before her. And then he nodded. “The—”
“I know, lock the door,” she muttered as Nathan stormed off for a second time, following after him and then pushing the heavy wood panel shut.
“Now—”
She’d already slid the lock into place. “Happy?” she called out.
“I haven’t been happy since I discovered you on my damned ship.” Not even the heavy panel between them could have muffled that clear admission.
Cassia wrinkled her nose. “Well,” she muttered. “I don’t think you mean that,” she called in louder tones to make herself heard. Cassia pressed her ear against the heavy oak panel, attempting to make out his response, and detected none.
And here she’d been waxing poetic in her mind about him and his kiss and every dizzying emotion she’d felt as he’d pulled her into his arms. Which was silly. As she’d said to him . . . it had been just a kiss. Only a kiss.
Why, it was so commonplace and so gross that even her entirely-more-affectionate-than-a-child-could-ever-wish mother and father engaged in the practice.
She closed her eyes.
Only, she knew she deluded herself.
For it hadn’t been just a kiss.
But rather, his kiss.
When she’d both imagined and practiced kissing, she’d been certain it would be gross. After all, her elder cousin had shared one with one of Uncle Frank’s stable hands when she’d been sixteen, and the young woman had described it in great detail to her twin and Cassia.
“Gross” had been a word to come to mind. “Awkward.”
A man sticking his tongue in her mouth?
No, thank you.