of my second shot of liquor.
“Are you okay?” she frets, still patting my shoulder.
“Yes,” I croak, the moment the liquor hits my head. Turning on my heel, I begin to make my way back to the small hutch that holds all my alcohol, but Vlatka’s hand comes up to brush my upper arm.
“I’m sorry,” she claims, removing my glass from my hand. “That was inappropriate and—we can just talk. I just needed to get out of that room, I was going crazy.”
I wave a dismissive hand in the air. “It’s fine.”
“How about we get you to bed and the guard can walk me back to—”
“We can just...talk,” I offer. “Tell me more about your—”
“I don’t want to talk about my husband or the fact that I ran away from home.” She tosses my cup on my bed. “I want to talk about new adventures.”
“Alright, what do you plan on doing after I drop you off at Port Royale?”
“I was thinking more of right now.” She grazes a nimble hand over my chest. “I’ve never done anything like this before but...adventures, right?”
My cock agrees to it, strains against the button of my pants to lose myself in entirety to the beautiful woman in my room.
But all I can see is red.
Red hair and green eyes. Lush lips and years of memories linked to it.
My eyes flutter back the vision of her. The urgency in her tone within the throes of passion with him. I left her here while he worked his way into her bed, and there was no coming back from that. I don’t even know if I’d be able to let it go, forgive her, for things to go back to being the—
Lips press into mine, slightly dry and hesitant. I haven’t had a woman in so long. I never could get Davina out of my mind when I was off to sea to even delve into someone else.
But now, she picked the Viking over me, and I have to start removing my heart from her small hands.
Opening my lips wider, Vlatka follows my lead, letting me burrow my self-pity into someone else. Her arms wrap around my neck, begging me to keep going, all while I have a civil war within myself to stop and just let me drink myself into oblivion.
A faint moan escapes her lips, and I imagine it being hers. My fingertips clutch on to the woman in front of me, pulling her into my chest, like my mind has played a million times in my head.
“Take me to bed,” Vlatka encourages. “Erase the bad memories with something worth holding on to.”
Guiding her to it, I don’t hedge over anything—I can’t. I keep pressing forward until her back hits the mattress and my body collides with hers.
We all experience heartache, pain, but mine started with a dream at sixteen years old when I saved a girl from death, and she just butchered my life into fragments of nothing.
Every morning here feels the same—a dream. The sun is always bright, the faint chirps of birds greet the early day, and it’s promising. Regardless of the monotonous start, my mood is worse. I left Vlatka asleep in my bed, her legs tangled with mine, and the sentiment irritated me because she shouldn’t be here within my sheets with me.
Letting my irritation simper throughout my body, I head to the dining room for any sight of food so that I can get my energy up and leave. I can’t argue with Davina when she’s set on something, it’s like prying food away from a shark and telling them they can only eat plants while wishing them good luck.
She’s set in her ways, pulling her stubborn tendencies out each and every time, but this time, I’m not settling while sitting back to watch it happen.
I stride into the large room, overlooking the long dining room table only for me to falter in my steps at a woman sitting at the far end of it. Kind eyes and cocoa brown hair with some gray and green streaks line her head, she keeps chewing her food as she stares at me.
The air feels tight and congested, clogging my lungs for my next breath as I study the odd features of her face.
From her nose up, her skin is a shade of green that slightly sparkles with each movement of her jaw chewing her food. Her eyes are dark as they study me while I gape at her.
“You must be the pirate,”