Page 67 of Ruining His Smirk

We fell silent. The sphere continued sinking through the black water while the voices of humpbacks moved around us. The darkness no longer felt empty to me. It was filled with lives speaking across distances I could not comprehend, calling to one another through a world humans had barely entered.

I’d felt the same way I had felt when Lady first breached. A more beautiful moment could not possibly be had by a man.

“Garrett?” His voice was soft.

I turned toward Nate. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry too. We need to talk, but I think I overreacted. I… I was braced for the worst.”

I leaned in, caught his face gently between my hands, and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. For one suspended moment, Nate did not move, and I started panicking. His lips were warm and soft, while the low, haunting voices of the whales passedthrough the darkness around us. I could feel his breath against my face.

Then his mouth softened and he kissed me back.

His lips moved against mine and a low moan from his throat joined the sounds coming from outside. My thumbs moved along his cheekbones as he deepened the kiss. I felt myself getting hard. It was impossible not to, but I needed my head screwed straight. We needed to talk. Gently, I broke the kiss and gave him a peck on his cheek before withdrawing.

“Let’s talk.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out where to start.”

“The duel?” he said. “You never explained why you thought I cheated.”

“You winked at me.”

Nate sat up straight. “I beg your pardon?”

“You did that thing with one eye—”

“I know what a wink is, Garrett.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about.”

“Ah, no. I… I remember vaguely that I winked at you. I fail to understand what that has to do with cheating.”

A thin thread of unease entered my certainty.

“Well, you did it right at the last touch and you knew what it would do.”

In the near darkness, I saw him cock his head to one side. “What exactly do you imagine I knew?”

“That I wanted you.”

Nate’s lips parted.

“I wanted you the whole damn week,” I continued. “Before we ever spoke. Every room I walked into, I found you. Didn’t matter how many people were there.”

Nate said nothing.

“I’d catch you looking. Then you’d turn away. Then I’d look again, and there you were.”

“That I remember.”

I looked down at our joined knees. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know what the hell to do about it.”

“But then we met.”

“When that woman came over and said somebody else had written downThe Three Musketeers,and you were standing there looking at me like that… I wanted to, hell, I wanted you.”