Page 32 of Stealing Tink

“Stop it,” I gasp, but I’m barely able to get even these words out.

I look up, stare into this man’s eyes. I don’t know what I’m expecting—a crazed expression to have overtaken him?

But there’s nothing crazed in his expression. Nothing to indicate insanity. Nothing to indicate he’s doing anything other than memorizing my features, the curve of my nose, the rosiness of my cheeks.

The light leaving my eyes.

CHAPTER 15

“Tink?”

The Nomad’s voice tethers me to the present. Reminds me that the memory was only a dream, and not even one that came to pass.

In that dream, that was my first time meeting the Nomad. When I’d woken from it, years ago, I’d made sure to get out of bed on a different side than usual.

And when I’d finally met the Nomad, it hadn’t been at a dance, but at Lady’s Whittaker’s mansion.

“You are aware that’s not where your hand is supposed to go.”

I glance down and find my fingers clutching my throat. I clear it, though silently, and place my hand on his shoulder instead. Anyone watching us would assume from the way my fingers are barely brushing his shoulders, my palm domed, that my posture is an attempt to be delicate.

Really, I just want as little of us touching as possible.

The Nomad cocks his head to the side. “Is something wrong?”

I shoot him a glare, then nod pointedly at my hands, both arrested by the posture of this dance.

“Right,” says the Nomad, daring to inflect the slightest hint of disappointment. “You wouldn’t happen to be able to mouth words, would you? I’m rather accomplished at reading lips.”

When I give him a scolding look, he rolls his eyes and says, “No, I don’t mean that in some vulgar attempt at flirting. If I wanted to flirt with you, I’d be more clever than that.”

I shake my head, answering his initial question. I’ve tried countless times, but any time I attempt to make the shapes of words with my mouth, it’s as if my tongue and lips forget where to go, groping around with no purpose. The first time I tried it, it was in front of Peter, who had looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust.

I certainly won’t be displaying as much for the Nomad.

“Seems unnecessarily cruel,” muses the Nomad.

I raise a single brow at him, hoping he can read the and taking my voice wasn’t? in my thoughts.

“All I mean is…” The Nomad pauses, then shakes his head. “Never you mind.”

I’m about to punch his shoulder and get him to finish when the song changes, this one slow. The type lovers dance to.

The Nomad pulls me in, and I can’t help it. My breath hitches. The gasp itself is noiseless, but he must feel the hitch in my ribcage, underneath which one of his hands rests, because he whispers in my ear, “Is that from fear or something else?”

Less than eager to answer that question for either of us, I turn my face away from him. Let my cheek rest on his chest.

It’s all part of the plan. The thing about a slow dance is that no one expects you to be looking at your partner. It makes it abundantly less suspicious for me to be staring at anyone else in the room, especially with the practiced far-off look in my eyes. The best opportunity to watch our target.

Still, as I examine Acel, try to home in on his every move, I find myself distracted. Warm breath taps against my ear in a staccato thrum, the Nomad breathing too shallowly for a slow dance requiring so little physical exertion. We sway, his chin tucked into my hair, his hand on my waist. I can’t tell if I’m imagining it, or if his thumb is moving up and down, rubbing the divot of my waist.

Fear or something else, indeed.

I home in on Acel, desperate for anything to distract me from that very question. He’s a beautiful man. Beautiful in the way a mountain is beautiful, or an iron gate. Sturdy and intricate and immovable.

When the queen looks at him, it’s with a trust that surpasses that of kinsmen, and for a flicker of a moment, I wonder if she loves him. But when she places her hand on his shoulder, it’s with the touch of a mother, not a lover.

A twinge of guilt pricks at my throat, but I dismiss it. If the queen truly loved this man, she wouldn’t force him to be her cupbearer as well as her personal guard. She might respect him, might care for him, but at the end of the day, she views his life as disposable and hers as not.