Heartless Hunter (Crimson Moth, #1) (59)

He dropped them next.

“Oh. My. Stars.” Rune covered her eyes with her hands. “Gideon Sharpe!”

“Is that a blush coming up on your cheeks?”

The heat of his teasing chased out the cold.

“Why so bashful? Don’t tell me you’ve never taken advantage of all those suitors lining up at your door.”

Her skin burned hotter even as a smile crept across her lips. “You are the worst.”

Surprising them both, she laughed.

Rune wanted to drop her hands and look at him. Desperately. But she didn’t want to take advantage, the way another girl had. So she stayed where she was, keeping her eyes covered.

His footsteps hissed in the sand. Instead of heading for the sea, though, they moved toward her. Rune took a step back and nearly tripped over a log. Gideon’s hand grabbed her elbow, steadying her.

His breath hushed against her cheek. “Come with me.” He stood inches away. All six gorgeous feet of him. She pressed her hands harder against her face. “Don’t you want to feel the sea on your skin?”

“Absolutely not,” she said from behind her hands. “That water is freezing.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, letting her go.

The water splashed as he walked into the sea. At the sound, Rune gave in to temptation, lowered her hands, and watched him wade naked into the waves.

She tried to remember the part she was playing. But the protective mask she wore was slipping fast. Rune couldn’t pretend to be a shallow, gossipy girl after he’d bared his soul to her. She couldn’t tell herself there were two sides to this story, or that Cressida and her sisters were the actual victims.

None of what had happened to him excused what he was doing now, of course: hunting witches down, one by one; propping up a violent regime. But it helped her understand him.

“Come on, Rune. The water’s warm …”

Gideon had increased the stakes of their game tonight by telling her something deeply, painfully true. For Rune to match him, she needed to offer something equally so.

But she’d been living a lie for so long, she didn’t know if there was anything true still in her.

If I didn’t have to hide myself, she thought, who would I be?

Who was the real Rune Winters?

Not the socialite. Not the Crimson Moth. But the person deep down inside her.

Rune had been playing a part for so long, she couldn’t remember.

Once, she’d been a girl who liked to wear ribbons and silks, lace and pearls. Someone who enjoyed dancing with cute boys and gossiping with fashionable friends. A girl who took tea with Nan on the terrace and went to the opera.

But what made that girl Rune?

She thought of the portrait hanging in her bedroom. Of a wild child in a white dress trying desperately to hold in her laugh.

If that girl were all grown up, what would she be like?

What would she do?

She would accept a challenge to swim naked in a frigid sea, thought Rune. That, she knew.

Slowly, she let her shawl drop. Reaching behind her, she tugged at the laces of her dress until they loosened, then pulled the cotton fabric over her skin and dropped it in the sand.

The warm breeze kissed her bare stomach and legs.

She took off her bralette next, then her underwear. Knowing all the while that he watched from the waves.

Standing naked beneath the dying sunlight, her hair whispered across her bare shoulders. Feeling mushy compared to Gideon’s lean, muscled form, she fought the urge to cross her arms over herself as she walked down the sand toward the surf.

She wanted him to look. To search her body for scars so he could find none. Rune had plenty of ordinary scars. Everyday cuts and scrapes collected over the years. But none were the silvery kind he’d be looking for.

As she stepped into the sea, the water sent a shocking jolt of cold through her.

“You are such a liar.” She hugged herself to fend off the chill. “I think a glacier melted in here.”

Gideon laughed, splashing water in her direction. She flinched as the icy droplets scattered across her body. But she continued to wade in, taking sharp breaths as the cold crept to her knees, her thighs, her waist.

What is he thinking? she wondered, hugging her chest tighter. Is he comparing me to other girls he’s seen undressed?

She wished she could wipe the questions from her mind. Because who cared what he was thinking? Not her.

When she finally reached him, the sea was as high as her throat and her feet arched to keep her toes on the bottom of the sandy bed.

“My grandmother used to bring me here as a child,” she said, glancing at the silhouetted island in the distance, and the causeway connecting it to the shore. “She would stand on the sand and shout at me not to swim too far. She was always afraid the current would sweep me away.”

Now would be the perfect moment to bare her soul. To tell him what being raised by a witch was like. After the secrets he’d entrusted her with, though, Rune didn’t have the stomach to lie, or fake a hatred she didn’t feel. But neither could she tell him the truth.

Like a true predator, Gideon sensed her weakness.

“Turning her in must have been very hard.”

Not at all, she would have announced if they were in an opera box or a ballroom or surrounded by her friends.

But they weren’t. They were alone, and playing a new game. One that was far more dangerous for Rune than for him.