“Please,” she leans back in her chair, tucked as they are in the corner of the bar, her knee brushing his beneath the table. She licks at the rum that lingers on her bottom lip and feels the tug of heat low in her belly when his gaze lingers. When he presses his foot forward until his boot tucks up against hers. “You couldn’t handle it.”
He hums, reaching forward and curling his fingers around her wrist, his thumb tracing back and forth along the tattoo sitting pretty at her pulse point. They’ve been dancing around whatever this is for months – and she doesn’t know if it’s the rum or the shadowed corner they’ve found themselves in or him – but she’s suddenly very tired of acting like she doesn’t care.
“Would you like to make a wager on that, darling?”
She smiles, flipping her hand until her fingers tangle with his. He looks surprised, but he hides it admirably with a smirk – his thumb ring cool against her skin.
“i would, actually.”
“Is that so?”
She leans forward into his space and lets her nose bump his. She can smell the rum on his breath, that bit of orange he had in his old fashioned earlier. “If you can kiss me without – “ she places her hand on his thigh beneath the table, delighting when he jumps and the whole damned thing jolts. “ – getting excited, then you win.”
He tilts his head, lips brushing hers the barest amount. “What do I win?”
She shrugs. “Whatever you’d like.”
He hums, hand releasing her wrist to drag up her arm instead, tangling in the ends of her hair before curling around her neck, nudging her closer. “And say I do, get excited, as you say,” he thumbs the space just under her ear and her breath catches in her throat. “What do you win?”
“Where have you been?” He comes crashing through the jungle like a man possessed, his hair half a mess and his coat twirling about his ankles. He has his sword drawn like he intends to do battle, his entire body hurdling to a stop when he finally take her in – pants rolled to her knees and feet dangling in the water.
“I, um,” she wiggles her toes in the water, suddenly feeling stupid for the indulgence. But the jungle was just so damn humid, and she hasn’t been able to breathe for a second, and –
“I found a waterfall,” she explains.
He drops his sword by his side, blinking at her. Silence stretches between them and she looks over her shoulder for her boots, suddenly feeling like crying, though she doesn’t know why. The exhaustion, probably. Worrying about Henry and – god, Henry. He could be anywhere and here she is – sitting with her feet in the water. Lounging like she’s on a holiday vacation.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she mumbles, pulling her legs from the water. “I need to get my – “
His hand is gentle on her shoulder, his sword back in it’s sheath and his leather jacket in a neatly folded bundle next to her boots. He looks smaller without the coat. Less pirate captain, and more –
More Killian.
“Nonsense, Swan,” he doesn’t toe off his boots, but he does sit next to her, angling his face into the cool spray of the water. She’s never noticed the line of his jaw before, the flip of his dark hair at the nape of his neck. “We can spare a moment more.”
They sit in the silence together, and she doesn’t overthink it when her head finds his shoulder.
While Nova takes after her mother in looks, she is her father’s daughter in temperament – prone to eye rolls and smirks and wheedling her way out of bedtime. Emma finds the whole matter utterly hilarious, and he imagines Liam is somewhere in the afterlife having a right laugh to himself. After all, he had been far from a delight to raise.
He’s just managed to wrangle the little scoundrel into her pajamas and into her bed when she turns those big green eyes up at him, the little dent in her chin a perfect reflection of her mother’s. He melts every single time she looks at him like that, and she bloody well knows it.
It All Starts With a Dance 