Still holding my hand he bent down, wobbling as the waves wreaked havoc with his yacht and yanked off his flip-flops. Once bare-foot, he moved toward me.

My heart looked through the chasing raindrops in interest not fear. My body primed from the electricity of the storm, ready to accept touch rather than expect pain.

He wedged his body against mine, his jeans rough against the back of my thighs, his t-shirt unwanted against my naked shoulders.

Clothing. Barriers. Masks.

Letting go of my fingers, he clasped the railing on either side of me, wedging me safely between him.

His protection gave me mixed emotions.

I liked having him there, sharing the power of the storm and being free for the first time in my life, but he’d ruined the rapture I’d felt. His body heat was a trap, warming me when I wanted the rain to chill me because I chose it to, no one else.

He’d taken away my choice even after forcing me to make so many.

I did my best to lose myself in the wind again, but it remained tainted. My joy faded as minutes passed. We balanced and tripped, our ears throbbing with howling noise.

Perhaps I should push back and signal we’d go inside.

Maybe I’d tempted death long enough by laughing in the storm’s face.

But then, as if my thoughts trickled into him and he read my discomfort, Elder pulled away, letting the wind lash against me with wet-coldness.

I sighed with relief.

Looking over my shoulder, I expected him to order me into the suite where it was safe or point that he was leaving and to do whatever I wanted.

However, his arms went up and his hands latched around his t-shirt collar. With a black look, he ripped it over his head.

A thunder crash sounded at precisely the same time my eyes fell on his dragon tattoo. His ribs exposed, his organs painted so lifelike he was part man, part skeleton, part myth.

Never looking away, his hands fell to his belt buckle and undid it. Unbuttoning his shorts and unzipping the fly, he grabbed both the waistband of the beige material and grey boxer-briefs and pulled.

He stripped with grace even while fighting gravity, and the moment he was free, he threw away his clothes as if they offended him.

What is he doing?

The question was void the moment I asked it.

I understood.

He understood.

Clothing was not welcome when facing such furious power. We were merely human at the mercy of the weather. Who cared if we died dressed or naked? We had no armament against it—might as well give in to the inevitable.

I shivered and not from the cold as he moved toward me. His right hand landed on the railing where I gripped it. His thumb grazed my pinkie. His erection hung heavy as he took another step, placing himself behind me, aligning our pieces as if we belonged to the same chessboard with a long lost king and queen.

I stopped breathing as his other hand landed by my left. His thumb mimicking his other and pressing my pinkie. He didn’t lean forward or wedge his nakedness against mine. He merely stood there, letting the wind nip my spine and the rain lick my shoulder blades. The only contact was my pinkies and his thumbs, but it was the most contact I’d ever had with anyone.

He held me with nothing but his thoughts. He touched me with something better than hands. He cradled me in feeling and no one—not my mother, friends, or Alrik—had ever done such a thing.

It cracked yet another piece of me, throwing it to the thunder hounds snapping in the wind.

His head came down, his nose tracing the shell of my ear. He inhaled me. I inhaled the sky. I didn’t know if I smelled of imprisonment and hatred or freedom and love.

I was blended now.

The storm had taken what I’d been and made me into someone I was meant to become.

It hadn’t healed me.

It had purged me.

Leaving me baptised by hell itself in its angry clawing abuse.

A low groan slipped from his chest to mine. My answering shiver was for him, not the storm. My pattering heartbeat for him, not the rain.

I was alive because of him.

I was becoming more than Pim because of him.

A wave surged inside me, breaking over the shore of my mind with the possibility of finally being honest with him, finally giving him my voice, finally admitting my true name.

Before, there was no way I could weaken myself; now, there was a way because it wasn’t weakness, it was time.

The softest kiss landed on my cheek, wiped away as quickly as it’d been bestowed.

But it had happened.

I’d felt it.

Time stood still as a man stood behind me, protecting me not molesting me, and allowed me to spread my wings and fly.

I OUGHT TO strap her ass for standing so recklessly in the storm.

I should give myself a whipping for doing the same thing.

Where had common sense gone? Where had the fear of a lightning strike or falling overboard and drowning gone?

Who the fuck knows.

All I knew was standing naked with Pim while we faced death with no fear had been better than any pot, better than any drug I could take to calm my mind and let me control my tendencies.

Being that way…free that way…had given me a glimpse into the sort of person I could become if I trusted myself that I wouldn’t fuck it up like last time.

An hour we stayed, riding the sea. An hour where my hands slowly slipped over hers, encapsulating her tiny grip while holding onto the rail beneath. An hour where my cock craved to press against her and my heart hammered at being so damn close.

And after an hour, it was as if someone notched up the churn cycle, switching the waves from rodeo to downright berserk. Our feet slipped often, we crashed against the balustrade frequently while I did my best to protect Pim from my weight as we shot forward, bending almost in half as the boat rolled, threatening to kiss the water before springing back and wrenching us into the sky.