Chapter 12: Her Terms

The fever broke before dawn.

Imogen woke clear-headed and dry, with the gray window growing pale and a weight across her hips.

Percy's arm lay over her.

He had fallen asleep on top of the covers in yesterday's wet-creased shirt, and his hand had closed around her wrist in the night and stayed there.

She lay still and looked at him.

The scar at his temple. The dark lashes. The mouth she had kissed in front of two hundred women, slack with sleep.

Three years she had kept her hands off this man.

She was done keeping anything.

"Percy," she said.

His eyes opened at once.

He took in the light, and her face, and his own hand on her wrist, and he let go at once.

"Your fever," he said. "Are you..."

"It's gone."

"Good. I'll go."

"Stay where you are."

He went still.

"This isn't forgiveness," Imogen said.

"I know."

"It isn't a reward for the boat. It isn't the terms. It's not for you."

"Then who is it for?"

"Me."

She sat up, pushed the blanket off her shoulders, and looked down at him.

"I want you in this bed," she said. "I want it now, and I want it my way. If you can't do that, go sleep on the chaise."

His throat moved.

"I can do that."

"Take your shirt off."

He sat up and pulled it over his head.

She put her palm flat on his chest.

His heart went hard under her hand, and she watched his breath catch.

She leaned in and set her mouth against the thin scar at his temple.

She felt him shudder.

"Imogen." His voice was rough. "You were in the water last night."

"Do I look sick?"

"You look..."

He did not finish it.

She kissed him then, slowly at first, and then not slowly at all, her hand wound in his hair.

He kissed her back hard, with three years in it.

His hands came up under her nightgown, big and hot on her bare back.

She pulled the nightgown over her head and dropped it on the floor.

He looked at her, and she let him.

"I thought I'd forgotten," he said. "I thought if I touched you, I wouldn't know how."

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