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“We have several available,” Harrick says and we both turn to look at him.

“Good,” Grayson replies. “Do you have my usual room?”

“The left corner room with a view? Yes.”

“Wonderful.” He looks back to me with a smirk. “It’s the only bed big enough for two.”

I blanch. “For two? No. I want my own room.”

“What you want and what will happen are two very different things. I told you once we made it ashore you are not to leave my side—that includes while you sleep.”

“I am not sleeping in the same room with you.” Sharing a wall had been close enough while we were on the ship, but there is no way in hells I am going to sleep in the same room, let alone the same bed with Grayson Tyde.

“There’s a room right across the hall from?—”

Grayson raises his hand to Harrick and the man is silenced. Just like that. Without a single word from Grayson, Harrick turns around and walks to the other side of the bar. I scowl at his back as he goes, frustrated that I’m left all alone with the bane of my existence.

Grayson moves further into my space. I try to back up but there’s nowhere for me to go stuck between him and the bar. “What are you so afraid of, Little Pearl?” His head dips lower and I can smell the ocean’s musk on him . . . and the decadently fresh scent of cedar.

I hold my breath and shift my head to the side, not wanting to be consumed by him. Then I feel his fingers pinching my chin, forcing me to look up at his face.

“Have I not been a fine host? Making sure your belly is full and you are safe from my men? Have I not given you a soft place to lay your head at night?”

“You threatened my crew,” I spit out.

“It is strange that I heard you command them not to follow you, yet the Trinity ’ s glimmer has been trailing us since the first day we left Silvermoon Landing.

You are angry at me, when it should be them you are angry with.

” He takes in a long breath as his head tilts to the side, assessing me.

“Or maybe you should direct your anger at yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” I narrow my gaze on him.

“There isn’t a single man on my ship who would dare defy an order of mine. And those who have tried have found themselves at the bottom of the sea.”

I snort. “And that’s how you choose to run your ship. Your men follow you out of fear.”

“ Respect,” he rebukes. “My crew understands that I only give orders that will further our agenda—making them richer men. Or that my orders are meant to protect them from themselves.”

“And you know what is best for them?” I scoff, rolling my eyes. “You don’t know everything, Grayson.”

He flashes his canines in a snarl. “You would be surprised by what I know of this world. What I know of you .”

Leaning closer I can feel the heat of his breath against my lips.

His eyes shift, peering down at my mouth for a moment before they flick back to meet my hardened gaze.

“You know nothing about me. You are a vile creature destined to burn out from the flames of your own making. You are cruel and unjust and that will be the end of you, Grayson Tyde. I saw how you run your ship. How you broke The Code when we set sail against the merchant ship. I saw how you murdered those men in cold blood as if their lives meant nothing .”

A growl rips from his throat, but I don’t care. Not as the pain of the past week’s events gathers firmly in my chest like an anchor pulling me deeper into the depths of my rage.

“My crew might have defied my orders, but that’s because they care about me. If it had been you who was lost to another, none of your men would follow. They would let you fall to your death without regret. They’d relish in your ending because?—”

“Enough!” he commands and I find my lips zipping shut of their own accord. The fire that kept me going is extinguished—snuffed out with a hastiness that startles me.

I rear my head back, realizing just how close I’d gotten to him.

But he closes the space between us again as he leans down to whisper in my ear.

His hair brushes against my cheek and I hate the swell of heat that builds in my core at his closeness.

“Your words are sharp, Little Pearl, and I might feel the sting of them if they weren’t so empty.

I can see it in your eyes. Every time you look at me, there is a blossoming curiosity.

A desire to know more—but you deny yourself.

” His chest touches mine now. He’s close.

So close I can hardly breathe without the risk of letting myself be utterly beholden to him.

“You speak of fear, yet it is you who cannot run away from it. You are so ridden by it, I can smell it on you.”

His words flay me open like the sharpest blade cutting into my flesh. Though a wound from his sword would be less painful—less agonizing . A whimper catches in my throat as heat tinges the backs of my eyes.

“I hate you,” I whisper.

“No, Little Pearl.” He strokes the side of my cheek and my eyes flutter close. When I open them, the stormy blue of his irises shift and meld like a moving, living thing. “You hate yourself.”