2 Chapter 2

“I like the weather.” Tom tipped his head back to consider Ellis’s expression. “And so do you. Elemental, wild, thrilling…making heartbeats race, making spines tingle…”

“If your heart’s racing,” Ellis informed him, “I’m taking you back to bed and summoning the physician again. Right now.”

“I meant it poetically! I’m perfectly well.”

Ellis raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, fine. Almostperfectly well.”

“Hmm.”

A year and half, they’d had. A year, more accurately. He’d lost time, at the beginning, not being at Tom’s side. Trying to start a new life, trying to be worthy, hoping that it’d be enough, that he’d be enough, that Tom would look at him and see someone gruff and battered but hopelessly devoted, whole heart held out, and that Tom would say yes, a retired privateer with callused hands and scars and a small running vixen tattoo along one forearm was somehow exactly what he’d needed in his life.