Page 48 of Born for Lace

Lagos.

When I hear his deep, otherworldly timbre, relief floods me, bringing with it the hazy recall of his sharp jaw and black gaze. Of his face over mine. Of his big, rough hands washing me in the cove, carrying me through the streets, and…

That’s all I remember.

My eyes flutter open to see him cross the room to a table. He is shirtless. Bulky muscles roil beneath tattooed skin.

I peer down my body, seeing a loose black shirt, the neck scooping lower than my collarbone and hanging off one shoulder—the thing drowning me to below my knees with a hood flap at my back.

But it’s the rip in the middle, exposing my hip, that catches my breath. It ishisshirt. The one I tore a few weeks ago.

“Lagos,” I beg. I didn’t mean for his name to sound so desperate, but every muscle hurts so intensely that I can’t feel the ones that don’t.

“I’ve got you.”

He returns to the side of the bed, leaning over me; his warmth is a blanket of safety. That’s his presence. I don’t know how a man so cruel and cold can somehow make me feel the safest I’ve ever felt.

A cool glass touches my lower lip. I part my mouth, and as he pours a familiar bitter liquid along my tongue, I blink over the rim at him. At his rugged and brutally beautiful face so close to mine. I thought his irises were black, but they are dark grey, like steel, a strange colour that I cannot tear my eyes away from. As if gravity resides within that hue.

I swallow, and he leans back, saying, “Opi.”

I know.

I nod. “I know the taste.”

“We found it in your pack.”

“Spero?” I feel odd, my throat rough, voice hoarse from overuse, but I can speak without pain.

“Safe. With Tomar.”

I sigh into the mattress, my body sinking. Heavy eyelids beat my vision away. I don’t fight fatigue. Warmth curls inside my stomach as the Opi works, a serpent of blissful ignorance coiling around the pain,hidingit.

It works quickly, sporing into the bloodstream through every vessel. It’s small molecules that ride red blood cells. Less than a minute; that is how long it takes to reach every corner of the body. Such things I learnt in my studies. To make sure we don’t drink our tea and then decide to stand.

Grief hits me. “Tide.”

Lagos rises. “Sleep.”

Without thinking, I reach out my hand for him, wanting his warmth, fingers lingering in the void of his body, just before everything goes black.

* * *

Everything is hazy, my memories, senses and the feel of my own body, but time is rolling while I am in and out more often than I can recall.

I have nightmares.

Reliving the beating.

Crawling to Tide…

Too late to save him.

When I open my eyes again, they sting with tears. I blink. I see a large circle of light reflected opposite me on an unfamiliar door. Was that always there? I blink at it. Where is that coming from? Where am I?

Lifting my chin, I manage to look over my head at the wall behind me. There is a small window filtering muted light. Like the portal ones on a boat…

Am I on a boat?

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