Free Lords of the Sea by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

afraid the storm would hit before they did.”

    38

    “You’re saying they led you here?”

    Cassie studied him doubtfully, wondering if it was just her imagination that his questions seemed to be designed to make her responses sound guilty. “Could I just explain what happened?”

    He lifted his dark brows but bowed his head slightly and moved away. Deciding that must have been a ‘yes’, Cassie composed her thoughts and told him everything she could remember exactly as she remembered it happening. Hopefully, she thought, everyone would tell it the same way and then they’d see it was just a mistake. “I hadn’t planned to leave the anchor chain, because I was afraid I might not find it again, but then I saw …. Well, I saw you. I thought it might be them, but I saw when I got closer that it was …. I thought you were a statue.”

    He turned and looked at her curiously.

    “You weren’t moving. I couldn’t even see that you were breathing.”

    If he realized she was hinting at getting some answers of her own, he ignored it.
    Instead, he paced the room for several moments, obviously deep in thought, though she couldn’t tell whether he was just reviewing what she’d said, searching for flaws, or if he was trying to think of other questions to ask.

    Unnerved as she was now, Cassie was starting to get a crick in the neck from staring up at him and that distracted her, temporarily, from her anxiety about what else he might ask her. She hadn’t imagined he was a big man when she’d first seen what she’d thought was a statue, she realized. He was big, and tall. She thought he must be half a head taller than Mark, and he had claimed to be six feet tall.

    Maybe Mark had hedged a little on the height, like she’d hedged on her age?

    Either way, Raen was still very tall, and broad shouldered. He looked good even in the robe, she thought---and manly. She would’ve thought the thing would detract from his masculinity. Odd how it didn’t, but then she supposed there wasn’t much that could, not with a man built like he was—and square jawed. There was no five o’clock shadow, despite the fact that his hair was as black as onyx. In fact, now that she thought about it, there hadn’t been hair anywhere else on his body besides his head—including his pubic area.

    That hadn’t really surprised her when she’d thought he was a statute. Given that he wasn’t, now she had to wonder.

    Did he shave—everywhere? Or did he just not have hair?

    He sent her a speculative look. “We do not have hair—at all.”

    Cassie stared at him blankly, feeling her jaw slowly slide to half mast. She knew she hadn’t spoken aloud, but there was no way she was going to believe he’d just guessed what she was thinking, or that it was just a coincidence that he’d seemed to answer the questions in her mind. She felt her face heat up until sweat popped from her pores.
    “You’re … telepathic?”

    He cocked an eyebrow, obviously not familiar with the term.

    “You read thoughts?”

    He frowned. “We communicate with our minds.”

    Cassie pursed her lips, trying not to think about what she’d just been thinking about. It didn’t help. Even though she managed not to formulate the words in her mind, she was keenly, uncomfortably aware that she’d been thinking about how good looking he was before she got to thinking about the hair—the lack of hair—everywhere. The 39
    blood that had just begun to recede from her cheeks came back with a vengeance. “That is so unfair! You might at least have warned me!”
    Several
    emotions
    flickered across his features in quick succession. Amusement seemed to dominate, however. “Why would I have done that? And how is it unfair?”

    She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you were reading my thoughts you know damned well why it was unfair!”

    To her surprise, he chuckled.

    The sound sent a quiver all the way through her, warming her insides.

    She would rather have thought