Her head fell back and her eyes found his. “Yes. But I didn’t stay for the s*x,” she said, edging in. “I stayed for my captain.”
Curling a hand around the back of his neck, she tried to draw him down, but he resisted. “No, Waif.”
No? Her smile vanished. He didn’t want to kiss her. The captain she worshiped didn’t want to kiss her. She’d thought walking away from him was painful. She’d breathed through the agony of confessing her family’s shame to him.
But this… learning he’d come to his senses and didn’t want her anymore, it was t*****e more excruciating than she’d ever have been able to imagine. But she couldn’t let him see that. She had to accept it. Swain had every right to hate her. Every right in the world.
“I understand,” she said. Why should he want to get intimate with her when
