Page 32 of Ravished By the Revenant

I only go through the trouble for Clara. I wash myself with cold water as I have done for centuries. But for her, I scatter rose petals. I fetch a bottle of lavender oil. I make the bath fit for a queen.

“Ridiculous,” I inform the tub. “You are a warlord’s washbasin, and look at you now.”

“Talking to the furniture again?”

I turn. Clara leans in the bathroom doorway wearing my shirt—my shirt, the hem reaching her mid-thigh, sleeves shoved up her forearms in bunches—and holding a piece of honeyed toast. There is butter at the corner of her mouth. The sight of her does more violence to me than the curse managed to in hundreds of years.

“The furniture listens better than you do,” I say dryly.

“The furniture doesn’t eat your eggs, though. Which were criminal, by the way. I want the recipe.” She pads closer and peers into the tub. “Rose petals. Again. And what is that smell? It’s like a spa in here. A haunted spa. Ghost spa.”

“Lavender. From the garden.”

“You make bath oil.” She looks up at me, toast pausing halfway to her mouth. “You. Destroyer of covens. Scourge of the Holy Roman Empire. You infuse oils.”

I cross my arms defensively. “A man with eternity acquires skills.”

“You keep saying that, and every time, the skills get more unhinged.” She takes another bite and studies the water, and her face softens. I have learned to hoard glimpses of these expressions like a dragon with treasure. “You did this while I was asleep. The food. The stairs. The buckets.”

“You were snoring,” I say deadpan. “I required occupation.”

Clara gasps. “I don’t snore.”

“Like a hog in autumn,” I confirm, my grin returning.

“You take that back or I’m drowning you in your own ghost spa.” But she’s smiling as she sets the toast aside and reaches for the shirt’s buttons, and I turn to give her privacy, which earns a snort. “Aldric. Your tongue has been inside me. I think we’re past the chivalrous pivot.”

If my body is capable of blushing, it’s doing so now.

“Habit.” I turn back.

She peels the shirt over her head, and I stand there and let her beauty do its damage. Then she steps into the water with a hiss that melts into a groan, sinking until the petals gather at her collarbones, and her head tips back against the copper rim.

“Okay,” she sighs. “You can keep me. Kidding. Mostly kidding. God, that’s good.”

I drag the stool to the tub’s side and sit. “Give me your hair.”

She cracks one eye open. “What?”

“I will wash you. If you permit it.” I hold up the soap—the good soap, the one that smells of honey. “Your terms. I’m asking.”

Clara looks at me for a long moment, water lapping, steam rising between us.

“Yeah,” she says, quieter. “Okay.”

So I wash her. I pour warm water over her hair with the pitcher, work the soap through the silver lengths of it, and drag my fingers slowly across her scalp until she makes a sound low in her throat that I file away beside every other sound I have stolen from her. I soap her shoulders, her back, the nape of her neck. She goes boneless under my hands, pliant as candle wax, and for a while neither of us speaks. There’s just the murmur of the fire from the bedroom and the drip of wet hair.

“This is nice,” she murmurs eventually. “You’re being suspiciously nice.”

“I am always nice,” I lie.

She tips her head back against the rim and looks up at me, upside down, her wet lashes clumped and her eyes very violet in the steam.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You have never once waited for permission.”

“Last night...” Her fingers trail through the water. “You touched me everywhere. Took everything off me. And you stayed dressed the whole time. Buttoned to the chin like you were headed to a funeral.” She pins me with her gaze, and her eyes aren’t sleepy anymore. “Every time I get near your shirt, you catch my hands. Why don’t you want to be naked in front of me?”