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I’m sure kings can travel, but would he want to? Especially so soon after things are back to normal. For that matter, how long will it take to figure out how to deal with Madame, to free my sisters?
More questions without answers.
Today, I am in the shower when he returns from another long morning. Once again, I have been contemplating the improbable soap, and once again, it has been twisting up my insides in a way I prefer not to think about. It’s clearly a woman’s soap, and it was clearly here when he had no intention of me sharing this space with him.
I don’t think he is that kind of man. But then, I don’t know that either of us took our marriage vows seriously at first for one reason or another, and I’ve never actually asked him about it.
I turn when the bathing room door creaks open, and steam curls out toward the cold air of his bedroom. He doesn’t speak, and I have a moment of anxiety before I spy the tips of his crown over the low wall.
His massive hand comes up to remove it, and there is a clink of the metal against the low stone table near the wash basin, then the clear smooth sound of furs sliding off a taut body.
I swallow, suddenly hotter even than the water that courses through the warm stones in the wall of this chamber. He still hasn’t spoken. When he rounds the corner where I can see him, he leans against the wall on one muscled arm, completely unashamed of his nudity.
Not that he should be ashamed when every single chiseled inch of him is honed to perfection. I unabashedly take in the view, and he grins.
“Do you mind if I join you?” he asks with all the confidence of a man who isn’t used to being told no. He speaks more like a king with each passing day, and I would be lying if I said that something in me doesn’t rise to the challenge.
I pretend to deliberate while he drinks me in like he’s been wandering the Mirrored Desert for centuries and I am the only oasis in sight. The spray of water reaches my neck, streaming down my body in clear rivulets that his gaze can’t help but track.
“I suppose I could allow that...”
He starts to move, and I hold up a hand.
“If you tell me why you have this soap.” I pick up the jasmine-scented bar with the startling realization that I am thoroughly prepared to hurl it at his face if it was for another woman.
He raises his eyebrows at whatever he sees in my features, his voice oddly gratified when he speaks. “Why do you think I have it?”
I narrow my eyes. If he wants to play games, he won’t have to play them alone. Slowly, I start to slide the soap over my skin, and his eyes hungrily follow the movement.
“Well,” I say, my voice like a freshly sharpened blade. “It’s decidedly feminine, and I certainly wasn’t sharing your chambers then.”
His smile broadens, and I scowl.
“Jealousy is normally an ugly color,” he says. “But then, you do look good in everything. Or nothing, as the case may be.”
Fire surges through my veins, and I can’t tell if it’s fury or desire, so I turn my back on him. “I suppose you’ll have to wait your turn, then, because that wasn’t an answer.”
He is at my back before I even hear his movements, standing so close to me I can actually feel the energy crackling between us. He leans down to whisper in my ear with a voice like a caress. “If you’re insinuating that there has been another woman in my chambers, allow me to inform you that from the day you waltzed into our wedding with fury burning through every feature on your impossibly perfect face, I haven’t been able to so much as think about another woman, let alone allow one within several feet of me.”
My body clenches with need at his proximity, but he doesn’t close the distance between us.
“I ordered that blasted soap weeks ago in the hopes that if I was exposed to it often enough, I could make myself immune to the intoxicating scent you seem to carry with you everywhere. But I couldn’t bring myself to so much as unwrap it. If I had to guess, Leif put it out once he took over for Sigrid with my rooms, and if I had to guess why, I would say because the universe enjoys driving me just a little bit insane.” He moves his mouth the barest increment closer to my ear, lowering his voice even more. “It’s not unlike you in that way.”
His fingers trail a path from my shoulder down my arm until they finally close around the much-disputed soap. With an agonizing slowness, he drags it across my skin, drawing lazy circles on my back.
“I could say the same.” I hardly recognize the husky tone to my voice, thick with need.
Apparently, it does him in, because he drops the soap and turns me in his arms, pressing my body against the warm stone wall with his and effectively erasing the space between us like it personally offends him.
And maybe it does.It’s sure as hell offending me.
He covers my mouth with his, and I snake my arms around his neck, tugging my fingers through his glorious braids. He makes a sound in the back of his throat, one that resonates all the way through his chest to mine, before he reaches his hands down to each of my thighs and pulls my legs around him.
I hate Madame more than I have ever hated her before, because I would gladly spend the rest of my life in this shower with him, but once again, we are in a race against time.
Even if every single moment we have left is tinged with the bittersweet edge of an impending goodbye, even if each second we spend together makes it that much more impossible for me to walk away, I can’t bring myself to regret this. Any of it.
Because our souls are like the thorny briar in the dragon’s cave, twisted and imperfect and barbed, but irrevocably entwined and entangled.
