AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What are you looking at up there?” Gahn Errok asked.
“It’s what I’mnotlooking at,” I groaned. “Ah, shoot. We still need to get you into the clean bed.”
I didn’t like the idea of him walking anywhere, but I didn’t want him sleeping on these blood-soaked hides. Maybe I could drag him somehow...
But he saved me from having to do that by rolling over again, then once more, until he’d rolled out of the bed and onto the stone. This way, I could strip the bed and he wouldn’t have to move to the other.
“Thanks” I muttered. I squatted, yanking all the sticky, blackened hides away and dumping them in a pile. Luckily, just as his loincloth had protected his skin from the blood, the hides had also protected the mattress. I swapped the dirtied ones out with the clean ones from the other bed. Gahn Errok rolled onto the freshly-made bed, sprawling on his back. It took damn near everything I had not to submit to the magnetic pull his lazily spread thighs exerted on my gaze.
I’d expected him to look happy, or at least relaxed, now that everything was nice and clean. But he scowled, his nostrils flaring.
“These hides smell like the other new women. I preferred the bloody ones. Beneath the stench of blood, I could still smell you.”
“Yeah, these are from Tilly and Nasrin’s bed,” I said with a shrug. “It can’t be helped. You can’t sleep on those bloodied things. Besides, these hides will smell like me again soon enough.”
His sight stars pulsed with surprise.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said, crossing my arms. “Just because you’re the Gahn doesn’t mean you get to kick me out of my own bed and make me sleep on the hard floor. I’m dead on my feet over here. There’s no way I’ll be able to sit up all night to watch you. Which means I need to be right beside you in bed so that hopefully part of me will notice and wake up if you do something stupid. Like stop breathing.”
I wasn’t actually concerned about that possibility. If I truly thought he might run into trouble during the night, there was no way I’d stay here on my own with him. Because what I’d said was true – I was brutally exhausted. My eyelids felt like they weighed about a thousand pounds as they hovered over dry, gummy eyes. It wasn’t just my eyelids. My whole body felt heavier.
“Move over,” I muttered. Kind of a pointless phrase. The bed was huge. He didn’t actually need to move over.
But, surprisingly, he did, scooching on his back further to one side. Something bounced between his legs. Shit. I scrunched my eyes shut and tumbled into the bed beside him.
Well, I’ll give him one thing. This guy certainly knows how to surprise me. Never before would I have imagined I’d be willingly sharing a bed with Gahn Errok tonight. But, strangely, once the shock of it wore off, it didn’t feel so bad. In fact, it felt kind of nice.
“Want some?” I asked, holding up the hides and offering to toss them over him.Please, please say yes so that you’re not just sprawling out like that in the open all night...
“No,” he grunted. “With the fire nearby, I am more than warm enough.”
“Suit yourself.” I’d noticed this about the Sea Sand men, too. When it got cold at night, they seemed relatively unbothered, while us humans would add layers and try to get cozy.
I pulled the hides up over myself, wiggling until I had burrowed happily beneath them.
Sighing contentedly at the sheer bliss of the physical comfort of a bed after a long day, I was about to drop off when a growly voice broke into my consciousness.
“Wait. I changed my mind.”
I cracked open one eye to find Gahn Errok on his side staring at me.
“What do you mean? I thought you said you were warm enough!”
“I am. But if you are under there then I want to be under there, too.”
I chuckled.
“You are like a child sometimes, you know that? It’s like I have a cool fort and suddenly you’re pouting that you can’t come in.”
His gaze narrowed fiercely.
“I promise you, vexing little creature, that I am no child.”
There was a heated promise in his words that made my insides curl in an alarming way.
“Besides,” he lamented, “I have lost half my body’s blood tonight. In fact, I think I feel a bit of a chill coming on. Yes, indeed I do. Surely you will take pity on me. I am the invalid here, after all.”
I gawked at him.
