“You’re hurt, too,” I manage to say.
She puckers those pillowy lips, her tongue tracing briefly over the sore, split place. “Maybe we should bandage each other up. Since we have a temporary alliance.”
“Might be the rational thing to do.”
“I’ll wash first.”
When she heads over to the sink, I debate whether or not I should turn my back. She came over to me willingly just now, showed herself to me in her most vulnerable state, but I don’t want to assume anything.
“Should I… should I go in the closet while you… do that?” I hate myself for stumbling through the question.
Devilry frowns at me. “What is wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You broke into my home. Then you saved my life.” She starts counting up my misdeeds on her fingers. “You ruined my heist, threw bombs at me, came running up to the tower to save me from a member of your crew, gave me an orgasm, thenstabbed me, tried to steal back your dagger, came in your pants for me, carried me on your back, and now you want to know if you should wait in the closet while I wash up? I think we’re past that, don’t you?”
“Just trying to be polite,” I mutter.
“Polite?” she spits, her eyes flaming. “Since when are you polite, Ravager? I don’t want you to be fucking polite.”
“Fine,” I snarl. “Then I’m going to sit here and watch you.”
“Suit your fucking self.”
“I will!”
“Good!”
She turns back to the sink and shuts off the steaming water. Angrily I wrap the tablecloth around my waist, knot it tightly, and sit my ass down, arms folded, mad as hell.
I stare with all my might as she washes her hair first. She bends over the sink to do it, showing me the twin curves of her ass and a glimpse of her pussy. She straightens, shedding water onto the floor, then begins running the soapy cloth over her entire body. She moves stiffly, wearily, and a little self-consciously. Her cheeks are nearly as red as her lips because she knows I’m watching her.
“You’ve got tiny tits,” I say. “How’s that for impolite?”
“You’ve mocked me for that before,” she says dryly. “On the rooftop that night.”
“Yeah? Have I said that they’re the cutest little damn tits I’ve ever seen?”
She glances toward me, and I swear her mouth quivers at the corner. Almost like she was about to smile. But she spins away, toward the sink.
As she’s washing under her left arm, her whole body tenses with pain. Blood runs down with the water from the place where my knife slid between her ribs.
I’m on my feet and at her side in a second. “Let me see.”
She lifts her left arm, looking away from me. Her pale skin is glossy, sheathed with water, pink where the blood runs.
My palm glides up her waist, my thumb stroking just beneath the cut I made, the one I regret more than any other injury I’ve caused her.
My actions didn’t make sense at the time, even to me. The way I felt when I thought Slaughter had killed her was a blend of mad frenzy and pathetic brokenness, a sickening hollow in my soul.
In that moment, I decided I never wanted to feel that way again. I wanted Devilry alive, and yet, when she was coming on my fingers, I had the strangest impulse to end her before she gained a greater hold on me, before she ruined my life and my plans just by existing.
It terrifies me, how close I came to killing her. Now that I’m calm, I understand that it would have been too late anyway; she has already changed me. The act of ending her life wouldn’t have spared me pain.
There is a part of myself that frightens me. I let her see it in that moment, and she didn’t struggle—she succumbed to me. Even if she hadn’t yielded to her fate, I like to think that I would have stopped myself. But I don’t know.
“The cut is deeper than I thought,” I murmur.
