Can hardly call it a camp this time.
The torches flame, but not as many, because there aren’t as many spots to plant them in.
The captives are down by the river, washing leathers it looks like, but there is no tent for them to hide in during the sleep hours.
Most of the fae have stripped down to nothing, their muscular bodies strong and chiselled, tall and proud, and they move in and out of the hot pools.
Then there are the few who don’t go in the springs—like the glassy haired female who, just some rocks down from me, digs aimlessly through her bag.
The disturbance of water at my boots draws in my gaze.
The cold warrior steps into the hot pool. The smooth sculpted detail of his legs disappears, swallowed up by the water, until he’s in up to his middle.
There’s a couple of fae in there already, the one with the lazy grin and all-sharp teeth, and who wears a wildness in his bright pink eyes.
Shark.
The other two have their backs to me, leaned over the other side of the pool, relaxed, just soaking.
I turn a slick look out the corner of my eye to the female.
Her bag goes ignored now. She’s slumped over in a huff, her moody face aimed at the males in the pool.
She wants to go in.
But she doesn’t make any move to join them.
‘Why?’ the question whispers in my mind. ‘Why doesn’t she go in?’
As if she can sense my stare, feel it on her fallen face, she throws a sudden, sharp look at me, one that has my heart lurching in my chest…
Then a small smile slides onto her pale mouth.
She jerks her pointed chin.
My lashes flutter, a flustered blink.
Am I allowed to look at her?
Is she allowed to smile at me, to gesture over at the next pool?
My chin grazes the shoulder of the rain jacket, and I consider the hot pool over, a larger one, one filled with about a dozen fae warriors.
Half of them are more readable than I care to admit.
Loathing floods me.
Guess there’s a universal sleaze of males.
Six of them over there are throwing glances at us, atbothme and the female warrior, lifting their chins as if to get a better look the moment we start undressing. They are elbowing one another, mumbling words I don’t recognise but that I understand.
Guess I am onlyathumbto the cold warrior.
That’s not a welcome realisation.
I hide the disgusted snarl that warps my face by turning around—and the female’s gaze snares mine.
Her wink comes and goes, her smile fades.
