Dante takes me around the corner, and I find we’re in the shallower part of the aquium. All of the Sarkarnii baths I’ve seen have a similar kidney shape, partially divided by a bulkhead. One part, the bit Dante dropped me into, is deep, and the other side is shallow. The Sarkarnii like to use the shallow part to shift into their dragon forms and gently toss water over themselves using their wings.
It’s quite a sight.
Once we’re in the shallower water, Dante swims away from me, using his sinuous tail to propel himself through the water like an alligator. He collects something from the other side of the pool and returns.
“Turn around,” he orders, almost like I’m one of his crew.
With not a little hesitation, I do as he says and find myself pulled between a pair of large, muscular, scaly thighs.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I will cleanse your hair,” Dante rumbles.
“Oh.” My mouth is a little dry, even while I’m surrounded by water. “You don’t have to do it.”
“I want to do it,” he says. “If you’d like.”
“Yes, okay,” I respond, my mind a whirl of puzzlement. It’s been a day here on Dante’s ship already, and I don’t think it’s even half over.
The hidden Sarkarnii children, the experimentation on themselves. All presided over by the most chaotic creature I’ve ever come across and interlaced with a web of secrets and narcotics.
Dante carefully rubs something which smells like pine needles on the top of my head, running his hands down my hair to the ends.
“This is a cleanser of our own making,” Dante says. “We find it helps with the minerals in the aquium to keep our scalessupple. You will not get this cleanser from any of the other warlords.”
For a second, my confusion deepens until I realize he’s trying to impress me. My mind goes back to Dalox’s threat. Dante has to woo me. He has to make me want to stay with him.
Everything he’s done today so far is his way of telling me he wants me to stay. He’s been showing me what he has, except it’s all broken to one degree or another.
Yet Dante thinks it should be reason enough for me to want to be with him. I don’t know what to think, not at all.
I feel the cleanser on my scalp start to foam as Dante continues to stroke it through my hair. Then he slowly massages it in with strong but gentle circles on my scalp. There’s just the mere hint of a pinprick from his claws as he works his way slowly and methodically over my head.
“My warriors and I like to help each other cleanse. It’s so much easier to get into the spines if you have assistance.”
“When you’re shifted?” I ask with a sigh I can’t keep out of my voice.
Dante hums, which turns into a purr as he concentrates on his task.
“I could…help, if you want?” I suggest, not knowing where the words are coming from unless my sanity has left the room.
“Lean back, let me rinse,” Dante orders, as if I haven’t said anything at all.
I do as he asks, and large hands scoop water to carefully remove the suds from my hair.
“Sit,” he says.
I do as requested, and he repeats the process. I relax into it. Right now, right here, with Dante, despite everything which has happened, this little act of grooming feels somehow right.
I guess I’ll deal with everything else later.
DANTE
Ifeel my little flame relaxing under my touch, like a warrior after a battle. I know how important it is to be well cleansed and how much I enjoy it.
It would appear she does too. And, despite the fact another warrior allowed her to touch him, I am entirely in awe of how she wanted to help my downed warriors and the sarkarnlings when she has no real need to offer me anything.
I’m the one who did the biting because I couldn’t help myself when I found her all alone in that darkened aquium, not unlike this one, only not as good because it wasn’t on my ship. Her scent drew me to her, my fangs lengthening, my shift almost uncontrollable as the fog I had descended into after trying not to take anything new for the past three nova days had a grip on me.
