She flapped the sodden rag with an airy hand. “No need. I do so at least once every day.” Any hint of merriment fled when she told him “Kneel, please. I need to reach your chest.”
He almost refused. Her elegant hands on his back and arms were a sweet torment guaranteed to leave him hard and aching for hours after he finished his bath. The anticipation of those same hands painting swathes of soap across his chest made his nostrils flare and his jaw ache from clenching his teeth. Nevertheless, he slid off the stool and knelt, staring straight ahead. Maybe if he kept her in his peripheral vision, he wouldn’t succumb to the urge to yank her in the tub, rip her shift off her body and take her in the water. Unfortunately for him, Louvaen Duenda had a bad habit of courting danger.
She perched a hip on the tub’s rim, dipped the cloth in the water and proceeded to shatter his lucidity into splinters. The fragrance of rosemary mingled in his nostrils with her own particular scent—cloves and the costly cinnamon mixed in the finely milled soap Gavin brought home from world beyond Ketach Tor. She must have used it to bathe away the filth of the morning’s butchering. The softest whine whispered past his lips when she drew pathways on his chest, connecting the many mutilations and curse marks that disfigured him.
“Your body tells many tales.”
Dip your hand a little lower, he thought,and you’ll feel the tale it wants to tell right now.
Sweat beaded his brow by the time she rinsed off the soap and draped the cloth over the tub’s edge. His penance, however, wasn’t over. Louvaen levered a thumb beneath his jaw. “Chin up.” He raised his head. “You’ve grown scruffy. Shall I shave you?”
The offer cooled him down. He eyed her askance. “And risk you cutting my throat?”
Her fingers scraped the coarse bristles darkening his cheeks. “I’ve a steady hand with a knife.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He’d fallen deep under her spell, eager to feel her caresses on his face. It was well worth the risk of bloodletting. “Give me your word you won’t slice me from ear to ear, and you can make me handsome again.”
“You have my word.” She retreated back to the hearth for more of the hot rocks but not before telling him he was capable of washing the rest of himself without her help.
“You’ve done a worthy job so far. Why stop now?”
Louvaen sniffed and turned her back on him.
“Well?” he insisted.
“You can sit in that tub until the water freezes before I answer that question.” Her scowl warned of murder as she lugged the scuttle back to the tub and dropped another scoop of rocks into the cooling water. “You better eat or there’ll be water all over your food when I douse your head.”
Ballard grinned, no longer caring if the expression flashed his sharp incisors. Louvaen Duenda was a delight to tease, giving as good as she got. “And here I thought you’d bash my skull in with one of those rocks.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
He finished the bath, sat back on the stool to savor the new heat and ate his meal while watching Louvaen add hot rocks to a copper basin. She dipped her finger in the water several times to test the temperature before carrying the basin to the tub and setting it on the plank next to his now empty dishes. Ballard offered a halfhearted protest—which she ignored—when she cleared his half full goblet and plates off the plank.
His breath caught as she paused, a pensive expression that darkened her eyes the gray of rain clouds. In the time she’d lived in his household he’d discovered she was intense, forthright, and fiercely protective. He didn’t know her to be mercurial. This sudden change in mood surprised him. “What’s wrong?”
She leaned into him, her breath tickling his cheek. “You’ve smeared honey on your face.” Her lips pressed softly against the corner of his mouth. Every muscle in Ballard’s body seized when the tip of her tongue swept across the spot, licking away the sticky honey. It was over before he could suck air into his starved lungs. Louvaen pulled away, features still grave, and ran her tongue over her lips.
Ballard growled low in his throat and snagged her wrist when she straightened. “Louvaen, I’m changed by the flux—hardly a man anymore but still with a man’s wants, a man’s hunger.” His fingers tightened on that slender wrist, drawing her back to him. “If you don’t wish to end up on your back, in my bed with me between your legs, you’ll take your clothes and leave.”
He didn’t want to give her the choice, the chance to escape from his chamber and into the corridor where the icy air would clear her head enough that she’d thank the gods she worshipped for a reprieve from submitting to a monster who’d once been a man. He wanted her beneath him—craved it—those long legs wrapped tight around his waist as he took her. He was faster than she knew. Shackled to an encroaching inhumanity, he’d been given inhuman speed and strength. She wouldn’t take three steps before he’d be out of the tub with the door locked, imprisoning her inside the chamber with him. His legs tensed in animal anticipation of the chase. His heartbeat thudded hard against his ribs.
He desired her, was nearly consumed by it. She’d been the catalyst of his every fantasy and masturbatory gratification since she’d mapped the ruined terrain of his face with her hands. Still, what he wanted most was a reciprocal yearning, the knowledge that she burned for him as much as he did for her. A futile hope, but he’d lived lifetimes holding on to hope with desperate hands.
Louvaen’s wrist jerked in his grip. Ballard let her go, fully expecting her to draw back her fist and punch him in the mouth before striding out of his chamber in a furious huff. Instead her eyes softened, glanced at the bed and again at him. A dozen emotions played across her winsome features—uncertainty, an odd grief and strongest of all, the same longing that set his blood boiling and robbed him of reason.
He was half out of the water when a pounding at his door broke the spell that held them both captive. Louvaen leapt away from the tub, her face shuttered. Ballard collapsed back onto the stool, sloshing a wave of water over the tub’s edge. He shoved the plank off the rim, sending it skidding across the floor. More water splashed the floors as the basin rolled away, scattering rocks in its wake. Covering his eyes with one hand, he tried not to shout his frustration.
The door opened, and the rapid steps crossing the room this time belonged to Magda. Ballard didn’t uncover his eyes even when he felt her gaze burning holes into him.
“I’ve come for the dishes. What happened here?”
Louvaen’s calm voice gave no hint to the turmoil she’d revealed to him only moments earlier. “I stumbled and knocked the board off the tub.”
“Well, it happens to the best of us. I’ll help you clean up.”
Ballard lowered his hand but kept his eyes closed and leaned his head back against the tub’s rim. The erection that nearly bent him double was softening. Magda’s untimely interruption had seen to that. At least she wouldn’t flay him with some unwanted commentary on the state of his arousal. Gavin’s unrelieved lusts had been a constant source of amusement for her. All he needed to end a quickly deteriorating day was her taking shots at him as well.
She gave a disapproving cluck. “Are you planning to stew in there until supper?”
