“I want nothing more than you wish to give me,” he assured her, knowing full well that his erection was nigh unmissable now. “A hand on my shoulder, a touch to my hair — even those small gifts would please me,kone.And I think they will give you something too, if you allow it. Build this bridge with me, sweet Josephine. Let us see where it leads.”
When she said nothing, Otto pressed forward. It was a cruel touch to what he suspected was an old wound, but if it moved things along, it had to be done. “Tell me, how long have you been a doctor’s plaything? Have you ever known what it’s like to be touched gently — to stroke another?”
He didn’t need her to answer. It was written all over her tormented expression, in the stark loneliness of her eyes. Josephine had never known the comfort of affectionate touch.
Otto snapped powerful jaws around the fury that threatened to burst from him. His mate had been starved and abused. The gods only knew what horrors she had suffered, and he suspected her only contact with the outside world had been in this very cell.
Gods know what kind of men have been pulled off the front line,he thought, paling.They could have locked her in with any kind of half-mad, battle-hardened being.
He knew she’d been attacked in the past, but now he wondered what else could have happened to her. He’d been fighting for forty years. He knew how war changed men, how desperate and twisted they could become. He knew they were often ravenous for companionship, and when locked in a tiny room alone with a soft, submissive creature like Josephine…
Suddenly, he didn’t resent the chains nearly as much as before.
Otto swallowed hard. Had he made a mistake in pushing her? There was no reason for her to trust him, and there waseveryreason for her to be suspect of his insistence. “Josephine,” he began, voice thick with regret, “I apologize if I’ve—”
“Could you— turn?”
For a moment, he could only stare. Then, in a rush, he said, “Yes, of course. Yes.”
It wasn’t an elegant maneuver, with his hobbled ankles and the long chain attached to the back of his collar, but he managed to get on his knees and brace his cuffed hands against the rough stone wall. It was cool under the heated skin of his palms.
Otto held his breath.
There was a pause, then the soft sound of a shuddering inhalation and the rustle of fabric.
Brave girl,he thought, chest tightening.My fearless little mate. You’ve no idea how I’ll treasure you.
Her steps were slow, the hardened leather soles of her boots loud in the tense quiet. Each scuff of her heel seemed to echo off of the stone walls. Her breathing was a rough scrape against his sensitive ears, each puff a testament to how terrified she was.
And yet she crept closer.
Otto felt himself begin to shake all over. Every muscle shuddered with the need to move, to shift, to doanything.Restlessness made his fingers twitch involuntarily against the stone, but he was too terrified of scaring her off to do so much as shufflehis knees on the tile.
At last, he began to feel her body heat radiating along his bare spine. All the fine hairs on his body stood on end as the soft cloud of her scent enfolded him — rich and smooth and earthy, like the oil he’d rub into wood for a fine, velvety polish.
He swore he could feel her reach out to him, but her touch didn’t come.
Speaking so softly he worried she might not be able to hear him, he said, “Touch me,kone.”
“You have… scars.” There was a peculiar note in her voice that he couldn’t place. It was almostawestruck.
“I do,” he answered, pressing his palms flat against the stone to quell the urge to reach for her. “There aren’t so many healers anymore, and I’ve been fighting for a very long time.” Otto did his best not to think of those wretched souls who’d been conscripted into the war. It waswrongto hurt a healer, but they were always the first targets on the battlefield. A living healer could keep a battalion going for years, after all.
Sometimes he wondered if there were any left in the world. His battered body certainly hadn’t seen one in at least fifteen years. Maybe more.
He hesitated, then, “Do you find them ugly?”
He’d never considered it before, as he had never bothered with any aspect of his appearance, but Otto was suddenly afraid that his mate would not find pleasure in his body.
The war had warped him in many ways, but he’d never been particularly beautiful. Josephine, on the other hand, was beauty incarnate. What if she did not crave him the way he craved her?A nightmare.
“No,” she whispered. “I also have scars.”
“If you’d let me, I’d kiss every one of them.” He didn’t intend to say that aloud, but he didn’t regret it, either. It was a promise he fully intended on keeping.
He heard Josephine suck in a breath. “Why? You don’t know me at all. I’m just a woman to you.”
“Notjustanything. Neverjust.I—” Otto gasped. The cool tips of her fingers kissed the muscle of his shoulder, over what he knew was a mottled scar left by an explosive. The damn thing had nearly taken his arm.
