“Will you help me?” Ren asks, and he chokes. The delicate slope of her shoulders makes him tighten his fists.
“With what?” he struggles to speak. Even as Ren takes another step into the lake, Bass doesn’t move. His feet are stuck to the ground.
“Bathing,” she says. His mouth is dry. “Why else would I ask you to come here?”
If he squeezes his fists any more, his nails will tear holes into his palm.
“I want the blood off.”
He does, too. But not—not like this. Bass can’t touch her like this. It’ll—
Ren unties the knot of her cotton shorts. Then, she bends and pulls the fabric down her legs, stepping out of them as the hem drags in the water only to be tossed aside with her top.
This is the end of him. This is where the gods will banish him to the Blacksalt Sea—how he looks at her like this. He squeezes his eyes shut and glances away because he can’t trust himself to look at her. Bass doesn’t trust himself to look at Ren without the thick heat rising in his body.
But even with his eyes shut, the image of her smooth, olive skin is burned into his brain. Not the flash of her shoulder he glances beneath her sleeve or the tendon on the back of her thigh running under the hem of her shorts—but barren flesh, the scales of her spine and the curve of her glutes.
“Haven’t you seen a naked woman before?” Ren calls to him, but he doesn’t dare open his eyes.
“Of course,” he grits between his teeth, huffing. None like her. What would it feel like to let his fingers wander over the bones of her?
“And men?” she asks.
He exhales shakily. “Yes.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
Because when he opens his eyes, Ren’s shoulder turned to reveal the dewdrop curve of her breast, his lips part and his mouth dries and a want courses through him in a way that it shouldn’t. Shameful. And even more shameful, the fact that he can’t turn away anymore.
Even as naked as she is, the leather tie of his godstone is knotted around her neck, the jade sitting in the rest of her collarbone and dragging his eyes to the valley of flesh he shouldn’t be looking at. A thrill of desperation runs through him.
Bass’ eyes flick up to meet hers, pools of obsidian hiding her thoughts from him. He doesn’t want to read her now anyway. Fear of her judgment makes him stutter. Fear that she knows he looks at her so unabashedly.
“I am,” he croaks out, throat stuffed with cotton.
Ren holds out her hand to him, the beautiful line of her arm stretched out as her fingers beckon him.
“Then help me into the water,” she says.
How could he ever say no? Basuin toes his boots off at the same time he strips off his shirt, tossing both aside in a movement that feels too long. In three big strides, Bass meets her, slipping his hand under hers until their palms meet.
He wades into the cool water with her, breeches drenched and heavy. But a huff of relief leaves him without permission as Ren sinks further into the water, her olive skin disappearing into the lake and out of his hellish sight.
The sigh that Ren lets out as the water wraps her in its embrace is devastating in and of itself. It makes him think—for the first time since they’ve met—what other noises she could make and what they might sound like. Bass is careful not to squeeze Ren’s hand out of the thought, but his jaw tightens into something painful.
Ren dips under the water, hair slicked back and bangs sticking to her forehead when she turns to him. Her lips split into a smile, almost in pride of something, and then she disappears beneath the surface again.
This time, the waters surrounding her illuminate into a glowing blue that matches the color of her forest magic, and when Ren rises, her skin is flecked with it. A feral thought tears through him—her skin freckled in god red, instead. Not of blood, but of his magic.
It makes him move closer; closer for the first time. As he wades into the ring of blue waters surrounding Ren, he feels the soothe of magic upon his skin. She’s healing herself. Trying to. It’s weaker than he’s ever felt, and it wrecks the haze of want in his mind long enough for Bass to recognize the dip in their connection. Ren has nothing left to give, and his own magic races through their god-thread trying to offer his own energy up.
Bass takes Ren’s soft arms in his hands, gentle but drawing her near. Careful to keep space between them. He would die if he felt her body right now. He would drop straight into the Blacksalt Sea and drown.
“Quit it,” he scolds her, watching as her head tips back to meet his gaze. “Let me.”
Ren opens her mouth, but before she can speak, Bass pours his magic into her. It feeds her through his palms, streams into the water around them. And all he can do is look into her twilight eyes, unmoving. He doesn’t have to conjure any images in his mind because she is right in front of him.
He wants the blood off. He’ll replace it with his own, color her with all he has.
