“This will help warm you from the inside,” I told her, having her take another sip, though a rattling cough rose from her chest after the first.
Another shiver ran down her spine and finally she spoke, through pale lips, “I c-can’t get w-warm.”
My jaw clenched. “Just give it time,rei thissie.”
There was a harsh mark across her right cheek and I knew it was from the rope. I remembered the way she’d fought to keep the hides tied down and my chest squeezed with a familiar sensation, the same one I’d felt when I saw Kakkari’s light in her eyes.
“You were brave tonight, Nelle,” I murmured, my voice low, as I skimmed the backs of my fingers over the mark. “Thank you for helping.”
She blinked at my words, her pale lips parting. Outside, Drukkar’s winds still raged and for a brief, startling moment, I was furious with him. For putting my horde in danger, for putting Nelle in danger. For injuring two of my warriors.
Let it go, I ordered myself, like all fierce emotion I experienced. I didn’t let myself feel it for too long. I couldn’t.
A drip of water ran down my arm from the furs around my shoulders, into her bath, and I was reminded that I was still soaked.
After I gave Nelle another sip of the fermented drink, I rose and went closer to the fire, undressing quickly to warm up. I stood there, nude, for a brief moment, feeling the heat flicker across my skin. But it didn’t take long for my body to return to its normal state, even as mythissiecontinued to shiver in the hot bath.
When I returned to her, she had dragged her knees up to her chest and hugged her arms around them, folding in on herself in an attempt to get warmer.
The three lashes across her back looked purple in the light. Thekerisahad Nelle stop wearing the bandages and the salve once the skin had begun to heal over. Though they still looked tender, the flesh had mended, but it didn’t stop my belly from churning at the sight of them. It didn’t stop my mind from going back to that morning, from remembering the way her body jerked as the first lash fell, from remembering her soft cry after the third.
She’d told me she wasn’t angry with me for the whipping, but how could she not be?
My fists clenched as I kneeled next to the bathing tub. Her face was turned towards me, her uninjured cheek pressed to the top of her knee, those dark eyes tracking my own.
“W-will the fence h-hold?” she asked.
“Lysi,” I rasped, my voice dark with my thoughts. Underneath the water’s surface, I saw her breasts, her slim waist. She had put on weight in the past week, for which I was relieved and grateful.
“Was anyone hurt?” she whispered.
“Two warriors, but the healer is with them,” I said. I would check on them in the morning.
I saw her eyes flutter briefly before she reopened them and I knew she needed sleep. When I dipped my hand into the water, I realized it was beginning to cool from her body.
After another long moment, I decided that I could keep her warmer than her bath could and pulled her from the tub.
I dried her off quickly next to the fire, though I was still worried when she didn’t try to fight me off. Once I was satisfied, I wrapped her in a thick fur and carried her to bed.
She didn’t fight me when I dragged her close. Even when I parted the furs, even when I pressed her bare skin against my body so that she could absorb my heat, she didn’t fight me. I cocooned the both of us and she pressed her still-cold cheek into my side, shivering, and shoved her hands between the furs and my back.
I felt her pebbled, tight nipples but I tried to fight off the poorly timed desire that rose. She would only retreat if she felt it, so I kept my need close, knowing that getting her warm was the most important thing that night.
But I didn’t expect how good it would feel…holding her close. That primal part of me that I tried to keep locked away reared its head and thickened my cock and made that moment feel so right. Like I was always meant to hold her like this.
“Veekor, thissie,” I rumbled, tightening my arms around her lashed back, spreading my warm palms over her thickening scars, and tucking her legs between mine. “I will keep you warm tonight.”
Chapter Fourteen
When I woke the next morning, I knew where I was the moment I opened my eyes.
I knew that I was naked, flushed and warm, my lips and fingertips tingling, wrapped in the demon king’s arms. My cheek felt raw from where the rope had whipped me.
My first coherent thought was,He is still here?
Usually when I woke in the mornings, he had already left, gone to seek out his duties for the day. Usually, I only saw him again after nightfall, when he returned to the tent, which I now knew was called avolikiin Dakkari.
The night before returned to me in an instant. The winds, the fence crashing, the ensuing chaos in freezing rain, the hides ripping up from the tents as families rushed to save their homes.
