With the smallest laugh ever laughed, he drags his fingers through his wet hair, strips off his dampened black jacket, and tosses it on the back of a chair.
“I suppose it’s only going to get more awkward, so ready yourself.” Cool and unaffected, he strolls to the wine cart and opens a bottle, pouring red liquid into two glasses.
An odd feeling flashes across the back of my neck, and I glance around, not necessarily nervous, but uneasy. The only thing I notice is that the bathing tub is filled and still steaming.
“You’re going to boil me alive. Or drown me.”
Another insignificant laugh. “Or bathe you.”
My brain pauses, and I glance from side to side in utter confusion as he turns around. “Bathe me,” I say, my words flat, prompting him for an explanation.
Casually, he walks toward me and slips a key from his pocket. An abrupt and unanticipated chill races up my spine when he moves closer and takes my hand in his.
I haven’t felt his touch in thirty years, and yet somehow, it hasn’t changed. The same formidable strength lives in those hands, those elegant fingers, yet he knows how to use them with a tenderness that once softened my cold heart and stirred my blood.
When he unlocks the shackles at my wrists, tosses them on a fine, velvet settee, and slowly drags his hand from mine, I am certain he must be unwell.
More than a bit taken aback, I narrow my eyes. “Have you any notion how good that felt? More importantly,” I add, “have you any notion how many necks I’ve snapped with my bare hands?”
A nearly imperceptible curl forms at one corner of his mouth, one that doesn’t reach his eyes with any sort of lightheartedness. “I didn’t intend for it to feel good,” he says. “Know that. And have you any notion how many necks I’ve snapped with my bare hands? Why do you think I need no weapon?”
“You’re a liar. And you have a guard.”
“Not a liar. And that I do. Right outside that door. A barbarian. Though I don’t think I’ll need him. Something tells me I’m safe from your deadly hands.”
The prince drops to a knee. I close my eyes for the briefest moment, swallowing hard as he unlocks the chains at my feet. When I glance down, finding him in a pool of red shadows, he looks up, not a drop of fear in him, though I could swear I see something far more damning moving in his eyes.
“I think I’ve dreamt this lovely scenario a time or two.” My cock twitches, that traitor.
“And you’ll have to keep dreaming.” He stands and points to the tub. “In the bath, perhaps.”
I rub my wrists where the chains had been and study the warm water. The tray of soaps. The sponge scavenged from the sea. “I’m not sure how to accept such a kindness from my enemy. Is there something in the water that’s going to eat my skin off? I’m going to look like Fleurie did when she first came here after this, aren’t I?”
Another tiny curl at the corner of his lips.
His violent edges have smoothed so much over these last weeks. Bron says he hasn’t been communicating with Thamaos as often, that the lack of contact with the god spirit is why he feels less like a knife at the throat.
For me, he’s more like a waiting kiss, which is even more dangerous territory if I’m honest. I know I’m lying to myself when my mind tries to convince me that enemies can be lovers. That there’s no rule that says passion must extend to deeper sympathies. And yet those words are all I can hear right now.
The prince reaches for the wine and sets one of the glasses on a drink table near the tub. “Unfortunately for me, I need you. As you have continuously reminded me, I can’t kill you, not until I find out for certain if you’re bound to Alexi, much as death might be the most desirable end to your annoying mouth. But you do stink. Actually, you smell like something crawled into your clothes and died. So if you would please—” he gestures to the tub and moves to sit on its edge “—I would like to enter my dungeon without wanting to vomit. I’m sure Fleurie will appreciate the effort as well.”
I scoff, pretending to be offended. “I have never been asked to get naked in such an insulting manner. But if you insist.” I reach over my head and tug off my tattered and filthy tunic. “Your little buckets of cold water and floor cleaner haven’t really been wonderful for grooming and, you know, not eating my skin off. Which I’m clearly concerned about.”
When I look at him, his eyes are locked on mine. His wine glass is held inches from his lips, the muscles in his clenched jaw rippling, as if it’s taking everything in him to keep his gaze on my face.
Fuck it. I toss my shirt aside and face him fully, slipping my hand to the ties of my trousers. “Are you going to help?” I ask, undoing the laces one at a time. “Is that the plan?”
His eyes drift down, and my blood warms.
Which is stupid. I should want him dead. A thousand times over. Brutally. But somewhere inside him is a good man that Thamaos has poisoned. I’m sure of it.
His eyes are dark and delightful when he lifts his gaze. I recognize the want there. The need. The ache.
“That is not the plan.” He stands from the tub’s edge.
“You sound like that’s a disappointment when it doesn’t have to be.”
He takes a deep breath and moves toward the door. “It does have to be, Colden. And it would be best if we both remember that. We are not on the same side, and I fear we never will be. This little fire between us is nothing anymore. Time to snuff it out.”
