“What’s the difference?”
“Pain fades. Harm lingers. I have no interest in damaging you.”
“What if … what if you do something I don’t like?”
“You’re agreeing to my terms, my pace, and my choices, or you’re not. There is no middle ground.”
“Until sunrise,” she whispers.
“Yes.”
“And then I can leave. You swear it?”
“The bargain will make it impossible to refuse.”
She swallows again. “Fine.” The word comes out rough. “I agree.”
The blood bond pulses, as if it knows what I’m planning … as if it approves.
“Bargain struck.” I smile, and snap my fingers.
She flinches at the sound, then her eyes round when a copper bathtub appears in one corner of the room, steam curling off the surface.
“Are you planning to drown me again?”
My smile is slow. “Of all the fantasies I have about you, drowning isn’t in the top ten.”
The flush that spreads down her throat is deeply satisfying.
“I … I thought fae couldn’t create water from nothing.”
“We can’t. I relocated it from the village well.”
She looks at the water, then back at me.
“Get undressed.”
She doesn’t move.
“Alleria.”
Her expression shifts—resignation, maybe, or resolve, and she turns away.
“Stop. Turn back to face me.”
Her lips press together, but she turns, and her hands go to the laces of her tunic. Her fingers are trembling badly enough that she fumbles with the first one, and has to try twice before it comes loose. She works her way down with jerky, graceless movements, until the tunic falls open, and she shrugs it off her shoulders. Underneath, she’s wearing a thin undershirt, and I can see the shape of her through the fabric. The curve of her breasts, the shadow of her nipples, the way they rise and fall as she breathes.
She hesitates, her fingers fisting in the hem.
“Keep going.”
She pulls the undershirt over her head in one quick motion, then her hands go to her pants, unlacing them with the same hurried movements, pushing them down and stepping out of them. Her undergarments follow, stripped away with a defiance that doesn’t quite hide the way her hands are shaking.
Then she’s standing in the middle of the room with nothing between her skin and my gaze. I can see the way she’s fighting to cover herself, her hands twitching at her sides, her chin lifting.
Defiant even now.
I move closer, circling her, and let my gaze travel over every inch of her exposed skin. The slope of her shoulders. The line of her collarbone. Her breasts are tipped with nipples that havehardened in the cool air. Her waist dips inward, then flares out. Copper streaks in her dark hair catch the firelight.
