“I already put the soap in her hair,” the woman said. “It needs to be rinsed off.”
“Let her handler do it,” the lord ordered.
“My handler?” I repeated, confused.
“Hey, trader!” Lord Arnaf raised his voice. “Give your Joy Vessel a bath.”
With the veering of his chair, Timur turned around. “Is that what you want, Elaine?”
My heart leaped in distress.
Or was it in anticipation?
I couldn’t name what I was feeling, but Lord Arnaf grunted with satisfaction.
“Oh yes, she wants you,” he said confidently. “She enjoys it when you touch her.”
My cheeks warmed with a blush. The clueless lord had outed my innermost feelings so blatantly, and he didn’t stop at that.
“And now she’s embarrassed for some reason,” he muttered grumpily. “Can you fix it, trader?”
As if I was some kind of a malfunctioning device that needed a good shake to perform as it had been programmed.
Timur moved closer, and my emotions twirled in a twister. Gripping the edge of the bath with the claws of his right hand, he leaned over me. His eyes narrowed, both the iris of the blue one and the black pupil of the red. His gaze focused on my face, as if he were trying to peer into my very soul, to see if Lord Arnaf was correct about my feelings.
Slowly, as if about to touch a butterfly that could fly away any moment, he raised his left hand. He didn’t take the cloth that the male servant had left draped over the edge of the tub at my feet. Instead, he gently stroked my arm with the tips of his fingers.
“Is that true, Elaine? Do you really enjoy my touch?” he asked softly, only for me to hear.
I realized how new and probably incredible this discovery must be for him. Timur had been hiding under his cloak from everyone’s attention for years. People shunned him. I’d pushed him away too.
But I thought about the many times his hand had landed on mine in a reassuring gesture. The way his arms cradled me gently when I sat on his lap. The many ways he’d put himself between me and any threat, shielding me from danger.
And I couldn’t lie to him.
“I do,” I said. “I like when you touch me.”
His expression softened. His gaze drifted from my face to my shoulder, then followed his fingers as they trailed the length of my arm. Pleasure followed his touch, like a shimmering wave of magic spreading through my skin. He stroked along my palm, then threaded his fingers between mine.
“Tell me, what exactly do you feel when I touch you?” he asked, keeping his eyes on our interlaced fingers.
All myleilathaswere filled with the tendrils of other men. I wasn’t even sure if Timur had any tendrils, since I’d never seen them. Or if he wanted to connect to me at all, since he’d never attempted it yet and turned me down when I offered. But I wished I could share my joy with him at that moment.
“I feel safe,” I said, searching for just the right words to describe the warm, colorful bouquet of emotions blooming inside me. “I feel…seen. You look at me like you want to know everything about me, like every little thing about me is important. Like I matter. And then…the way you looked at me yesterday, in the rain… It made me feelwanted.”
He gripped the edge of the tub behind my head, his claws scraping against the delicate surface of the giant shell. His other hand let go of mine.
“I should…um, I should wash your hair,” he said, his voice strained.
At the tension in his voice and body, a flicker of worry passed through me. Did I say something wrong? Did I say too much? Was honesty not the right path to take in this case?
With his lips pressed into a firm line—an expression of resolve—he moved his chair around the tub and stopped behind me. He ran his fingers through my hair. At first, those were only the fingers of his left hand. I closed my eyes, tilting my head into his touch.
He breathed softly, massaging my skull. Then I felt his claws combing through my hair too. The sharp tips gently scraped against my skin, delivering the best skull massage ever.
“It feels so good, Timur…” I murmured.
He lathered the soap into foam, then rinsed it off. I tried to remember when the last time that someone washed my hair for me was and could only remember my mother doing it back when I was seven or eight, before I even learned to take a bath on my own.
