Away from the ice-blue bedspread shimmering like a shallow pool beneath the indigo sky.
“Take me to your bed,” I breathe.
“No.”
When he fords down his private corridor, I assume he’s taking me tomybed, which is fine, albeit slightly confusing—does he not want me in his?
I’m wrong, though. His destination is his bathing chamber.
Of course… I must smell wretched after my flight. Though perhaps not too wretched since he tongues my neck.
The air is muggy and heavy with the scent of eucalyptus and roses. Holy, almighty Cauldron… I twist around to find the glassdoor of his steam chamber already white with fog and his filled bath overflowing with candlelight and white petals.
I almost blurt out that I love him, right there and then, but by some miracle, I manage to rein in the excessive sentiment before it can send him—the man who’s sworn off any and all relationships—running for his snow-tufted hills.
As the hiss of hot air coils through the marble room, he slides me down his body. I reach for my brassiere and snap it off. Lust blunts out the stroke of silver around his pupils, transforming them into magnetic pools of black.
He blinks, but it doesn’t evict his palpable hunger.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of my leather trousers but don’t apply any pressure, because his fingers are fisted at his sides instead of ridding his form of cloth. “You’re coming inside the bath with me, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know how”—his throat dips—“judicious it’d be.”
I unbutton his jacket. “Veryjudicious.”
“Isla…”
Before he can add an injunction to stop, I roll onto my toes and move my lips over his. “Please come with me.”
His mouth trembles around breathy indecision. I wait for him to say yes, but he stays silent. I tentatively push the jacket off the broad mantel of his shoulders. He doesn’t stop me. Nor does he put any resistance when I guide the sleeves down his arms, or when I start on his shirt.
He lets me strip him of both. The same way he allows me to unclasp his trousers. My heart scuds as, layer by layer, I reveal his naked form. When I seize the ties that hold up his linen braies, he shackles my wrists and breathes out my name.
Just my name.
Nothing else.
Yet I understand he means for me to stop, so I do.
I go back to undressing myself. Once I’m down to my underwear, his smooth, hairless torso is lifting and falling at such speed that it jars his necklace.
I take a step back, sinking my fingers into the slender bands holding up my skimpy underwear, and then pirouette before letting it fall. His breath catches. I glance over my shoulder to find his eyes pressed against my bared backside. It’s not the first time he’s seen me naked, yet the way he stares makes it feel like it is.
My gaze lingers on his tented braies before roaming up the ladder of his defined abs. My king is all whittled muscle and lean bone sheltered beneath creamy skin.
While one of his hands flexes at his side, the other toys with his pendent.
I linger by the giant quartz tub—one heartbeat, two, three—begging him with my eyes to follow me. When his bare feet remain planted wide, unmoving, I understand that he won’t. Before he can spot my disappointment, I climb into the bath. A sigh swells my lungs as the steamy water kisses my legs, soon enveloping all of me.
I lay back, letting my lashes collapse. “What are you so frightened of, Konstantin Korol? Breaking your celibacy streak? Baring all of yourself to me? Letting go and enjoying yourself…for once?”
I strain to hear his sighed reply, but all that fills my ears is the hiss of steam from the adjoining stone chamber. Did he leave?
I throw my senses out as far as they can reach, snaring first the masculine scent layering itself over the scented wax, then a muted, wet plop—twoplops—like something dipping into the bath.
Or someone.
35
