“Like what you imagined?”
He blew out a breath. “My imagination is painfully underdeveloped.”
I couldn’t help my laugh—or the jolt of warmth through my core. The sight of him staring at me with that hunger sent a fresh feeling through me. Power. I felt it again, magnified.
A man that capable. A fae that powerful. He wanted me.
His hand passed over my bare skin, up my belly and alongside the curve of my breast. I exhaled with the touch. I’d never been exposed quite like this. Never felt so vulnerable, but it came threaded with a new feeling of want as his fingers moved over me like I was something precious, divine.
“Stand,” he said.
The command ricocheted through me. I fucking loved it.
I stood. He sat forward and undid the tie of my leather pants as my hands rested on his shoulders. His fingers moved with surety, and he eased my pants down over my thighs and calves. I stepped out of them, and he slid them aside.
I stood above him in only my underwear, fingers still on hisshoulders. I knew I must smell like the dungeon and worms and earth, but he stared up at me like I’d descended from the sky.
“Wildmother,” he whispered. “You’re perfect.”
I didn’t know what to say; no man had ever called me that. I didn’t know if it was the liquid I’d drunk or my own arousal, but need expanded in my core, sudden and warm.
He stood. In one motion, he’d pulled off his shirt.
It was only the second time I’d seen him without a shirt on. The first time we’d been in Thalassa’s hovel, and he’d been dying of poison. The light had been poor. But here…
He was like no man I’d ever seen. His arms and torso were layered in muscle; the ridges of his abdomen shifted under the crystal light as he bent to pull off his trousers.
I barely caught a glimpse of what lay between his legs—thick, hard—before he stepped forward and swept me into his arms. This was the decisiveness I knew, but he’d never applied it to me like this.
My arm went around his neck as he stepped over to the tub and into it. He lowered himself into the water, and me with him, taking care not to submerge my shoulder.
The water was so hot it burned. After three days in the endless-cold dungeon, it felt like one of my dreams.
He settled me against his chest, his legs bracketing me, his hardness against my lower back. NowthatI hadn’t felt in the alcove. The feeling of him there—and his chest behind me, his arms wrapping around me—made the blood in my center rush downward.
I made to turn toward him, but he stopped me with careful hands on my shoulders.You’re not in control here, his hands said. Some part of me wanted to resist, and some part of me relished his strength.
His fingers trailed up my arms, raising goosebumps as he traced his way up to my hair. “I promised you a bath. Let me clean you, Eury.”
No one had ever done that for me besides my own mother. “Dorian…”
“I want to. Will you let me do that?”
He wanted to. He wanted to clean me, care for me.Let him.Why shouldn’t I let him? In the Eldermaze, he’d told me his promise was keeping me alive. Like a penance I didn’t know the sin for.
I swallowed, nodded.
And so he did. He cupped water in his hands and poured it over my head. He unwound the tangles and snarls from my hair with gentle slowness. His fingers pressed into my scalp, and a long breath quaked its way out of me.
I had never been massaged. I had never known how good it would feel.
When he finished with my hair, he moved downward. His large hand came around my neck, over my collarbone. Again, I wanted to turn toward him; again, I knew he would stop me.
Resisting my urges only made them stronger. Only made my need grow.
And maybe that was what he wanted.
He was methodical and careful with my left shoulder and paused when I hissed at the pain.
