MY EYES FLEW OPEN. I SPLASHED ABOUT, sitting up to gape at Asdren standing on the other side of the heated pool, eyes flashing brightest blue, arms folded.
I felt my heart thunder in my breast as if it would burst free.
“Well, you planning to speak?” he asked, glancing from me to the mat boy who darted up to his side. Asdren flipped a gold coin to the lad who fell on it like a starving wyrmling on a discarded meat pie. “You did good, Pommy. Lock that door behind you when you leave.”
“Aye, Sergeant Major,” the boy whispered, saluted the sellsword, and bolted out of the bathhouse. The rattle of a key in a lock sealed me in with one irate dwarf.
“You know him?” I finally managed to say. Asdren strode to the edge of the pool across from me, his stern expression set like stone.
“I know quite a few people in this shite hole place. Pirates and mercenaries tend to congregate together like blackbirds picking over a corpse,” he informed me. “Pommy is a waif that my kindhearted cousin Killa took in after her boy was killed.”
“Oh.” That cleared up a small bit of shock. I slid down into the hot water until it rested on my chin.
“Oh. Yeah, oh is right. When me and the others arrived a few hours ago—”
“The rest of the Sable Legion are here?” I moved down just a little more. The water now tickled my lower lip. Guilt was pushing me down into the bath. What was hedoinghere?
“Aye, they’re out looking for some relaxation as I rode them hard the past few days.”
He sat down to remove one boot and toss it over his thick shoulder. “How did you find me?”
His bright blue gaze flitted from his remaining boot to me. “I followed your trail across the plains. You think you’re the only one who can pick up a sign? I was in the military for forty years, boy-o.”
“I am an elf grown,” I corrected immediately.
“Really? Are you now? That’s a laugh.” He jerked his left boot from his foot and then heaved it at the wall. It hit with a thud and dropped onto the damp floor. “From where I’m sitting, you’re acting like a shitty little brat. What kind of elf grown sneaks out of a man’s bed in the dead of night after they shared a moment?”
He stared hard. I sat up a bit in the pool, shamed, yes, but also proud of my dedication to my king and my mission.
“I have a job to do.” My chin came up.
“Fuck that. I have a job too.” He pushed to his wet feet and began yanking the ties free on his leather breastplate. I stared wantonly as he flung the protective plate aside and divested himself of his undershirt, baring that furred, wide chest. “My job was to make sure your skinny arse made it across the tundra. Correct me if that ain’t what I swore to your king.” My lips flattened. “I think my exact words were, and I fucking quote, ‘one skinny elf ain’t going to ride through a vast tundra filled with irate warriors and not come out missing a few body parts,’ end quote. Which meant to me that you was mine to protect until we ended the search.”
“But I did not require your escort over the tundra. My skinny arse made it here without any harm befalling me. I still have all my parts.”
Why was I arguing with him when all I truly wanted was to have him take me to his bed and show me how wanted I was? If he still wanted me, that was…
He grunted. Then proceeded to strip off all his clothes as my prick took notice of how stiff his cock was when it bounced free of his breeks. So he did still desire me then. That made me stupidly happy.
“You just got lucky. Slipping off in the dark is unbecoming of a royal scout,” he commented, as he was about to lower himself into the heavily scented water. He never looked left or right. His whole attention was on me. “You want to be named a scoundrel like your old man?”
“Do noteversay that to me!” I snarled as he sat just an arm’s reach from me, stripped of all his outerwear, baring himself to me. “What are you doing?!”
I warred with myself. Move into his arms. Leave the pool. Shout at him. Kiss him. Tie his beard in a knot. Beg him to love me.
“I’m looking to start soaking the dirt from me. Some lame-arse redheaded elf rode off without even a fare thee fucking well, spurring me to chase his freckled backside for nigh onto a sennight. What do you think I’m doing, Chirp?”
“Trying to confuse me…the truth of what…making it hard for me to think!” The truth poured out of me like a well-primed pump. “You here is…why are you doing…this is…it hurts.”
I leapt from the water, pulled a towel around my middle, and stalked into the changing room, leaving a path of primrose-scented puddles in my wake. The door slammed open behind me, an irate and naked dwarf thundering in on my heels.
“And there he goes, running away from his problems like a true cowardly son of a bandit,” he flung at my wet back. That brought me around with a vengeance. His gaze met mine. “Tell me you ain’t like your pa once more, Chirp. Seems all he did was run. From your ma, from you, from his responsibilities, from the law. Both ores are from the same vein, I see.”
“You horrid shite!” I growled, all that earlier happiness now muddied up by his miserable comments. “Why are you here? I do not need you to protect me. I am an elf grown! How did you find me here?”
“Oh, that was the easiest part,” he replied with that smug confidence I found both wildly appealing and terribly galling all at once. “We rode in exhausted, so I went to my cousin’s house to beg a place to sleep and some rest. She was happy to put us up. I asked if she seen an elf with bright red hair and freckles in the past few suns. No, she said, but her foundling spoke up to tell me that he never seen no red hair on an elf’s head, but he seen a tidy little patch of fire down by your meat rudder. Also, he was happy to say, there were a hundred dots all over this elf’s pale, bony backside. There could only be one rawboned daisy dancer to fit that description, so I come down and there you sat in a bath. What the fuck did you do to that pretty hair of yours?”
“It concerns you not at all.”
