Grat grabbed my wrist, moving my hand away. “Don’t scratch, you’ll make it worse.”
“What will I make worse?” I glanced down.
The pink welts from my scratching crisscrossed the wide bluish lines that marred my chest and shoulders. The raised edges of the lines bloomed with a bright blue rush of dots. Grouped in fours like the lucky clover leaf, the swollen dots looked like small pink flowers covering my body in long discolored stripes.
“What the hell is this?” I screamed in horror and would’ve bolted out of the tub had Grat not caught me by my arm.
“You’ll have to wash off the juice of the reeds. Like this.” He rubbed my shoulder with the soap, lathering my skin.
“Will it help?” I whimpered.
“The soap has red pine sap in it. It’s the best thing against the sweet reed. My mother washed my mouth with it when I was four and ate a bunch of sweet reeds once.”
“You survived,” I exhaled with relief.
“I did. And you will too. Sweet reed won’t kill you, but it itches like crazy, especially if you wait long enough for the rash to turn purple.”
It itched badly enough already. I hadn’t paid it much attention before, thinking it was just the sweat and the dirt under the bear hide that itched my skin. But now that I saw the rash, all I wanted to do was to scratch it.
“Don’t scratch,” Grat warned. “Once we wash it properly, you’ll feel much better.” He leaned around me to take a look at my back. “How did you manage to get it all over yourself like that? Did you roll in the damned thing?”
“I wanted to bathe in the pond, so I took my clothes off,” I explained.
“What clothes?” He cast a confused look at the discarded hide and a few dirty rags that were left from my dress and undershirt.
Afraid that he’d demand an explanation for those, I scrambled for a distraction.
“So, how do I make it better?” I rubbed an inflamed welt over my collarbone.
He promptly moved my hand away again and soaped my chest. “Iamdoing it better, see? Once it’s clean, the itch will stop, and as long as you stay away from the sweet reed from now on, you’ll be fine.”
He didn’t use a washcloth, gliding his huge hands over my skin to spread the suds on my chest instead. I stiffened when hislarge palms moved over my bare breasts. But he washed them with the same methodical concentration as any other part of my body.
His touch was firm but gentle, sending my emotions into an unexpected area. My nipples hardened as he rubbed the soap over them. My heart beat faster. A warm, achy feeling stirred low in my belly.
“Get up a little. Let me see more of you,” Grat instructed.
Obediently, I rose on my knees, with the water level dropping to my hips.
“Silly girl,” he rumbled good-naturedly. “Just look at you. You got it everywhere.”
He lathered my belly, then slid his palms down each of my thighs. As one of his huge, warm hands traveled back up my left thigh, it slipped, with his thumb bumping high between my legs.
Desire zapped through me. Air rushed out of my lungs. I bent over, gripping the edge of the tub.
“Did I hurt you?” Grat worried.
“No…” I exhaled a shaky breath.
He glanced at my face, and finally—finally—seemed to realize that I wasn’t just some “stray” he’d picked up in the woods but also a woman. A woman, who had never been touched with this much care before by a man who harbored no hidden agenda but simply tried to make her feel better. I was also a woman, who hadn’t touched herself for a very long time while being busy fighting for survival.
I pressed my thighs together, sending a shiver of desire through my naked body, too aroused and too tired to hide it from him.
“Oh,” he uttered, looking a little stunned. “Did I get you excited, my sweet wild thing?”
“Mhm,” I half-nodded, half-moaned in response.
Grat cleared his throat, looking uncertain. “Do you need me to…uhm, take care of it for you?”
