Best to not think about that. She needed to focus on getting warm. She squeezed all of the water she could from her braid and then rummaged through her bag for an old rag she’d packed as a washing cloth. Her hair smelled like swamp and there was dried mud on her feet, but it was the best she could do until she could clean herself in the river. If she ever dared to go back into the water, that was. It certainly wasn’t something she was going to do now with night coming on.
She dressed in her spare shirt and breeches, pulled on fresh socks, and shoved her feet into her mostly dry boots. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and sat down just as a dark form stepped from the fog. Her heart stopped and didn’t start beating again until the shape resolved into the witch hunter, waterskins slung over his shoulder, her wet clothes folded over his arm, and a determined look on his face.
He hung her clothes over one of the lower branches and set the waterskins down by their bags before crouching in front of her. He took her hands in his and cursed.
“Your hands are like ice, and I can’t start a fire in this. What a miserable fucking day.”
His hands were warm and calloused, but gentle where they cupped hers. She smiled. “Language, Captain.”
His blue eyes flashed up to meet hers. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
“I’ll be okay,” she told him, pulling her hands away and tucking them inside the blanket. “The storm sounds like it’s moving off.”
The roll of thunder was distant now, muted to a low growl. Hopefully, the rain would stop soon too.
“I’m going to change into dry clothes. If you can’t get warm, you need to let me know and we’ll try something else.”
She almost asked him what else there was to try, but then she thought about the heat she’d felt radiating from him and decided not to think about it. She huddled into the blanket until the coarse wool scratched at her cheeks and listened to the tap of the rain on the oil cloth. She watched Casrian grab a dry shirt out of his bag and walk a few paces away to the edge of their shelter.
His back was to her as he hung his wool coat on a branch and drew his damp shirt over his head, revealing broad shoulders and the long valley of his spine. She was momentarily mesmerized by the way the muscles in his back shifted as he dragged his shirt across his body to dry off.
Why did he have to look like that?
She didn’t want to be attracted to the witch hunter. It’d be easier if he were ugly or smelly or foul. Anything other than the golden god of a man who made her insides feel funny every time she looked at him too long.
Temptation of a carnal nature wasn’t something she had much experience with. Toam wasn’t exactly bursting with strapping young men. Tilly was always telling her she should go find a handsome stranger in Sulen to have a little fun with. But she’d never met anyone she wanted to be with in that way.
Maybe that was it.
She’d spent years neglecting her natural urges and now they were welling up at the sight of the first handsome man to cross her path. It didn’t mean that shelikedhim or wanted to act on it. It just meant that he was pretty to look at. So long as she didn’t let it go past looking, she’d be fine. Stupid to feel anything more than that for a man who’d hurt her mother. One who’d hate her if he knew what she was.
It wasn’t like he was interested in her anyway.
You must know what you look like…
But he’d only been rattling off a list of attributes that she might be able to use to find a place in the capital. In some old, desperate man’s bed.
He hadn’t offered herhisbed.
He didn’t look at her like he wanted her anyway. Mostly, when he looked at her, it was with a mix of irritation and appalled fascination. Her tangled hair and the smell of swamp water weren’t going to change that.
She stared fixedly out at the rain and tried to ignore the sounds of the witch hunter undressing only a few feet away.
“Do I need to change this bandage?” he asked.
“Is it wet?”
“Everything’s wet,” he said. “Will you help me?”
“Sure.”
She turned to him and froze. He was facing her, and she tried to figure out where to look when all she could see was the broad slope of his chest and the bands of muscle on his abdomen. There was a golden line of hair that arrowed from his navel into his breeches and she…
Nope.
It wasn’t safe to look there either.
She forced her gaze up to his face but that was no better because his expression told her he knew what she was thinking and was deeply amused by it.
