Page 45 of Black Sea

And before I could stop and think about the consequences, I left the shower stall where I had taken cover.

26

The guards roused themselves from their arousal and raised their crossbows with a start, aiming at me as I approached the servant with the stern expression I used to give my soldiers.

She jumped a mile and stopped touching Amlach, who calmly pulled out his hand from under her tunic.

“You’re cutting that beard in patches, girl,” I reproached her. “Do you want him to look like a piebald?”

“N-no . . .” she stammered, glancing hesitantly toward the men. “I . . .”

I stretched out my hand with the palm facing up so abruptly that the young woman recoiled in fright, stepping out of the semicircle formed by Amlach’s legs.

“Give them to me,” I ordered.

Ysia shuddered at my feral gaze, handed me the scissors, and then turned and left the bathroom like lightning.

I met the guards’ anxious gazes, daring them to shoot the darts now that I was armed with scissors.

The fifth soldier huffed annoyingly. “Just be quick about it.”

Summoning all my courage, I tried to ignore the glances directed at my legs, arms, and shoulders as I turned toward Amlach. Swallowing hard, I moved between his knees to get closer to him.

He stared at me with a very smug face. “Someone is jealous . . .”

I glared at him. “Someone doesn’t realize I have scissors right at his throat.”

A smile lifted one corner of his lips.

“Head against the wall,” I commanded him.

He did as he was told, his pine-green eyes glimmering with arrogance.

I set to work, trying not to think about the fact that I was touching his face for the first time. That his breath was brushing my knuckles. That I longed for my eyes to rest on his damp torso.

That I longed for him to touch me as he had just done with the human girl. To touch me much more than he did with her.

I felt a liquid heat between my thighs at the thought of feeling his calloused fingertips slip through the hairless lips of my vulva. At the thought of his fingers entering me, I felt like I was on fire. I rubbed my knees together, embarrassed by the inconceivable reaction of my body, and tried to ignore the tingling all over my body, focusing on what I was doing.

Gradually, Amlach’s smile waned, and his face turned so serious and gloomy, almost vicious, that I stiffened. His hands—resting on his thighs until then—slowly closed into a fist.

I held my breath, the scissors close to the small tuft of beard I was about to trim.

Amlach inhaled forcefully, angrily, and let his arms fall slowly to the sides of the chair, grasping its back legs. “Don’t stop,” he ordered in a low growl.

Or he would stop restraining himself.

That was the message his eyes conveyed. They were too intense, too dark, filled with a desire that threatened to possess me, devour me.

Ruin me.

With my heart thundering in my chest, I finished trimming his beard and then applied the soothing ointment on the still reddened and slightly peeling areas of his face due to the days spent in the sun.

In a sudden move, Amlach took my wrist and, frowning, peered at my fingers. “You’re bleeding.”

The broken nail on my middle finger was encircled by a thick, vermilion ring that had already started to trickle down toward the knuckle.

“It’s nothing,” I said brusquely.