Chapter XI Bath #2
His fingers run gently over the ribbons keeping my stockings in place. The soft flesh of my thighs is dented, the ribbons firmly tied, but Khay makes no move to undo them. Round and round his fingers go, until shocking, hot tingles spread from his touch up my legs, pooling in a forbidden place.
“Khay,” I whisper, needing him to stop, yet also not. “I… Please.”
He nods once, his face turned down, expression hidden. His movements are too sharp as he unties the ribbons, but when he slides the stockings down my legs, his touch is reverent.
One thing is certain. No maid has ever undressed me like this.
When I step out of my stockings, he grabs my hips, holding me as if he’s afraid I’ll run. His eyes are firmly turned on the place where my legs meet, his breathing fast, cheeks dark.
“It’s so thin,” he says with wonder. “I see the shape of your hair underneath. So pretty.”
I shake my head with disbelief. “That’s not pretty. None of that is.”
“No?” Khay laughs hoarsely, looking up, and I gasp in surprise when I see his eyes.
They are darker than before, more intense, and his cheeks are hot with a purple blush so prominent, his freckles almost blend with the color. Candlelight glistens over the cool metal of his eyebrow piercing.
“My little diamond, everything about you is pretty. No, that’s a silly word, forgive me. Beautiful. Stunning. Breathtaking. That’s what you are.”
I realize he’s joking, because no one would ever call me such words other than in jest. I sigh in relief. A joking Khay I can handle, and much better than the strange, mesmerized one.
“Can I bathe now?” I ask, my fingers flexing with the urge to undo his messy updo and touch his soft hair.
“Oh, yes.”
Khay’s long fingers brush the soft skin of my lower belly as he undoes the ribbons tightening my underwear around my hips. He slides them off my thighs, and I turn away, rushing to step in the bathtub and be covered—by water, at least.
But the bathtub is huge, and I hesitate, thinking how high I’ll have to raise my leg to get in. I don’t even worry about my aching thighs at this point, only about how that motion will expose me.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Khay rasps, standing behind me.
His warm palms settle on my waist, fingers kneading my flesh for a heartbeat, and he lifts me up with ease. I sit in the tub, hot water reaching up to my breasts. Khay takes a deep breath and turns away, and I close my eyes, desperately trying to calm down my breathing.
I don’t understand what just happened, but something tells me Khay isn’t the right man to experience it with. If anyone should make me feel this way, it’s my husband.
I swallow the tightness in my throat, wondering if I’m going insane. Not even a week has passed since they stole my kingdom, killed my father, and took me away. Why do I have a ridiculous, wild urge to grab Khay by the hair and pull him into the bathtub with me?
It’s a crazy thought, one coming from the same place that’s relieved my father is dead.
“No, I won’t pretend nothing happened,” Khay says quietly, his back to me.
The water splashes against the copper tub as I turn to watch him, folding my arms on the rounded lip.
“Will you explain it to me?” I ask, hoping maybe he has an answer to the insanity raging within me.
“I’ll try,” he says with a rueful laugh.
“I… I haven’t touched a naked woman in ten years.
That’s when Magnar became king and made me his first knight.
For ten years, I waited for a queen, only to be disappointed time and again.
You see… The queen… Is the only woman I’m allowed to touch.
The only one I want to touch. And now, here you are, and I…
I can barely hold it together. I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better, my lady.”
I watch his back, heaving with sharp breaths, his hands tightened into hard fists at his sides. I think Khay is in pain. I understand it, because there’s a strange, deep ache pulsing in my belly.
“Are you overwhelmed?” I ask.
He snorts without amusement. “You could say that. I’m… trying to be respectful, my lady, and I’m doing my best not to be crude right now. If I don’t control my words, I won’t control anything anymore, and it will end badly. I am only allowed to touch you intimately with your permission.”
I shake my head, frustrated. That tells me nothing, though it’s good to know Khay won’t fondle me if I don’t ask him to do it. It’s also—disappointing.
I gasp a little, shocked by that thought. I never expected I would enjoy any sort of intimate touch, not after my father… But… But he’s gone. And he only ever touched me through my clothes.
This is different, so different. The sensations in my belly have nothing in common with the slimy disgust his caresses evoked.
I wonder what Khay feels, though. He still hasn’t said it clearly. Is he dismayed? Maybe having to touch me makes him squirm with loathing inside.
No, I can’t be the cause of such suffering.
“Khay, do you hate this? Do you want to leave? I can bathe on my own, and I’ll get out as soon as I’m done and won’t drown, I pro…”
He moves so fast, I fall silent from shock. Khay drops to his knees in front of the tub, his face an inch away from mine. His eyes are enormous up close, glistening and dark.
“Caliane, I am loving this. You misunderstood me. Here is the only place I want to be, and so I beg you, don’t tell me to go.”
I shake my head, bemused by how ardent he sounds. The usually smirking Khay is desperate, his face flushed, lips parted as he watches me with wide, pleading eyes.
“No, I… Stay. Unless you hate it, that is.”
He barks out a strange, choked-up laugh. “Nothing can make me hate this. I… Can I wash you? Please. Your skin is so soft, and I can’t… I’ll be respectful. I promise.”
Tingles spread across my chest and back, hot and pleasant. I want to say yes so badly. But I have to ask first.
“Won’t Magnar be angry?” I whisper.
Khay sighs, his face softening. “He’ll be jealous but pleased. The queen should trust her knights. Then again, I can ask him to come. But let me warn you—he won’t be able to wait any longer if he sees you like this. Your wedding night will be tonight.”
I shake my head. “No. Don’t call him. But how… How can this be fine? He… He knows about it? He doesn’t mind?”
Khay presses his forehead to mine, his gentle fingers tangling in my hair. I close my eyes, strangely comforted.
“Would Magnar like to be the first one to see you bare? Yes, without a doubt. Is he trying his damnedest to be good to you and respect your wishes? Also yes. He did kill your father, and Magnar is nothing but willing to accept the consequences of his actions. Only a monster would expect a woman to lie with her father’s killer before his body cooled properly. ”
I clench my teeth, hating to think about my father right now. “Enough about that. So you… You are allowed to see me like this as my knight? This is what the Agnidari consider proper and right?”
Khay hums in confirmation, his fingers burrowed deep in my hair and gently massaging my scalp. I realize he must have taken out my pins, because my hair is loose, locks sticking to my wet arms. I didn’t even notice.
“He trusts me with you. I am his first knight, and that’s why I am here right now, not Raduna or Arvi. Though they can serve you, too, in whatever way you require. If you’d like one of them to be here, I can…”
“No. I… This is perfect. Thank you for explaining.”
Khay takes a deep, happy breath, the warm air he exhales caressing my face. It smells like mint, and that small detail makes me finally lose the last of my reservations.
They aren’t monsters. And Khay… I trust Khay.
“Start with my hair, please.”
He releases a shaky breath of relief and stands up, turning quickly away to bustle with a row of bottles standing on a dresser.
I try to shake off the remnants of my nervousness as I submerge, getting my hair properly wet for washing.
When I emerge, Khay sits at the head of the tub on a stool. He motions me closer.
I sit with my back to him, and Khay’s fingers bury in my hair, lathering a soapy, fragrant concoction into my strands. It smells sweet, like fruit and honey, and I think Khay likes it. His face is close, and he sniffs the air repeatedly with small, happy sighs.
“Do you really enjoy doing this?” I ask with a disbelieving huff, because I can’t imagine anyone being so riveted by my hair and body.
“Enjoy is too weak a word,” Khay says, massaging my head with firm, circular motions. “I love this. You are so beautiful, little diamond.”
I smile at his joke, my eyes falling shut when softening, melting pleasure flows from Khay’s skillful touch. My nape relaxes, and my head lolls back, right into his waiting palm. He holds me up, still working the delightful lather into my hair.
If I had a maid, she would have been done by now, her movements fast and efficient, sometimes painful. Khay is gentle and takes great pains to make this as pleasant for me as possible. When he takes his time like this, it’s easier to believe he’s telling the truth—that he enjoys taking care of me.
“All right,” Khay says when the foam in my hair grows cold. “Tilt your head back, and I’ll rinse it out.”
He has a small bucket he uses to get water from the tub.
With this, too, he takes his time. His fingers comb through my hair time and again, and I sigh with pleasure as warm water cascades down my head and back.
He works up to an even, dependable rhythm, splash, rinse, comb, splash, rinse, comb, until I sway loosely, everything else forgotten.
When that’s done, he squeezes water out of my hair, then rolls it up into a towel he deftly wraps around my head.
“Close your eyes.”
I do as he says, leaning against the tub with a happy sigh. A moment later, a warm, wet cloth presses to my forehead and runs down my face in easy, gliding motions. Khay takes his time, and my breathing deepens. I never knew taking a bath could be so restful.
When the cloth glides down my jaw and throat, and then over my collarbones, I stir. He hums the same melody he did before, when I almost drowned, and I settle back with a sigh. The cloth skims the tops of my breasts, and my nipples tighten as my breathing grows faster.
“Keep them closed,” he murmurs, his voice deep and taut. “I’ll take care of you.”
The cloth travels lower and dips under water, circling my breast in slow, easy motions. As the circles grow smaller toward the center, I hold my breath until the cloth passes over my tight nipple, and I release a heavy sigh. Heat builds in my lower belly, and I clench my fists helplessly.
“My queen must be pampered,” Khay whispers as the cloth circles my other breast, gentle and inevitable.
My eyes firmly closed, I focus on the sensations.
Nothing exists but my body, his hands, and the all encompassing heat of the water.
He washes my other breast as carefully as the first, then lifts each of my arms to gently clean the skin of my armpits.
Round and round the cloth glides, cleaning every inch of my stomach and arms, lingering between each of my fingers.
I was never washed with so much loving attention before.
When it’s time to do my back, Khay rearranges my loose body until I sit, hugging my knees, and he glides the cloth with firm, blissful strokes over my muscles.
My breathing becomes so deep and unrestrained, I almost feel like crying.
It’s as if something comes loose inside me, a screw that was previously tightened.
There’s more space for breath, more sensation.
“I adore doing this, my queen,” Khay murmurs in a low, worshipful voice. “I love seeing how you sigh and quiver under my touch. I will do so much more, and I’ll give you so much more pleasure. Lean back now. Keep your eyes closed.”
When he grasps my ankle, I sigh, realizing what other parts of me are yet to be washed. Khay glides the cloth over my foot and up my calf, then switches to the other leg. That done, he lays his palm against my inner thigh and pushes it gently to the side, his breathing fast now, hand trembling.
I shake but let him open me, my body soft and pliant in his hold.
“Oh, my queen,” he whispers as the cloth strokes my thigh under water, as meticulous and gentle as it was everywhere else. “Oh, Caliane.”
My breasts push in and out of water with every fast, shaky breath.
He hums again, the melody helping me relax just a little, but this fire burning in my belly is not fear or apprehension.
I am excited, tension building. I long to finally feel his touch in the place he left for last, and I squeeze my eyes tighter and tighter, because not seeing it makes it more bearable.
The cloth stops almost at the apex of my thighs. I gasp out a breath that sounds strangely like a sob.
“May I, my queen?” Khay asks, voice trembling.
I nod, not daring to open my eyes. “Yes!”
When he touches me, it’s not with the cloth. His fingers slowly comb through the hair between my legs, and I choke on a shocked breath, my nails digging into my outer thighs. The melody cracks, Khay’s humming breaking apart in places as he loses control over his voice.
His fingers part me softly. My breaths turn into soft moans, and I sense how hot my flesh there is, how plump under his touch. He strokes me with gentle, easy glides, no longer washing, but—caressing.
When he reaches deeper, to the very center of me, and strokes my opening, the melody stops. Khay heaves a deep, longing sigh.
“This is Magnar’s,” he whispers. “At least until you give him an heir.”
Oh gods. The thought of Magnar touching me there, pushing inside me, and making me full until I’m pregnant isn’t at all repulsive or scary now. If he were here and did it now, I wouldn’t protest at all. Indeed, I might thank him.
Khay’s fingers skim lower, deeper, and I cry out in shock as they press to my other opening, the one even more unmentionable than the first. He circles it, round and round, and it’s…
it’s… Just as pleasant as everything else he did today.
My insides tighten with heat, and I bite my lips shut as a wail of pleasure builds in my throat.
“And this might be ours,” he says between fast, heavy breaths. “If my queen allows it. This might be ours.”