Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
B riony
Why does every one of my encounters with Fox Tudor leave me bewildered, confused and flustered? My heart is racing like a runaway train and all because the man stepped within a few centimeters of me. He didn’t even touch me – not with his hands anyway. He did touch me with his magic. It was different again from Beaufort’s and Thorne’s. It was almost like it wasn’t restraining me but holding me – holding me like he would if he were going to kiss me.
I knock my hand against my head. What the hell is wrong with me? One bit of fingering and all my thoughts have turned spicy and a little unhinged.
There is no plane of existence in which Fox Tudor would want to kiss me. Especially now he is a professor at the academy and would most definitely lose his job, his reputation and his livelihood.
Yet, no matter how many times I tell myself that, I can’t shake that first instinct away and I can’t stop imagining what it would be like to kiss a man like Professor Fox Tudor.
Intimidating probably.
Perhaps there’s some god watching and judging my smutty thoughts, because I’m halfway back to the tower when the killer cramps start, forcing me to double over and groan. It’s a really bad one – probably worsened by that torturous exercise session today. Muriel tried to convince me once that physical exercise helped lesson cramps but I’ve long suspected that was just another of her sadistic lies.
Clutching my stomach and bending double, I hobble across the remainder of the campus, up the stairs and collapse on my bed. It hurts too much to even attempt to remove my clothes and climb into my nightwear. Instead I pull the covers over me and pray for death. Fly isn’t even across the hallway, to call for help and beg for painkillers. I’ve no more of my own.
After a few minutes, I hear the tower bell clang eight o’clock and I’m vaguely aware there’s no way in hell I’m making it over to the Princes’ tower tonight. I couldn’t give less of a shit. There is nothing they could do to me that is worse than what my own body is currently doing.
I roll up into a ball, my teeth clattering and close my eyes. I do the thing I always did when the pain was too much. I take myself away. I close off my body from my mind and I disappear, somewhere my sister is, her arms around me, her soft voice whispering to me.
“Storm!”
The light kicks on, dazzling me back to the present. I groan as the pain batters my body once again and the light assaults my eyes.
“Where the hell have you been? You were due at our place twenty minutes ago!” Beaufort’s loud angry voice yells at me.
I wrap my arms over my head. “Leave me alone,” I mutter.
Boots march across the floor and then a hand lands on my shoulder.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong, little thrall?” That same hand comes to cup my face and turn it towards his. He’s not alone. Dray hangs right by his shoulder. I blink up at them, tears I didn’t even know I was crying blurring their features.
“Go away,” I mumble.
“Did someone hurt you?” Dray growls, sounding remarkably like his wolf.
“No!”
“Are you sick?” Beaufort lays the back of his hand against my damp forehead.
“No, it’s just my period. I got my period, that’s all.”
I hear Dray sniff. “Fuck, yeah. I can smell it – that’s gross.”
“Thanks a lot,” I hiss. “Now please leave me alone. I’m not coming tonight. I don’t care if you think you’re going to drag me or whatever. It hurts too much.” I clutch my stomach and moan.
Dray and Beaufort conspire in hushed tones, but I’m too out of it to work out the words. Then, in the next moment, I feel a pair of strong arms slide underneath me and scoop me up. Beaufort’s arms. He holds me against his chest and marches me out of the room.
“I may be wrong, but I don’t think there is any conceivable way that you could describe this as dragging, Beaufort Lincoln,” I point out.
“I’m making an exception,” he says with an expression that looks a lot more like a real smile than his usual smirk.
Dray trots along after us, bouncing up and down on his toes.
“I wanted to carry her,” he whines.
“Tough shit,” Beaufort says, taking the steps two at a time.
“But you get to have all the fun.”
“She’s sick,” Beaufort says.
“And I smell bad, remember?”
“You still smell fucking amazing,” he says grinning, “just not as a good as usual.”
Beaufort’s arms are strong and his embrace warm, and maybe I’m imagining it but I swear I feel his magic against my skin, soothing away the pain. I sink into his arms, resting my head against his chest and close my eyes.
I guess the pain and that exercise session plus all the tension with Professor Tudor has worn me out, because I jerk awake again a few minutes later as Beaufort carries me up the stairs in his own tower, Dray still behind us.
“Where are we going?” I murmur, sleepily. If he thinks he’s going to get a repeat of last weekend’s activities, he’s going to be sorely disappointed. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t – that was a one off, a stupid mistake – I don’t think I could physically lower myself onto my knees tonight. My thighs will not do it.
“I’ve run you a hot bath.”
“Are we joining her in it?” Dray says, eyes lighting up.
“No,” Beaufort says firmly. “It’s to make her feel better.” He glances down at me. “That’s correct, right?”
I nod my head, not that I was treated to many hot baths back home.
“We’ll add some soothing salts in too,” Dray pipes up.
“Are protectors meant to run their thralls baths?” It doesn’t exactly sound like how things are meant to work. “As your little slave, aren’t I meant to be the one running baths?” I say, sarcastically.
Beaufort walks into the steamy bathroom and drops me down hard on my feet.
“I’ve told you before, the arrangement is reciprocal. You look after us and we look after you.” He jerks his head towards the bath. “Get in.”
“Erm, no.”
Dray leans in the doorway, one foot crossed over the other ankle, gaze flicking eagerly between me and Beaufort.
“Don’t argue with me, little thrall. You said it would make you feel better. We both saw how much pain you were in. Get in the damn bath.”
“Not with the two of you standing there watching. Some privacy please.”
“You shy?” Dray chuckles.
“It has nothing to do with being shy and a lot to do with privacy and respect,” I say through gritted teeth as another cramp sears through my stomach. I really, really want to climb into that bath and sink into oblivion. I just don’t want to do it with them watching.
“You’re clearly exhausted,” Beaufort says, “you fell asleep in my arms almost immediately. I’m not having you fall asleep in the bath and drowning.”
“I won’t.”
“You’re in obvious pain, little thrall, just get in the bath.” Dray chuckles. I lift my chin stubbornly and shake my head, even though the cramps hurt like hell. “I’ll tell you what, then. We’ll turn around.” He grabs Beaufort’s arm and, after some tussling, forces him to turn his back on me, doing the same himself. “There you are. We promise not to peek.”
I consider them. I don’t really trust them not to peek. I also really want to climb into that bath. It’s been so long since I’ve had one, I can’t even remember what it was like. But it smells divine and looks like heaven.
“Okay,” I say, “but if you–”
“We won’t,” Dray promises.
Hunched over to protect my modesty as best I can, I slip off my clothes quickly and climb into the bath, sighing as I slip under the water. My eyes drift closed as the warmth of the water and salts soothe away the cramps and I tip back my head and lean it against the edge of the bath, my body completely submerged under the water.
“Wanna tell us about those scars, little thrall?” Dray growls from the other side of the bathroom.
My eyelids fly open. Both men are glaring at me, thunder clouding their expressions. It’s pretty terrifying and I don’t even know what I did wrong.
“You promised not to peek,” I say, sinking deeper into the water.
“Was it the shithead from Slate Quarter?” Beaufort asks, his tone deadly. “The same one who gave you the black eye?”
“It’s no one you know,” I say, turning my head and peering down into the water; my body is obscured under the water, water that’s slowly turning crimson with my blood.
It brings back flashes of memories, of running water turning red with my blood as I washed myself up as best I could in the freezing cold river.
Under the water, I can’t see the disfigurements she left on my stomach, although I know the ones on my back are far far worse.
“How did it happen?” Beaufort asks.
I swim my hands through the water. I feel light-headed, like I could float away, disassociate from the here and now and never have to answer these questions.
But then he’s beside me, his fingers cupping my chin again, once more turning my face to meet his. “Tell me how they did it and who it was and I will kill them.”
“You’re not going to kill anyone,” I snort.
“I am,” he growls.
“It’s in the past. It’s over. I’m never going back there.” Even if they send me back to Slate Quarter, I won’t be going home. I’m not a child anymore. I’m free now and I have no intention of returning.
“No, you’re not,” Beaufort says, meeting my gaze with his silver one. “Because you’re ours now.”
I don’t know why he says that because we all know, even if I relent and agree to be their thrall, this is only a temporary arrangement lasting as long as our time in the academy. Then I will most probably never see the three of them again.
I don’t have long to mull it over though, because in the next moment they do something entirely unexpected. Dray comes to kneel on the other side of the bathtub and reverently, gently, with care and kindness they begin to wash me, soft sponges and fragrant soap gliding over my skin.
I’m too weak to argue about it. Too tired to push them away.
Instead, I close my eyes once more and dissolve into the feeling. If it’s been a long time since anyone touched me with kindness, then I don’t remember a time someone stroked and caressed me like this. Even Amelia was too busy to do anything but scrub the dirt from my body, hurriedly because the water was always too cold to make it pleasant.
When Dray reaches the scars on my stomach, he’s even gentler, his brow furrowing as he does.
“I know it’s really ugly,” I mutter, wrapping my arms around my stomach in a bid to hide them from him. Maybe this will finally be the point when they realize they don’t want me as a thrall.
“I didn’t say they were ugly. Is that what you think? Is that why you were trying to keep them hidden?”
“They’re not exactly beautiful, are they?”
He rocks back on his heels and drags his shirt over his head. His chest is sculpted and muscular, rows of tight abs running over his stomach. But he also has a scar of his own – a ragged one that runs in a circle over his shoulder and down his back.
“How did–” I gasp.
“Another shifter. He wasn’t very friendly.” He chuckles. “Don’t worry he’s dead now.”
“Shit,” I mumble, realizing it must have been a set of powerful jaws that made that scar, realizing it was probably Dray who killed the other shifter. “But I didn’t notice it when you were–”
“Fur hides it.”
“Did it hurt?”
He chuckles again. “Hurt like hell,” he says, running his fingertips over the raised mangled flesh. “Do you think it’s ugly?”
“No,” I admit. I shrug. “It’s kinda sexy.” I peer down at my stomach. “My scars are not sexy.”
“They’re a testament of what you’ve been through – whatever that was,” he adds, with a growl, “of what you survived. And that is beautiful.”
I can’t help smiling at the crazy bastard, an expression he studies with interest.
Beaufort taps my shoulder.
“Lean forward so I can do your back,” he commands. I pull a face. I don’t want to. I only ever catch fleeting glances of my back in the mirror but I know it’s as mangled and twisted as Dray’s shoulder.
“Please,” Dray adds with a set of puppy dog eyes that could melt the coldest of hearts.
With a little huff, I fold forwards, resting my cheek on my bent knees.
Beaufort mutters something under his breath and then he’s gliding the sponge over my back. I barely feel it. I lost the sensation on the skin there long ago.
“Did it hurt?” Dray asks me, repeating my early question.
I consider whether to tell them the truth, and in the end – who knows what possesses me – I do.
“At first, yes. But I learned to disassociate from the pain. To take myself someplace else.”
“It happened more than once,” Beaufort says, his voice quiet but a current of rage quivering below the surface.
I close my eyes. “Many times.”
I feel a slight tug at my scalp and then Beaufort is unwinding my hair and washing that too.
“She has the most beautiful hair,” he murmurs to Dray, running his fingers through the strands and massaging my scalp. It’s so good I let out a little sigh of pleasure. That man really does have exceedingly talented hands.
When they’ve finished washing me, Dray holds out the biggest, fluffiest of white towels I’ve ever seen and Beaufort holds out his hand to help me out. I hesitate again, but they’ve already seen me naked so I guess there is nothing left to be modest about.
“Don’t you have a different towel?” I ask.
“This one not good enough for you, little thrall?” Dray asks, one side of his mouth raised in a lopsided grin. “It’s made from the finest cotton.”
“I’ll get blood all over it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Beaufort says, shaking his hand.
“Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of fabrics?!”
“Yes,” they both answer together.
“Oh,” I say, still thinking about their answer as I climb out of the bath and let Dray wrap me up in the towel.
“There’re sanitary items just there,” Beaufort says, pointing to a pile of items beside the sink, “and a set of my pajamas there.”
“Pajamas?” I say, but they’re already out of the bathroom.
I peer around looking for my own clothes to pull on instead and realizing they’re gone. Sneaky. Seems I have no choice but to put on the plaid pants and baggy t-shirt unless I want to walk back to my room in the nude. Which I definitely do not.
I find a comb by the sink and brush out my hair, automatically going to tie it back up and then pausing. They’ve seen me naked. They’ve seen my scars. They’ve seen my hair. There’s almost nothing left to hide. And so I leave it hanging loose and tiptoe out into the hallway.
“I’m in here,” Beaufort says, standing by the chest of drawers he caught me at days ago. He’s holding a glass of broth in his hands. “It has pain-easing qualities. It will help you sleep.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from him. “Do you have something I can put it in? I’m worried I’ll have spilled it all by the time I get back to my room.”
“You can sleep here tonight,” he says casually. I raise an eyebrow at him. He shrugs and buries his hands deep into his pockets. “You’ll be much more comfortable. That bed in your room is shit, whereas this one …” He tilts his head towards his bed and I follow my gaze that way. “Plus there’s a hot water bottle waiting for you.”
The bed is huge with so many pillows and blankets I could roll myself up in. It’s so tempting, especially as the soothing effects of the bath are fading.
I obviously have a serious lack of willpower today. These men are wearing me down.
That may have to be tomorrow-Briony’s problem, though, because right now I want to curl up in that bed and sleep.
“If you’re expecting …” I nibble on my lip, because he’s asking me to climb into his bed after all and I am not na?ve, that has some definite connotations.
“I’m expecting you to get a good night’s sleep. I doubt you’ve had one since you got here.”
I don’t tell him I’ve slept pretty well, that my bed in the tower may be shit but at least it’s a bed and not the cold hard floor.
“Okay, then.”
He raises his eyebrows. “What? No argument?”
“Your bed does look amazing.” I sigh. I gulp down the draught and Beaufort walks me towards the bed and sweeps back the cover. There, as promised, is a fluffy-looking hot water bottle.
Feeling pretty self-conscious, I climb into bed, hugging the hot water bottle to my stomach and rolling onto my side.
Beaufort pulls the cover up around me and to my utter astonishment tucks me in.
“Good night, little thrall,” he says, pressing his lips to my forehead, “sleep well.”