13. Steam and Surrender #3
“I would… like that, but I should warn you,” she said, gathering her courage, “I’m meant to help you bathe.
And dress. And well, all of it. The other ladies, they expect to be washed and tended to and…
” Her blush deepened impossibly. “I could wash your hair, if you… I’m very good at it, so I’m told, and…
” The thought of this sweet, shy creature scrubbing my back like I was some pampered noblewoman made my face go hot.
Which was why I stopped her mid-flow, lifting my hand up.
“That’s… erm… no. Thank you. Truly.” I cleared my throat.
“I think I can manage the washing part myself. I’ve been doing it unsupervised for a while now and only occasionally drowned,” I teased, and it felt like a win when she laughed again.
That same helpless bright sound that ended in the little snort.
She clapped her hand over her mouth again, and I thought, fiercely and absurdly, that I would happily fight a second war just to keep that laugh in the world.
“Ha! There it is, you did it again, and you can’t take it back.” I smirked, making her chuckle this time.
“Now go relax,” I told her, shooing her gently toward the door. “Before I make you laugh so hard you injure yourself. Come back and rescue me from the dress in an hour. That part I genuinely cannot do alone.”
“An hour,” she promised, bobbing one last curtsy, her eyes bright. “Enjoy your bath, my… Alex.” I winked at her.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get it one day.”
She grinned at this, and then she was gone, hurrying out in a rustle of sapphire skirts, pulling the chamber door shut behind her, and the room settled into warm, petal-scented quiet.
I shed the crimson gown with enormous relief, leaving it pooled on the floor like the silken death trap it was, and sank into the bath with a frankly indecent groan.
Heaven… This was heaven.
Although I did feel like having two baths a day was a bit excessive, but with a bath this awesome, who was I to complain?
The water came up to my collarbone, hot and soft and endless, the tub so absurdly vast that I could have stretched out fully without touching either end.
Four people could have bathed in it without crowding.
I tipped my head back against the cool marble lip, closed my eyes, and let the heat soak the last of the day’s nerves out of my shoulders.
Just for a little while, I let myself drift, weightless and warm and, for once, entirely safe.
Which, of course, was exactly when I heard the door.
I leaned back, looking up, and there he was.
Even upside down, Atlas looked unbelievably gorgeous. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door close behind him, the soft click of the latch, and I knew we were alone.
“Hello there,” I said with a slight smirk.
“Hello.” He smiled down at me, a dark twinkle in his eye and a devilish grin that told me he had exactly one thing on his mind. One thing I found I wasn’t remotely inclined to complain about.
I righted myself and moved through the water until I reached the far side, the better to see the whole of the room. And, of course, the whole of him.
He was breathtaking. He still wore the same dark, fitted tunic from that morning.
I had grown so used to him in armor, or in nothing at all, that the casual elegance of it made him seem somehow more dangerous, not less.
Or perhaps that was simply the predatory look in his eye as he crossed the room toward me.
He reached back, fisted a handful of the dark fabric at his collar, and drew the tunic up and over his head in one slow, unhurried motion.
The movement bared his torso to the light, and I very nearly drooled as every carved muscle shifted beneath sun-warmed skin.
He tossed the tunic carelessly aside. Heat crawled up my neck and lower, pooling between my legs, and my heart began to pound as his hands dropped to the laces of his trousers.
There was an elegance to the way he toed off his boots and stepped out of them that should not have been possible.
The soft sound of fabric against skin impossibly loud in the steam-thick quiet.
I turned away, feigning a nonchalance I didn’t remotely feel, though my burning cheeks and the smile tugging at my mouth gave me away entirely as I turned back to him.
“What do you think you’re doing? This is my bath,” I informed him, crossing my arms over my bare chest, trying to look stern and no doubt failing.
He chuckled, the sound rumbling low in his throat like a warning. “I think you’ll find, little bird, that this is my bath. Just as everything else in this castle is mine.” His gaze dragged slowly down the line of my naked body, and his voice dropped lower still.
“And you are in it.”
I turned to give him my back but ended up shrieking, half laughing, as he slid into the water beside me, ignoring the steps entirely.
The bath surged and broke around us as his weight hit it, and somehow his heat made the sloshing water feel almost cool by comparison.
His nearness stole the breath straight from my lungs.
Then his hands found me, sure and certain as he spun me to face him so he could wrap his arms around me, drawing me against the hard, hot length of him that I felt dig into my stomach.