Chapter 8 #2
“You…” he finally said, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Dammit, woman.” He huffed out a sound that was both stunned and irritably amused. “You are either utterly daft, stupidly brave, or foolishly forgiving. Which one, I cannot figure out, but I am in favour of utterly daft.”
She rolled her eyes. “Or I was just doing my job.”
“Rayna, you should have never entered that room alone, especially having known there was a possibility I could have harmed you,” he said with a scolding bite to his timbre. “You ought to be more fearful for your life. Had I held on for even a trice longer, I might have killed you.”
Rayna’s feathers ruffled, standing on end.
“I didn’t walk in without any precautions, Dominic,” she said and swiped up the bottle of shampoo as she moved to his side of the tub.
“The guards were waiting outside, but you let go, so it was fine. I’m also good at my job.
I know when I can approach someone, and there was no real danger with you.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to enter. ”
He made an indecipherable sound of disbelief as she placed the bottle by his shoulder. Standing at his back, she reached for the small hand shower attached to the bath on the wall side, but Dominic seized her wrist.
He glared disapprovingly. “You are the very reason a woman should always have a man to watch over her. Why she is placed under his care and protection.”
Her scoff was instant, uncontainable. “Yeah. Sure.”
He tugged her, almost pressing her breasts to either side of his face. “A man—be it father, husband, or brother—would have stopped you from acting so recklessly.”
“Dominic—”
“He would have protected you, made certain you were safe under his roof. Or at the very least, he would have prevented you from entering a rabid man’s cage and endangering yourself.”
“I’m not a child that someone needs to or can tell me what I can or can’t do, or where I can fucking go.
Especially not when it comes to my job,” she bit out.
“Neither am I some damsel in distress that I need a man to protect me. I don’t.
I never will.” His gaze hardened, but so did hers.
“I’d like to remind you you’re not in your time right now.
Women don’t need to rely on men the way they once did, so don’t try to fit me into a mould that doesn’t exist anymore. ”
“I called you neither a child nor a damsel, Rayna.” His fingers tightened around her wrist. “You are undoubtedly a capable, foul-mouthed witch. And what year it is does not change what a man’s due responsibility is, what it has always been. And that is to care—”
“Then you’ll be glad to hear that V gave me permission to talk to you, so there. Now what?” She ripped her hand free and grabbed the small showerhead, whacking the tap underneath on.
The splash of water hitting water filled the silence as Rayna rubbed her teeth together, her mind trying to pacify her hiking pulse with satisfying images of dousing Dominic in the cold spray.
Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths, Rayna.
Fuck, why did he get under her skin so easily?
She was normally so coolheaded with Studies, able to have objective conversations with them, even when they shared some eye-twitchingly grating opinions and beliefs, especially when it came to gender.
But with Dominic, it was like he was sticking hot pins into her skin that she couldn’t ignore and just had to pull out.
Yet it left behind this twitching, itchy ache that made her want to claw at her own skin before ripping his off too.
Gosh, she really bloody wanted to dig her nails into him and make it hurt.
He’d probably growl in her ear before chuckling that deep, irritating, lazy laugh of his. Then he’d call her a little witch, whatever that was about, while his hands—
Uh…Rayna?
Realising she was just standing there, staring at the back of Dominic’s head, wasting water, Rayna shuffled on her feet with a swallow.
She didn’t dare try to pick apart how the train of her thought had gone from wanting him tied to the tracks while she drove full steam ahead to the rushing sound of his laughter and whisper of his hands.
“Tip your head back,” she said, gently pressing the pads of her fingers to Dominic’s hairline.
With his arms spread over the rim of the tub like some powerful warrior king being tended to by his war prize, he quietly and stiffly lifted his chin.
She moved the showerhead over his thick shoulders, greedily mapping the bunching muscles across his back all while cursing herself for drinking him up.
Gosh, it would have been so much more convenient if he’d been a huffing, sniffling, moody old lord who spat when he spoke rather than a hulking beast with a chafing personality that rubbed her in all the wrong ways. A few right ones too, which made it even worse.
“Hold this,” she grumbled and gave him the showerhead after dampening his locks.
She slapped the tap off, then squirted a glob of shampoo onto her palm. As she massaged it into his luscious hair, he dropped his head all the way back and stared up through narrow slits that radiated a dark, rolling heat.
Her fingers slowed to a stop, wary prickles crawling over the back of her neck. “What?”
“That man—Victor—does not care for you enough if he allowed you to put yourself in harm’s way,” he said low and slow.
“He would have kept you as far from me as possible if he did, even if it required sending me back against my will. He would have done everything possible to protect you. Yet other than threatening me, he did nothing.”
The idea of needing such protection as a grown-arse woman was highly questionable to Rayna.
But like most Studies, Dominic was a product of his time and genuinely held an innate belief that it was true.
She couldn’t fault him for that, but being who she was, how fiercely she valued her independence and choice, it still felt wrong to be told a man knew better.
Even if Dominic was one of the good men who was sincere about his “protection,” considering historically, men were the thing that caused women the most problems. Yeah, women didn’t need a man’s protection, but to be protected from them.
Taking a deep breath, she approached the topic diplomatically. “Victor cares about me immensely, because he allowed me to do my job, knowing it wasn’t entirely safe. He knew I’d be livid if he ever tried to stop me on the basis that I’m a woman and therefore can’t face the same danger a man can.
“In some cases, that might be true. But in your case, it wasn’t. And it was a collective decision, not just mine or his. But he did want to protect me, which is why he was watching the whole time from outside your quarantine room.”
“Your idea of care might be to keep a woman sheltered, but that isn’t V’s idea.
He cares by loving me and trusting me to make the right decision, while offering me his opinion and concern where he sees necessary.
But at the end of the day, he knows and appreciates that the final choice is mine.
He knows that’s important to me, and I love him for that. ”
The buzz of the bathroom fan vibrated off the white tiles in the seconds that followed as a stormy shadow cast over Dominic’s face. She couldn’t figure out why he was so angry about what she’d said, but her hackles were rising, readying to defend against an incoming crash of arguing words.
His jaw rocked back and forth before he uttered, “Who is he to you?”
“He’s family.”
She didn’t want to elaborate further by telling him exactly how he was family. That only led to Studies asking questions she wasn’t comfortable answering. At least not immediately.
Like some children’s cartoon, a blue sky launched across Dominic’s face as his brows softened. “Family?” He slanted his chin. “So...he is not your lover?”
“Lover?” she echoed, reeling back. “What the fuck? No.”
“Ah.”
She caught sight of the little twitch in his mouth before he straightened his head, and realisation rose through her with disbelieving slowness. “Wait. You thought he was my lover? Is that why you were so rude to him?”
“I was not rude to him. I simply…could not understand why he was so openly affectionate towards you.”
Rayna’s mouth hung open. There was no way he was admitting to what it sounded like he was admitting to.
“Are you fucking serious? Were you jealous?”
He sniffed haughtily. “I admit to no such feeling.”
Well, that was just another way of saying yes.
Her mouth collapsed further before she quickly snapped her lips together. There was no way he was being real. There was no way this man, who she’d just met, was envious that another man had fussed over her. What the actual fuck?
Rayna felt an absurd impulse to cackle hysterically, but there was one very distinct alarm bell ringing in the back of her mind that suppressed her warped amusement.
She didn’t mean to do it, but her fingers instinctively curled into Dominic’s soapy hair and yanked backwards, tipping his face up again. He growled a sharp sound, baring his teeth from one corner exactly as a cat that had been poked would.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” he snapped back. “Did your governess never rinse your mouth with soap for cursing like a sailor?”
Grinding her teeth, she flashed him a vicious grin. “Did no woman ever smack you for acting like you own her when you just fucking met her?”
“I have never before made the mistake of expressing interest in a wicked little pixie.”
This bitch just called me a fucking pixie!
“How about you don’t express anything unless you want me to bury you under with your balls out for the crows to peck on?”
His lips fell apart before riled amusement quirked his wide mouth. “You,” he growled through a chuckle. “How dare you speak of my manhood so shamelessly, let alone threaten it?”
He seized both her wrists and swiftly tugged her down, bringing her face right over his.