Chapter 3 #2
His lips press together. “We both know I’d kill them first.”
There’s no jest in his voice. But it’s not possessive in the way that once made me hesitate. It’s deeper than that. Protective. Instinctive.
He strides to a nearby table and returns with a sponge and a vial of oil. Instead of tossing them in, he crouches at the pool’s edge and crooks his finger.
“Come here.”
“I can wash myself.”
“You can,” he agrees. “But you don’t want to.”
He’s right, and he knows it. I glare at him anyway.
I swim closer, slower than necessary, just to see the flicker of frustration in his jaw.
He’s still Mallen, after all. Still used to obedience.
But he waits. His weight shifts a little, but he doesn’t move.
His shoulders tighten as his breathing quickens, and my heart races, desperately trying to keep pace with itself.
I duck under the surface and emerge just in front of him, water streaming down my face. When I wipe it away, his gaze rests on my lips. There’s nothing soft in his eyes now—only heat and want and flame.
“A kiss,” he says quietly, “for a sponge. Seems fair.”
“You said you wanted to talk.”
“I do. But you need this more. I need this more.”
His voice dips, roughened at the edges, like it’s been dragged over gravel.
Not just with want—though that simmers in his gaze—but with something rawer.
His eyes search mine, not demanding, but uncertain.
Like he’s offering something without knowing if I’ll take it.
Like he’s asking for more than a kiss and doesn’t know how to name it.
I hesitate.
“You don’t want to?” he asks. But his tone is different this time—gentler, without demand. He watches me closely.
The game has changed. This is rawer. Harsher. Truer.
“It wasn’t…” I glance away, humiliated. “Our kiss was…confusing.”
He doesn’t push. He waits.
That makes this worse. Harder.
“I’ve never…” My voice dies in the steam. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. Or do. And I did…feel something…and it was a lot, for a first kiss.”
His brows lift, barely. Surprise flickers across his features and then something like regret.
“You’ve never—?”
I shake my head.
“Not even those smug little heirs who linger around the palace like vultures?”
“They saw a throne. Never me.”
A shadow passes through his gaze. A growl coils beneath his breath. But he reins it in.
“I would have done it differently,” he says after a pause. “If I’d known.”
He reaches out, slowly, and I let him touch my cheek. His hand is warm and steady.
“I would have kissed you like this.”
His fingers slide into my hair, cradling the back of my head. He doesn’t pull me in—waits, close enough to breathe me in, his forehead nearly resting against mine. My heartbeat stutters. He could take. But he doesn’t.
So I lean up and he meets me halfway.
His lips brush against mine, light as air, and I shiver.
This time, I catch it. The soft press, the spark, the slow drag of his mouth as he moves in rhythm with mine.
It’s not urgent or overwhelming. It’s like a dream I’m only now remembering, and when I open to him, trembling and willing, his tongue finds mine with aching gentleness, coaxing rather than claiming.
He finally draws back, and I can’t breathe.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod, stunned. And then I lean in again, bolder now. This time, I kiss him.
I’m left panting. Wanting more. Needing more.
“Did I overwhelm you earlier?” Mallen asks.
I don’t answer. I let the water swallow half my face instead, my gaze pinned to his, unblinking. He watches too closely. Too carefully. There’s a hunger in his emerald eyes—not just desire, but the more dangerous kind. Possession masked as patience.
He smiles, slow and deliberate. “You’re not used to being seen, are you?”
Heat creeps up my neck and over my cheek.
“Did you think I didn’t see you, Princess?”
I’ve trained beside Mallen for years, fought against his blade, endured his bruises and taunts.
I know the cut of his jaw and the swell of his muscle—not because I admired it, but because I learned how to break past it.
Even so, he seems broader than I remembered now the candlelight catches on the breadth of his shoulders.
Dark hair damp at his temples, a curl loosening in the steam.
His gaze holds mine, steady, as if he has been practicing restraint his whole life.
And now, under the flicker of the flame and the veil of steam, the lines blur.
I can’t tell if I’m watching him—or if I’ve been seen too clearly, and it’s already too late to look away.
When I splash him, testing the weight of this new imbalance, he doesn’t flinch. He just laughs. But it’s not joy—it’s calculation. A warning disguised as play. It says he will not be bait. If I want more, I will have to ask.
“Need help with your hair?” he asks, too casually.
What he means is: Will you let me touch you? Will you give me that much?
I want this game to continue, but I’m not ready to explore this. Not yet. Not in the way he wants. Not when the lens I view him through is shifting and I’m dazed by its changing colors.
I shake my head and reach for the bottle. He sets it in my hand at once and steps back to the edge of the room. The silence that follows is not still. It smolders between us, heat banked under iron, and I let it burn in me too. I comb the tangles from my hair while he keeps his watch.
“You should return to your chamber.” Mallen turns his back, offering a moment’s privacy.
I rise from the bath as if it’s nothing.
As if I feel nothing. As if I don’t want everything.
It’s only as I dry myself that I remember my tunic is still adrift in the pool, waterlogged and silken where I abandoned it, the weight of it forgotten.
I eye it and then glance at Mallen’s turned back.
There’s no robe. No shift. No gown. The new attendant never brought them.
So I wrap myself in the towel instead, clutching the corners with more dignity than grace.
“I’ll walk back in this,” I mutter.
Mallen turns and freezes. His mouth parts slightly, just enough to catch the breath as it stutters past his lips. His eyes turn to midnight, like he’s seeing something precious left too close to danger, like a storm cloud sliding over the sun.
“No, you won’t,” he says, voice low.
He shrugs off his cloak without ceremony and drapes it over my shoulders with careful hands. It’s warm, smelling faintly of smoke and steel, and far too large—swallowing me whole. Still, he adjusts the folds so they cover me fully, even tugging at the collar to shield my neck.
“You could have found something cleaner,” I murmur, my tone caught somewhere between dry and grateful.
“It wouldn’t be mine,” he says, as though I’ve just given him everything he’s waited for.
I don’t quite know how to respond. To that. To him.
“You’re not going anywhere in a towel, Azhara.” His voice is low. A sound catches in his throat. “You’re mine. Not because I own you, but because you’re carved into me. Written in my bones. No one else sees that. No one else ever will.”
The ferocity in his voice startles me. There’s heat behind it, and command—and a tension that might break me open in the best, or maybe worst, way.
My stomach flips, heat curling low and deep, and gods help me, I want to be claimed like that.
I want to belong to something. To someone. Maybe even to Mallen.
Before I can think of what to say, he lifts me into his arms, gentle but firm.
“Mallen—”
“You’re tired,” he says. “And I don’t want to argue.”
His hold is careful, as if he’s taking the weight of me.
I rest my head against his shoulder despite myself.
Neither of us speaks on the walk back. The silence is soothing.
Nothing more needs to be said. There’s peace here.
Balance too. And I catch myself before I drift asleep in his arms, certain he’d never let me forget that my guard fell.
He sets me down at the edge of the bed and steps back immediately, putting distance between us that he doesn’t seem to want but gives me anyway. He crosses to the windows and checks the bar, his gaze on the courtyard instead of me.
The girl rushes in and helps me dress for bed while Mallen looks away, her hands brisk. I sink into the sheets, exhaustion finally catching up with me.
“If you need me,” Mallen says from across the room, “I’ll be right here.”
I open one eye and spot him dragging a blanket onto the small couch in the corner.
“You’re not serious.”
“Always,” he replies, easing onto the cushions. “Especially about you.”
“I don’t need protecting.”
“Your father said you’re not to be alone. Not when you eat. Or sleep. Not even when you bathe. Always watched, always guarded.”
He settles into a chair across from the bed and keeps his gaze on the ceiling, like one more word might be the drop that causes the dam to break. As if he’ll say too much if he looks at me, and his collapse will lead to ruin.
“And I’ll be damned if I let another man into your chambers.”
I lie back down and pull the covers over my chest, staring up at the ceiling and asking the gods what I’ve done to deserve this. They don’t reply, and all I hear is a sound dangerously close to a low laugh rolling off Mallen’s chest as I shut my eyes and try to sleep.