8. Charm & Manners #3
Surprise and arousal flooded his veins as he took in what she was wearing. Only a long white shirt hung over Cypress’s shoulders. Torren was unable to look away, drinking in the sight of her thick, long legs and bare feet.
Torren crossed his arms and rolled his neck, mastering his more baser desires.
Cypress crossed her arms, leaning on one hip as she pulled a face, and said, “I hope it’s not to try to woo me with your…charm.” She waggled her fingers in his direction, sending blood rushing through him.
“Don’t lie to yourself, Lass,” Torren said, leaning forward. “You like my charm.”
“Why are you in my room? I thought you wouldn’t need one,” Cypress asked, redirecting their conversation.
“It seems your display on our arrival got more attention than I thought. Unwelcome attention.”
Cypress looked unimpressed. “And?”
“I’m here… To protect you.”
She gave him a thorough look up and down, arms crossed around her middle. “You are going to protect me? How many more Brandlewines did you order while I was gone?”
Torren shrugged off her concerns. “Yes, I’m here to protect you. Go to sleep. I’ll be in the chair, way over here.”
“I sleep with a dagger, you know. Try anything, and I’ll slice off your manhood.”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” Torren said, smirking at the lass. She’d said the very same thing their first night in the woods.
“Fine,” Cypress said, and began to unwind her hair from the long braid.
“Fine? I don’t get a thank you?”
“I can take care of myself, thief. I’ll accept your help, but I don’t have to thank you for it,” She said dryly as she sat on the edge of the bed, tousling the length of her hair, massaging her skull.
Torren dragged the chair across the room so that it was positioned between the door and the bed, though not so close as to get knocked out if someone were bold enough to bash the door down. “Fine, Lass. Don’t thank me for it when someone else tries to come at ye, and I save your sorry skin.”
“Someone else?” Cypress drawled, green and brown eyes boring through him.
Torren tilted his chin toward the window and said, “There’ll be fat hogs in the valley come fall.”
“And we aren’t leaving?” Cypress asked, looking at him as if he’d grown five heads.
“We’ll be safe enough for a few hours' rest,” Torren commented, and laced his hands behind his head and settled into the chair.
She grimaced, then grabbed her pants, deftly sliding into them without revealing any of her unmentionables.
Torren definitely wasn’t looking.
“Marvelous. Looks like neither of us will sleep well, then,” Cypress muttered while stuffing her feet into her boots, violently tying the laces.
“Why are you getting dressed, Lass?”
She merely shot him a flat look through her lashes before deigning to reply. “You are daft if you think I’m going to sleep unprepared to make a swift exit.”
Torren opened his mouth, then closed it.
“I assume you’ve sent word to have our horses readied?” She asked, checking that her sword was clear in its scabbard. Then leaned it against the bedpost.
Torren nodded. Then, unable to contain the question any longer, he asked, “Do you not have any sense of modesty, Lass?”
“Excuse me?” Cypress hissed while tying a beautiful, finely-tooled leather corset around her waist.
Torren settled deeper into the chair and propped his feet on the edge of the mattress.
“You’re a strange one. Supposed to blend in with the ladies, but are clearly more intelligent and talented than most of the men in command within this country.
And yet, you don’t act like a lady, don’t seem to come equipped with the same prissy limitations of the nobility.
Where did you come from? Or rather, what hole did they drag you out of? ” Torren asked.
Cypress gave him a seething glare, color blooming across her cheeks and chest. The edge of her shirt slipped over her shoulder, deep mahogany hair tumbling over as well.
“Modesty and purity are something only drilled into the nobility because, without it, they’d realize too soon that the men hold too much power. It says nothing of me to be comfortable in my own skin and more about you if you are so barbaric as to be unable to resist compulsion.”
Torren raised his hands toward her to ward off her anger. “I don’t disagree.”
“Then why the judgment?”
“Not judgment, Lass. Curiosity.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“Not nearly.”
Cypress scoffed and asked, “What do you want to know?”
“Where did they find you?”
“Orphanage. Queen Henrietta chose me to be a companion of Cade’s. We trained together. I got good, then better than everyone else.”
Torren nodded. “And they never mentioned me?”
“Nope,” Cypress said, making her lips pop.
He nodded, accepting the malice in the tone. He’d earned it, in any case. “Did you know your parents, before the orphanage, I mean?”
“No.”
That was it. No explanation, nothing. Just a flat no, and a clear end to the conversation.
Torren nodded in acceptance. “Good night, Lass.”
Cypress gave him a skeptical look, brows scrunched together before she said, “Goodnight, thief.”
Torren smiled and crossed his hands over his middle, fingers laced together as she shuttered the lantern and shrouded the room with darkness.
Sometime during their talk, the inn had gone silent–enough so the sound of the night outside seemed to magnify in the dark.
He closed his eyes briefly, listening to the crickets chirping and birds calling, the wind whispering through the trees.
It wasn’t long before Torren heard the sound of Cypress’s soft breathing filling the space, as if the trees had lulled her to sleep themselves.
Torren was a long way off from sleep yet, so he gazed out of the window and into the dark, listening to what the wind had to say about Cypress, the indomitable.