Chapter 11 #2
But I wasn’t going to explain all that to someone like Lord Arnaf. Even if I tried, I didn’t think he’d understand. For him, I was Timur’s property and he was my master. So I kept it simple for him.
“I need to know we’re safe before I make my decision,” I insisted.
Lord Arnaf nodded quickly.
“Yes. Of course. You’re safe. Both of you. I far prefer your pleasure over your fear.” He grimaced, pointing at his tendril still connected to the leilatha in my upper arm.
Whether he’d forgotten to retrieve it or left it there intentionally, it might be to my benefit that he’d stayed connected to my emotions because now he knew exactly how I felt when threatened. I hoped he preferred me feeling safe and happy rather than anxious and scared.
“Then I would like to stay, my lord,” I declared. “The bath looks lovely, promising a lot of joy and pleasure that I will gladly share with you and your friends on the same terms as before.”
I focused on steadying my breathing, trying to calm my nerves and hopefully salvage this evening to everyone’s benefit.
My gaze drifted to Timur with no effort on my part.
Despite his threatening pose with the spears at the guards’ necks, looking at Timur relaxed me, just like being near him often did.
“Maybe we should release the guards now that Lord Arnaf gave us his word, what do you think?” I smiled at Timur.
With a brief nod, he shifted the spears. The sharp points of their metal heads slipped off the guards’ necks. The two men quickly scrambled into sitting positions. One rubbed his throat. The other one looked like he was about to puke.
“Out,” Timur barked the word with the force of a hurled stone.
Gripping the two spears, he jammed them into the floor with power strong enough to pierce the rugs. The iron heads sank into the sand below up to the wooden shafts of the spears.
The guards hurriedly climbed to their feet and rushed out of the tent without waiting for confirmation from their lord.
Keeping a polite smile plastered on my face, I gestured at the floor cushions by the table. “Feel free to join your friends behind the screen, Lord Arnaf. I will undress on my own.”
For a moment, the lord remained silent. I waited for him to push back. Little men like him hated giving up even a modicum of their perceived power. Thankfully, the lord’s desire for more joy guided him in the right direction.
He raised his ass from the edge of the shell-tub and silently moved over to the pile of cushions to join the other five men there. The servants then positioned the silk screen between me and them.
I released a soft breath the moment the capricious lords disappeared from my view. Timur remained with me.
“I’ll stay close,” he said. “But I won’t look.”
Letting go off the spears, he turned his chair around to face the exit of the tent.
The five tendrils snaked from behind the screen where the fine lords reclined in the pile of cushions in anticipation of my joy.
Their tendrils quickly found me, then glided up my body to connect with all my leilathas.
I’d done it so many times by now that the sensation of someone connecting to my emotions barely registered with me.
I gestured for the servants to turn away too. Then, in relative privacy, I started to undress. I kept my eyes on Timur, not because I feared he’d turn around, but because deep inside, I almost wished he would.
I remembered the heat burning in his eerie, mismatched eyes when I got naked in front of him in the rain yesterday. I had done it innocently, fully believing he didn’t care and couldn’t get aroused. Knowing that he could was exciting. Though I still didn’t understand how it worked in his case.
I remembered the warm glide of his tongue as he drank the rain straight from my skin. He did it with the passion of a starving man, and I was his first meal in ages. Yesterday, it all had come so quickly and unexpectedly, I feared he’d devour me, and I pushed him away.
Now, that he was turned away from me, I couldn’t see his eyes or the lust in them.
What I saw was the back of his head, his long silky tresses spilled over his wide shoulders and down his powerful back.
Snow-white strands glistened in the ink-black mass of his hair, like trails of falling stars in the night sky.
His cloak had slipped off his left shoulder while getting caught in the bumps and spikes of the bone plate that covered his right one.
He had placed his elbows on the armrests and looked completely still, making me wonder what might be going through his mind right now while he listened to the rustle of my dress sliding down my hips.
I still wasn’t sure if I could face that wild, feral passion of his. Yesterday, it scared me just as much as it thrilled me. But right now, with his back to me, I felt safe. And maybe even… willing?
Excitement rushed through my naked body in a wave of warm shivers. I caught myself smiling as I climbed into the tub. This was my first bath in a very long time, after almost three weeks of traveling in the desert and living in a shack with no running water.
The shell of the tub felt warm, just like the water inside it. The water caressed my skin enclosing my body, and I couldn’t hold back a moan of bliss.
Soft moans from behind the screen echoed mine. The lords were enjoying it as much as I did.
Resting my head on the curved edge of the shell, I closed my eyes and allowed peace to descend upon me. For a few blissful moments, all my worries moved away, and only pure pleasure remained.
The fragrant oil made the water feel like silk against my skin, and the tiny white blossoms floating on the surface smelled amazing. Then someone poured something into my hair, startling me.
“What are you doing?” I opened my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest.
The two servants sat on each side of the tub now. The man lathered a washcloth with soap, while the woman was rubbing my skull.
“We’ll scrub your body clean and wash your hair,” she said, leaning over me with a serene expression.
“Isn’t that what humans do when taking a bath?” the man asked with curiosity.
I doubted they’d ever bathed a human before, since they weren’t Joy Vessel Keepers from a sarai, but they weren’t doing anything wrong. Dipping his hand in the water, the man fished out my arm, then started scrubbing it with his soapy cloth.
“Oh, alright,” I muttered, surrendering my arm to him.
The sense of control slipped away from me, but I did my best to cooperate. It was worth getting clean.
“Wait,” Lord Arnaf spoke from behind the screen in a sharp, displeased voice. “She isn’t enjoying it. Stop it.”
The servants immediately stopped what they were doing and moved away from me.
“I already put the soap in her hair,” the woman said. “It needs to be rinsed off.”
“Let her handler do it,” the lord ordered.
“My handler?” I repeated, confused.
“Hey, trader!” Lord Arnaf raised his voice. “Give your Joy Vessel a bath.”
With the veering of his chair, Timur turned around. “Is that what you want, Elaine?”
My heart leaped in distress.
Or was it in anticipation?
I couldn’t name what I was feeling, but Lord Arnaf grunted with satisfaction.
“Oh yes, she wants you,” he said confidently. “She enjoys it when you touch her.”
My cheeks warmed with a blush. The clueless lord had outed my innermost feelings so blatantly, and he didn’t stop at that.
“And now she’s embarrassed for some reason,” he muttered grumpily. “Can you fix it, trader?”
As if I was some kind of a malfunctioning device that needed a good shake to perform as it had been programmed.
Timur moved closer, and my emotions twirled in a twister.
Gripping the edge of the bath with the claws of his right hand, he leaned over me.
His eyes narrowed, both the iris of the blue one and the black pupil of the red.
His gaze focused on my face, as if he were trying to peer into my very soul, to see if Lord Arnaf was correct about my feelings.
Slowly, as if about to touch a butterfly that could fly away any moment, he raised his left hand. He didn’t take the cloth that the male servant had left draped over the edge of the tub at my feet. Instead, he gently stroked my arm with the tips of his fingers.
“Is that true, Elaine? Do you really enjoy my touch?” he asked softly, only for me to hear.
I realized how new and probably incredible this discovery must be for him. Timur had been hiding under his cloak from everyone’s attention for years. People shunned him. I’d pushed him away too.
But I thought about the many times his hand had landed on mine in a reassuring gesture. The way his arms cradled me gently when I sat on his lap. The many ways he’d put himself between me and any threat, shielding me from danger.
And I couldn’t lie to him.
“I do,” I said. “I like when you touch me.”
His expression softened. His gaze drifted from my face to my shoulder, then followed his fingers as they trailed the length of my arm. Pleasure followed his touch, like a shimmering wave of magic spreading through my skin. He stroked along my palm, then threaded his fingers between mine.
“Tell me, what exactly do you feel when I touch you?” he asked, keeping his eyes on our interlaced fingers.
All my leilathas were filled with the tendrils of other men.
I wasn’t even sure if Timur had any tendrils, since I’d never seen them.
Or if he wanted to connect to me at all, since he’d never attempted it yet and turned me down when I offered.
But I wished I could share my joy with him at that moment.
“I feel safe,” I said, searching for just the right words to describe the warm, colorful bouquet of emotions blooming inside me.
“I feel…seen. You look at me like you want to know everything about me, like every little thing about me is important. Like I matter. And then…the way you looked at me yesterday, in the rain… It made me feel wanted.”