Chapter 48 #2
He snorted, then shifted the towel up past her knees until all of the burned flesh was exposed. Releasing a low whistle, Bradley scooped out a glob of pastel-green ointment and spread it over his palms.
Millie flinched when he cupped her calf in both hands, the ointment sending chills racing along the swaths of burned skin.
With slow, gentle movements, the apprentice smoothed the ointment from the tips of her toes to just beyond her knees.
The letter opener slipped from her hand, and she sagged back with a moan of blissful relief.
Bradley’s hands stilled at that sound, just for a second, then resumed the languid strokes.
He kept his gaze firmly on the red skin in front of him, and nowhere else, even as his pulse strangely quickened.
He discovered his was slightly light-headed, too, and realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled in a rush.
Millie tensed.
“Relax.” He said it as much for himself as for her.
Remembering to breathe, he dipped his fingers into the jar of sea glass to treat the princess’s other leg.
Legs, he noticed, that had firmed and strengthened since he’d first met her.
She had attractive ankles, too, a detail he hadn’t expected to notice or even care about.
He discovered the soles of her feet had thickened, probably because Sir Roger and Jax both insisted she go barefoot whenever possible to increase foot grip and flexibility.
Their roughness irritated him for some reason, and he spent a little more time massaging the ointment into her feet.
The princess moaned again, relaxing fully against the mattress. She pulled out her hairpin and let her hair unravel across the bedspread. Bradley knew the very moment she went boneless, and it had nothing to do with the deep sigh escaping past her lips.
“That feels wonderful,” she whispered, and wriggled into a more comfortable position. She touched his hand when it slid to the burn above her knee. “Thank you, Mr. Donmarin.”
Startled, the apprentice cut his eyes to the princess’s face.
She’d never thanked him so candidly before, and from her soft expression, the way she seemed almost asleep under his gentle ministrations, he knew she was sincere.
The combative pirate aspirant and the spicy princess were gone.
Only the woman remained. Driven, passionate, and . . . kind.
That simple phrase and the sentiment behind it were a salve to unhealed wounds. A match struck in a world of darkness. It was softness, for him.
Bradley ceased to breathe, just for a moment, but it was a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.
A moment where anything was possible and permitted.
That he was worthy enough to run his fingers through that beautiful auburn hair or drag his lips along her shoulder and up her neck in pursuit of that faint scent of jasmine.
To kiss those full pink lips that smiled at him.
This. This was a very good reason to keep that parchment locked away forever. No woman would want him with the black ichor of a corrupted soul coursing through his veins and polluting his eyes. Yet what he craved was deeper than want.
The Kraken take me, I’ve been alone too long.
Bradley shut his eyes. Blocked the image of the princess in her corset and unbound hair and his towel sweeping across her thighs.
Forgot that he was clad only in his sleeveless undershirt and boxer briefs, both of which were rather form-fitting and would definitely reveal a very particular part of his anatomy should the princess open her eyes before he got a handle on himself.
He distracted himself by humming the tune his mother used when she was treating sailors with rope burns.
She said it mimicked the song of the sea and activated special compounds in the seaweed.
He could be imagining it, but he felt a tingling sensation in his hands whenever they stroked along the princess’s skin.
Calmer now, he opened his eyes and found a few places he’d missed and gently rubbed the ointment in there.
Laundry. Cooking. Two of the tasks he’d accused her of neglecting.
They’d both ended in disaster, but she’d at least tried.
And not the kind of trying where she purposefully sabotaged the endeavor to excuse herself from the task in the future.
That kitchen had been spotless when he’d arrived to extract the burning scones from the oven.
Not a sack of flour out of place nor a cup left beside the kitchen sink.
She had listened to him.
Something taut unraveled within him, allowing for another sensation to bloom. It was relief, he realized. The relief of being heard. Of being seen and included, his wants and needs recognized and not brushed aside.
Wetting his lips, he glanced down at the pastel-green ointment in the jar of sea glass. It was precious medicine, not a drop to be wasted. He could spare a little more for the princess.
“This will take some time to heal,” he said, breaking the spell of silence between them. “A week, at least. You’ll need thick, breathable socks.”
Her eyelids flashed open. “But I’m not supposed to wear—”
“You want your feet to blister and rip open instead? How will you train then? And I said socks, Tula, not shoes.”
“I understand, Mr. Donmarin! Your chastising barrage is unnecessary.”
The room was quiet for a long tense moment, nothing but the soft sounds of his hands smoothing against her legs and the faraway sounds of a Hero running for his life from a dragon.
“Ugh,” Millie griped. “How do you it?”
He wet his lips. “Do what?”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “All the boring stuff. The cleaning, the cooking—”
“I like cooking.” It gave him a sense of accomplishment. So long as he didn’t have to create elaborate meals, he enjoyed it. He preferred fresh food and simple but hearty flavors.
She waved that aside as she fell back and stared at the ceiling. “The mending, the laundry.”
He chuckled. “No one likes laundry, but it must be done. It matters, and you simply make time for the things that matter.” He flicked her lightly on the leg, earning him an affronted look.
“And don’t think you can just throw your clothes out the window for the desert to eat anytime you don’t want to do the washing and simply put on a new outfit.
I know it crossed your mind, you little heathen. ”
She wrinkled her nose at him, eyes twinkling with mischief. “How dare you accuse me of thinking that exact thing?”
Bradley realized he was just about to smile at her and clamped his lips shut. By Caelus, am I teasing her? Is she teasing me back?
Fantasizing was one thing—a private, solitary experience—but teasing required a connection between both parties. Dropping his gaze, Bradley cleared his throat and resumed his work on her burns.
“What possessed you to start baking?” he asked quietly. Anything to take his mind off the heat igniting upon his cheeks.
She nudged him in the chest with her big toe. It didn’t hurt.
“Because I’m not selfish,” she said. “And I really love pastry.”
His blue eyes flicked up to hers then back to his thumbs kneading the ointment into the ball of her foot. “Hn.”
Millie tried to sit up, but it was a little difficult to do without kicking the apprentice in the face, and she didn’t want him to stop whatever he was doing with her foot. There were no words to describe how heavenly it felt.
“And I wasn’t doing just my laundry,” she persisted. “I threw your clothes in there, too.”
His hands stilled. “You what?”
“It may not have occurred to you, sir, but I haven’t had to be responsible for a lot of the mundane things for the bulk of my life. I’m learning, okay? I’m not some thoughtless twit with nothing but air and cotton in my brain. I watch and I listen and I— Hey!”
Bradley tossed her legs to the side and launched off the bed.
In the bathroom, he bent over the tub and fished around in the mass of clothing.
His stomach dropped when he found his undershirts, normally the off-white color of undyed linen, a beautiful carnation pink.
Leaning back into the doorway with a sour expression, he showed them to the princess.
Millie stifled a snort and pressed a hand over her mouth, brown eyes dancing. “But they’re clean, right?”
He kept his lips pursed even as they threatened to quirk upward. “I give you permission to be selfish in this chore, Tula. Never help me with my laundry again.”
Bradley’s footfalls were so soft upon the sand that the inhabitants of the dungeons were only alerted of his presence because Fink had heard him.
Chittering, the ferret wormed his way through two of the iron bars and bit down on the apprentice’s boot in greeting.
Bradley scooped up Fink in the rough manner he seemed to enjoy and wrestled him gently.
Their playtime concluded, Bradley lifted his gaze and found the Heroes watching warily from their cell doors. The dragon’s valet never visited them after collecting their supper plates. They assumed he was off doing sorcerous things, which he normally did, but not tonight.
A jerk of his chin summoned Sir Roger.
“Like I told the miss,” the hedge knight said as he approached the dungeon door, “I didn’t see who started the fight this afternoon.”
The apprentice noted how the old man spoke loud enough for all to hear.
“I know what started it.” Bradley flicked his finger between two bars.
He’d seen the same stir-crazy behavior in some of his fellow fishermen before.
Long voyages at sea with nothing to do but wait for the fish to bite and get on each other’s nerves.
“I’ll be back for them in the morning. They might be the princess’s tutors, but they’re guests in my tower first and foremost. And I will not tolerate unruly guests. See that they’re ready to work.”