Page 104 of City of Snakes
He scoffed but avoided meeting my gaze. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
He sat down on the stone seat that was designed to bask on, with me across his lap. “I’m afraid I got too used to you running your mouth at me. And when you were too sick to do so, I felt helpless. Helpless enough to go to Mattock in order to understand what to do for you.”
I straightened. “You had no right. He doesn’t need to know the status of my health.”
Krait drew in a deep breath. “You were asking for him. I hated doing it as much as you hate me for it.”
I swallowed hard. Emmerick was often who I’d made the maids fetch when I needed to see Healer Mortag.
“I don’t hate you.” I desperately wished that I could hate him. “I need to wash off…away from you.”
“Let me help you,” he said as his hands moved toward the buttons on the back of the nightdress.
“Trying to undress me, Darvanda, like in your little fantasies?” I instigated, hoping for a cutting response.
“You just pissed yourself, Sybilla. A tryst is far from my mind.”
“What happened to ‘it’s just piss’?”
“Just stop moving already.” He worked on my buttons, and I slumped forward into his chest. The stubble on his chin tickled my temple.
It was possibly one of the most intimate things I’d ever let someone do for me—yet not an ounce sultry.
“All undone.” He helped me stand upright in the water, and I held the nightdress up to my front—not that it did much toconceal anything with the way it clung to me. His eyes didn’t wander; instead, they scanned my face as I stepped away.
Once I dipped deeper into the water, he lifted himself out of the pool. Pulling his soiled shirt over his head and tossing it into a sopping heap beside the bath, before he walked to the pool beside mine.
Then he stripped off his soaked linen pants.
My mouth went dry at the sight of his bare ass.
Absolutely shameless.
I tilted my head at the work of art that was the back of him—sculpted as though an artist had chiseled away meticulously to craft the perfect man.
Before he sank down into the water, he glanced over his shoulder, catching me staring. “Should we commission a portrait for you?”
My cheeks heated as he sank into the bath and then floated to the edge of the pool to rest his forearms on the colored tile between us.
“I must be gravely ill because it almost sounded like you had a sense of humor,” I bit back.
He smirked as though my cutting words brought him joy.
I turned away from him, pulled the soaked nightdress over my shoulders, and threw it down with a wet slap beside his discarded tunic. The small walkway between our pools created enough distance that my breasts weren’t visible below the water. I was thankful he couldn’t see me. In this state, I felt anything but alluring.
When I submerged my head, the salt and sweat leaving my face felt divine. When I reemerged, Krait’s hair was wet, too, and slicked back. I stepped to the edge between our baths and peeked over it.
Krait lifted himself onto his palms for a moment, snatched a square of soap from a basket and offered it to me across thedivider. The wicked V-shaped dip of his hips made heat gather in my core.
I happily took the soap, distracting myself from my scandalous thoughts, and scrubbed myself from head to toe with the mint-scented bar. Maybe if I scrubbed hard enough, it might remove the grime of all my mixed emotions about the King in the next bath.
Ignoring the handful of hair that came out as I scrubbed, I relished the feeling of my fingers against my scalp. I’d made such a mess of everything—forcing his hand to uphold our betrothal, playing political games that now felt too large for me to carry.
“You said to me once that you didn’t understand who made me think they could put their hands on me without consequence.”
Maybe the ebbing fever had inspired me to speak. Or maybe I needed more clarity from him as to what he wanted.
