Page 39 of Hot & Heavy

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Cage elbowed him in the side to get his attention. "It's Yasmine, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Crazy, isn't it? She has Phyllis Diller hair. She nags so much she give shrews a bad name. She smells. She talks funny. She freakin' tried to kill me. Twice."

"Beauty's only skin deep," Slick said, throwing a proverb at Ian for a change.

"Yeah, if you're drunk out of your mind and willing to dig down to her liver," Ian countered.

Cage put a finger in the air as if to interrupt him. "She does have nice breasts, though, bless her heart."

"Breasts aren't everything," Ian observed, with a straight face yet.

Cage and the other members of his squad exploded with laughter at that remark. Ian laughed, too.

"To some people they are," Geek pointed out.

"Oh, yeah?" Pretty Boy said. "You got statistics on that, Mister Brainiac?"

"Actually—"

"Don't let him needle you," Ian advised Geek. To the rest of them, he explained, "I know it's crazy, but I feel guilty about turning her over."

"Maybe it's a bit of Stockholm Syndrome," JAM offered. "You know, where the captive falls in love with the captor."

"I am not in love with that witch. Besides, I was the captor, not the captive," he protested.

"Stranger things have happened. Besides, they say that ugly women try harder to please." It was Slick speaking and waggling his eyebrows at him.

"There is that," Sly said. "Maybe she's the Avis of the female species."

"Actually, I'm getting kinda tired of beautiful women," Pretty Boy commented.

They all stopped and gaped at him.

"Gotcha!" Pretty Boy said with a laugh.

JAM said something as they entered the mess hall that got Ian thinking. "I wonder what Yasmine looks like under all that grime."

"Before, she looked like a dirty witch who swallowed her broom," Omar said. "I suspect that after her shower she will look like a clean witch who swallowed her broom."

Ian thought a moment, then said, "Yeah, you're probably right."

She was no swan, but…

In some ways, Madrene felt as if she'd died and gone to Asgard, so heavenly was her experience in this new world.

Her robe had been tossed in a basket to be taken out later to their midden. The two lady soldiers, whose names turned out to be Amber and Dough-lore-ass, took her to a bathing chamber where she enjoyed the most bone-melting all-over wash. Without even sitting down in a tub! Madrene had thought the bathing pools in the Baghdad harems were luxurious, but even they could not compare to the showers of hot water that came out of a metal sprayer in the wall.

And the soap! The hard bars of rose-scented soap were a luxury she would have thought reserved for the highest royalty. For the hair, there was a scented liquid called shampoo. Amber and Dough-lore-ass claimed even the lowest classes had access to such special soaps and shampoos. If the scented soap and shampoo were not enough, they also gave her an object called dee-odor-ant to apply in her armpits. She would smell like a bloody rosebush by the time they were done with her.

Afterward, they stood her before an enormous mirror, a luxury most kings could not afford in her country, and helped her comb all the tangles out of her waist-length blond hair. Her hair was the same color as it had been when she'd left the Norselands three years ago, but her skin had darkened somewhat because of her exposure to the hot Arab sun.

Amber had helped her in the bathing chamber. Dough-lore-ass, on the other hand, stood with a weapon in her hand the entire time, guarding her. As if she might run off naked to the gods-only-knew-where!

"I like the name Amber," Madrene remarked. "My father and my brothers traded in amber."

The two women just stared at her. Then Amber said, "You told the general your name was Madrene. Do they call you Maddie for short?"

Madrene had forgotten that she'd divulged her real name. That had been careless of her. She blinked several times, then said, "Yea, they call me Maddie."