I walk closer, the rock beneath my boots slick with puddled moisture. The hot spring sits in the middle of the room, and there’s a short area of raised rock that makes a shelf around it. The water itself is in constant movement from the gentle bubbles rising at the center. Kneeling down, I dip a finger into it and practically purr at the heat.
At a noise behind me, I turn around, only to find Slade shrugging off his coat and laying it onto a rock that’s jutting up from the ground.
When I see him whip off his shirt next, my eyes go wide. His body never fails to make me surge with heat. All those perfectly defined muscles, those roots weaving beneath his pale skin and curving around his pecs, spreading up his collarbone and down his shoulders. He’s so incredibly, beautifully fae.
“I figured you deserved a reward for training so hard,” he says, and I have to force my eyes back up to his smirking face.
I blink over at the hot spring, excitement bubbling up as much as the water’s heat. “We’re getting in?”
His grin flashes through the dim room. “I wouldn’t bring you all the way in here just to tease you. I know your back isn’t bandaged anymore, but Hojat said it’s not quite ready for a soak. But I figured we could soak our feet and legs together.”
“Great Divine, yes.” I think I might weep in joy on behalf of my poor, aching feet. “But…why’d you take off your shirt if we’re soaking our feet?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t submerge in the water—not until your back is all the way healed. But even so, we’ll need to strip, otherwise our clothes will get soaked near the hot spring. The steam is very thick.”
My eyes cast over to the bubbling pool, and he’s right, I can see with my own eyes how dense the steam is, but that doesn’t make me stop from panicking.
“I promise, the steam will feel nice.”
My heart knocks against the rails of my ribs. “I’m sore,” I blurt out.
Slade’s lip twitches. “I will be the perfect gentleman,” he assures me. “I only want to take care of you, to help you relax. Nothing more. And I’ve seen you bare before. There isn’t an inch of you I haven’t touched.”
Heat that has nothing to do with the hot springs comes bubbling up into my core. But it’s tempered with an edge of distress.
I don’t have bandages wrapped around me anymore. If I take off my shirt, he’ll see. He’ll see the ugly, leftover bruising. The crinkled, frayed stubs. He’ll see the ruin of my back.
And I still can’t bear that.
I don’t know when he moves behind me, but I startle at his soft voice. “Let me.”
His fingers skim against the back of my neck, right where the first button is, and I can feel the heat of his breath press against my skin far more than the steam in the air.
I freeze, my fingers gripping the front of my collar while my emotions go jumbled and confused, like puzzle pieces all shaken up.
“No,” I tell him, taking a step away. “I’m just going to leave this on.”
He moves back into my line of vision, but I don’t meet his eyes. The silence between us is like silt, the murky waters convoluted and confusing. But even in that silence, I know he hears. I know that he’s listening to what I’m not saying.
Don’t look. I don’t want you to see.
“Alright,” Slade finally says, his tone quiet.
I hear him walk toward the hot spring, and then a rustle of clothing tells me the moment he drops his pants. I feel my already heated cheeks flood with a blush.
My eyes flick up to see his completely nude body, his back facing me. I’ve never gotten to appreciate him from this angle before. I watch as he walks his way into the hot spring, the steam almost completely enveloping him. Yet it doesn’t obscure the way his ass flexes before he steps in deeper, until his lower half disappears beneath the surface of the water.
He sticks to the perimeter, avoiding the bubbling center, and then the rest of him disappears for a second too as he dunks his whole body under. When he comes back up, he pushes his dripping black hair away from his face, and the movement is so incredibly sexy that, despite the moisture in the air, my mouth goes dry. Slade is all hard, sculpted muscles, an endless plane of strength and masculine beauty.
Right now, I feel lacking. Sweaty from training, hair tangled, my skin probably in heated blotches, and my back…
More than anyone else, Slade adored my ribbons. And now they’re gone, and I just feel so…incomplete. Inadequate. I don’t know if I’ll ever not feel that.