Page 16 of Fairies Don't Fall

“Also forbidden. If it involves violence, it’s not done in the bathhouse.”

I nodded. “Ah. Then she shouldn’t have tried to hit me. Ruin got in front of me. I hope she’s okay.”

I looked behind me, and there was Ruin, grinning. “I’m good,” she reassured me.

Max was moving fast, and the next thing I knew, we were in a small room with a glass door. He opened it, put me in and closed the door while I stood there, dripping blood from my fingers and staring at him.

“She doesn’t know how to use a shower,” Ruin said.

“You can explain it to her,” Max said.

She shook her head and edged away from him. “No way. I don’t shower with other people. That’s weird.”

He sighed, opened the glass door, stepped inside with me and pulled a lever embedded in the wall, sending a rush of raindrops down on me.

I looked up, and the rain came from a metal circle. I reached up to touch it, and the blood on my fingers started running down my arm towards my elbow, then dropped down to the floor, where it circled towards a drain and disappeared.

Max grabbed a bottle of something, squeezed it into his hand and then put his hands on my head, wiggling his fingers to massage my scalp with the stuff that smelled like lavender.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, blinking to get the drops of water off my lashes.

“Washing your hair with shampoo. While I do that, you wash with this soap and washcloth,” he said, nodding at the little shelf embedded in the wall. The shower room was white tile with blue trim. I took the white washcloth and the soap and stared at them for a long time.

“Wet the soap, rub it on the cloth, then rub the cloth on your body. Keep your towel on.”

I nodded. “Ruin explained how rude it is to drop your towel. Don’t worry. Fairy saliva is very sticky. It won’t fall down.”

He gave me a sharp look. “Fairy saliva is very sticky? You keep your clothing on with spit?”

I nodded. “Otherwise, you need needles to sew things together. And weaving. And cutting. It’s such a long process to make something.”

“You could just go shopping,” Ruin said through the glass door. “Max, she doesn’t have any clothes now, not that you could really call that gauzy stuff clothing anyway. I guess she can wear my clothes. She’s a little taller, but not much. You’re so small,” she said to me matter-of-factly.

I nodded. “And unappealing to males. Why is commenting on my smallness not a matter of pride, but the lack of male attraction is?”

Max cleared his throat. “You’re washed well enough. Ruin, you shouldn’t tell people they aren’t attractive. I hate having to say that. It’s like you were raised by wolves.”

She snickered and shook her head, then pointed at me. “No, she said that. It’s Vervain’s fault. He made her lose her confidence.”

“Vervain?” Max looked down at me, a frown between his brows.

I reached up and touched those dark brows. Still the same while his jaw was so different. “I was having a conversation with the aggressive werewolf who drops towels. I thought if I showed her my belly, she would back off, and there would be no fight. It’s not about Vervain.” I touched his jaw, and the skin was so silky, so smooth, so warm. I pulled away, feeling burned. “His jaw is like yours.” It was. Without the beard, Lord Max looked similar to the most stunningly attractive male in all of Fairyland. “When will your beard grow back? You shouldn’t look so…”

He raised a brow. “Delicate and fairy-like?”

“Pretty.” I cleared my throat and shifted, feeling uncomfortable with the weight of his hand on my head. It was too warm, and he was too massive, and I was in a towel that did nothing to camouflage my complete lack of feminine charms. He was so aggressively male. No wonder the woman had dropped her towel. Oh. That’s what it was about. Of course it was. Werewolves were always hunting down a mate if they were single. Max must be hunted all the time. Maybe he shaved his beard so the werewolves didn’t think he was as attractive. Pity that made him more so towards me.

“You should get a mate, so women stop hunting you,” I said.

His eyes glowed brighter for a moment before he pulled my head under the stream of water. Then, when he pulled me back, he had more goopy stuff to stick in my hair.

“Conditioner. It’ll make your hair silky and soft instead of tangled and coarse. I already have a mate.”

Ruin gasped. “I knew it! What happened to her? Did she die in a fight with your best friend, or what?”

He glanced through the glass door at her. “The moon is my mate. If I ever feel for a woman half of what I feel for the moon, maybe she can be displaced.”

She snorted in disappointment. “The moon is your mate? And the owl god is your greatest competition, right? You’re such a lunatic.”

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