Page 113 of Kingdoms of Night

She was mad. And he was still naked.

“How did you end up in the bed?” He stayed facing away from her, but his gaze drifted to her moving shadow as she dressed, cast by the hearth.

“I don’t know who took the spare blanket, but when I lay down, I was wrapped in something else entirely and you were on the other side of the bed. And we did not have sex.”

“My clothes,” he said slowly. He’d Changed and shredded his clothes. If only the gods would have mercy once. He was not going to rescue Annette naked.

“Hold on.” She pulled the pack over, removed the stack of black garments, and tossed them to him. “This should work.”

He caught them neatly but then cleared his throat. “Your clothes aren’t going to fit me.”

“Those aren’t mine. They’re Naatos’s. I’m sure he won’t mind if you wear them.” She sighed heavily. “Where did my mask go? Did I lose that, too? Of course I did.”

He frowned. Of course it made sense that she would have a lover, didn’t it? She was strikingly beautiful, with those warm russet-brown eyes and full lips and legs that went on and on and on. All of her piercings, from the ones on her eyebrows to the ones in her ears and the ring on the left side of her nose, accentuated her features. With or without her makeup, she was stunning.

“Are you certain your… lover won’t object?”

She laughed darkly as she shook her head. “He is not my lover. Never was and never will be.”

Odd. Both the way she said that and because she had the man’s clothes. “So… why do you have his clothes?”

“Because, despite being a total blood beetle most of the time, he actually can be a decent person. He gave me his travel bag.”

“He probably likes you.” Even as he said the words, they tasted bitter in his mouth, but they were true. What was there not to like about her?

She laughed again, harder this time. Looking up, he frowned. What was so funny? His frown deepened.

She straightened her vest over her skirt. “No. That’s not it.”

“Men are sometimes good at hiding their feelings.”

“Maybe. But he’s a Vawtrian. A shapeshifter. They’re completely devoted to their mates and pleasuring them, and can only have sex with one person ever in their entire lives. It’s all based on this biological compatibility. And the two of us were not compatible in any way. He just gave me these things—” She shrugged before putting her back to him once more. “He did it to be kind.”

The faint chuckle that followed was hard to understand. So this Naatos was a friend of hers?

People who cared enough to be kind were rare, and they weren’t a given even among the family a child was born into. If she had someone like that in her life, even just one person, he was glad. And slightly gladder that it wasn’t a lover.

The mattress creaked as he stepped out of the bed, and then he quickly pulled the black cotton trousers on. They fit reasonably well, almost seeming to adjust to his body. He set aside a fine brocade doublet and grabbed a black linen shirt, made of finely woven cloth. He pulled it on over his head and then tucked it into the trousers.

He’d never seen clothes so fine in his entire life, let alone worn any. Among Maman’s things, she’d had a beautiful dress, one she’d treasured and preserved, and it had been the only such fine item in their home until they’d had to sell it. Even once he’d grown into an adult and worked for what coin he could, he’d never thought to spend it on any clothes better than rough-spun basics. As a werewolf, with his Change being so unpredictable, that had proved an even wiser choice.

Surely a man who’d spared the coin for such luxurious things wouldn’t like some stranger wearing them, much less a peasant. He cleared his throat again. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t have a lover right now, all right? There wasn’t time for one. Not really. Especially not one who would need me to focus on his needs and wants at the expense of everything else. One-way paths are hard to navigate when you’re already carrying a heavy load.”

He hadn’t meant whether she was sure she didn’t have a lover, but… “One-way path? As a lover?”

What relationship was a one-way path? He picked up the belt, and as he was buckling it, Idalno’s gaze followed his hands. When his eyes met hers, she looked away.

She fussed with her hair. “Unato men don’t care about pleasing their lovers. In sex, pleasure is for the man and childbirth is for the woman.”

He gaped at her open mouthed. What nonsense was that? It sounded like a lifeless existence for both men and women. Those men would never understand the joy of pleasing their partners, bringing all the tension in a woman’s body to a high point only to release her into sheer bliss and utter relief. And those women would never be made to feel appreciated, worshiped,seen. Receiving pleasure was accepting that you mattered.

Had no one ever made her feel that way? Not even a single night with a stranger? “Your country’s women should visit the men in mine. They’d get along famously.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Unsurprising. There was more to life than sex, but the way a man treated a woman in the bedroom spoke volumes about what she meant to him. How many partners had made her feel unimportant?

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