Page 75 of Feral Guardian
Alastair’s hand tightens on my shoulder, not in warning, but in warmth. He loves my boldness, and I’m bolder with him at my side.
Igor seesaws his head. “You Fyns, think you know all. Fine. Big one, help my wife with dishes. Little one, beers. I want the men to see you and get thirsty,” he says with a wicked leer.
Alastair’s hand tightens on my shoulder, but I pat his knuckles softly. “You’ll be right there, and I’ll be right here. You can even watchme.”
He looks down at me with desperation, then back to Igor. “Can we bathe first?”
“Barrel’s in the pantry.” Igor jerks his head toward the kitchen. “Be quick.”
Alastair and I move around the bar into the back and find Igor’s wife, a muscular woman with a determined set to her jaw. We ask for the bath and she nods us along down toward the cellar. Perfect. Cold bath that’s already been used byeveryoneelse staying the night.
We reach the pantry and find the dirty basin of water exactly as I expect it to be. It’s washed countless men before us, but with a bit of my magus ability, we can have it warm and clean.
“Watch the door,” I whisper to Alastair.
He turns and marches toward the doorway, obscuring us from view. I begin drawing out Eyzanth’s passion and Gaien’s flames, a heat to fill the water. Inverted Nol’Ther’s decay to wipe away any lingering muck with a tug of my fingers. A twist and flick of Gaien’s grounding, sucking the dirt particles through the cracks in the wood basin.
In under a minute, there’s a hot, clean bath. I beam and strip down.
“Princess,” Alastair sighs, taking up even more of the doorway.
“I’ll be swift,” I say, submerging myself in the water.
I groan, massaging the warmth into my shoulders.
“That doesn’t sound swift,” he says, his voice tight.
“Give a girl a few seconds to acclimate, will you? We ladies can’t all just be done as quick as you men.”
He grunts. “You’re making some kind of lewd joke, aren’t you?”
I giggle as I rub the sap of the “punishment” tree from my arms. “I am.”
“Here,” he says and I turnto look at him.
He tosses something white the size of my palm toward me and I snatch it out of the air.
Soap.
I groan and sink all the way into the water, scrubbing the bar into my face, hair, neck, pits, and slits. I surface against my will and strain the water from my hair.
“Fine. Done,” I say as I step out of the basin.
I use inverted Kai to flick the water from me and back into the bin. Alastair glances over his shoulder as he hears the water slosh off me, but his eyes don’t meet my body. They glimmer with red, and I know he wants to look.
I step closer into his line of sight. “Never seen me like this, have you? Fully bared.”
He tries to turn his head away, but he can’t. He just grinds his jaw, glowing eyes pointed at the ground. “No.”
“You’ve touched me in ways no one ever has, Alastair. Why not look your fill, too?” I ask.
He swallows hard. “Because if I look at you, I won’t be able to stop myself.”
The admission has my core going molten. I press my thighs together and the movement has Alastair’s eyes drifting nearer. He growls as his skin shimmers and the tips of horns poke through his forehead. Claws flash at the ends of his hands and his body swells.
Excitement thrills through my body and I step closer, willing him to see me.
“Get dressed,” he says, his voice an otherworldly grinding of stone and metal. It sends a shiver down my spine and makes my hair stand on end. I want to hear him say my name with this voice. “Now, or I will do unspeakable things to you.”
