Page 28 of The Scandal You Started
His jaw shifted several times, and his brows twitched like he was struggling to process what she’d said. Leaving him in his bemused state, she headed to the sink to dump the flannel.
“You…” he finally said, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Dammit, woman.” He huffed out a sound that was both stunned and irritably amused. “You are either utterly daft, stupidly brave, or foolishly forgiving. Which one, I cannot figure out, but I am in favour ofutterly daft.”
She rolled her eyes. “Or I was just doing my job.”
“Rayna, you should haveneverentered that room alone, especially having known there was a possibility I could have harmed you,” he said with a scolding bite to his timbre. “You ought to be more fearful for your life. Had I held on for even a trice longer, I might have killed you.”
Rayna’s feathers ruffled, standing on end.
“I didn’t walk in without any precautions, Dominic,” she said and swiped up the bottle of shampoo as she moved to his side of the tub. “The guards were waiting outside, but you let go, so it was fine. I’m also good at my job. I know when I can approach someone, and there was no real danger with you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to enter.”
He made an indecipherable sound of disbelief as she placed the bottle by his shoulder. Standing at his back, she reached for the small hand shower attached to the bath on the wall side, but Dominic seized her wrist.
He glared disapprovingly. “You are the very reason a woman should always have a man to watch over her. Why she is placed under his care and protection.”
Her scoff was instant, uncontainable. “Yeah. Sure.”
He tugged her, almost pressing her breasts to either side of his face. “A man—be it father, husband, or brother—would have stopped you from acting so recklessly.”
“Dominic—”
“He would have protected you, made certain you were safe under his roof. Or at the very least, he would have prevented you from entering a rabid man’s cage and endangering yourself.”
“I’m not a child that someone needs to orcantell me what I can or can’t do, or where I can fucking go. Especially not when it comes to my job,” she bit out. “Neither am I some damsel in distress that I need a man to protect me.I don’t.I neverwill.” His gaze hardened, but so did hers. “I’d like to remind you you’re not in your time right now. Women don’t need to rely on men the way they once did, so don’t try to fit me into a mould that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I called you neither a child nor a damsel, Rayna.” His fingers tightened around her wrist. “You are undoubtedly a capable, foul-mouthed witch. And what year it is does not change what a man’s due responsibility is, what it has always been. And that is to care—”
“Then you’ll be glad to hear that V gave me permission to talk to you, so there. Now what?” She ripped her hand free and grabbed the small showerhead, whacking the tap underneath on.
The splash of water hitting water filled the silence as Rayna rubbed her teeth together, her mind trying to pacify her hiking pulse with satisfying images of dousing Dominic in the cold spray.
Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths, Rayna.
Fuck, why did he get under her skin so easily?
She was normally so coolheaded with Studies, able to have objective conversations with them, even when they shared some eye-twitchingly grating opinions and beliefs, especially when it came to gender. But with Dominic, it was like he was sticking hot pins into her skin that she couldn’t ignore and just had to pull out. Yet it left behind this twitching, itchy ache that made her want to claw at her own skin before ripping his off too.
Gosh, she really bloody wanted to dig her nails into him and make it hurt.
He’d probably growl in her ear before chuckling that deep, irritating, lazy laugh of his. Then he’d call her a little witch, whatever that was about, while his hands—
Uh…Rayna?
Realising she was just standing there, staring at the back of Dominic’s head, wasting water, Rayna shuffled on her feet with a swallow. She didn’t dare try to pick apart how the train of her thought had gone from wanting him tied to the tracks while she drove full steam ahead to the rushing sound of his laughter and whisper of his hands.
“Tip your head back,” she said, gently pressing the pads of her fingers to Dominic’s hairline.
With his arms spread over the rim of the tub like some powerful warrior king being tended to by his war prize, he quietly and stiffly lifted his chin. She moved the showerhead over his thick shoulders, greedily mapping the bunching muscles across his back all while cursing herself for drinking him up.
Gosh, it would have been so much more convenient if he’d been a huffing, sniffling, moody old lord who spat when he spoke rather than a hulking beast with a chafing personality that rubbed her in all the wrong ways. A few right ones too, which made it even worse.
“Hold this,” she grumbled and gave him the showerhead after dampening his locks.
She slapped the tap off, then squirted a glob of shampoo onto her palm. As she massaged it into his luscious hair, he dropped his head all the way back and stared up through narrow slits that radiated a dark, rolling heat.
Her fingers slowed to a stop, wary prickles crawling over the back of her neck. “What?”
“That man—Victor—does not care for you enough if he allowed you to put yourself in harm’s way,” he said low and slow. “He would have kept you as far from me as possible if he did, even if it required sending me back against my will. He would have done everything possible to protect you. Yet other than threatening me, he did nothing.”
