Page 75 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“I have your clothes,” he said. “I’ll step into the bathing room and you can—”

“I’ll get changed out here, you have a bath,” I agreed in a firm voice now. “Then we’ll go down to the inn Pepin and Nordred are staying at. We’ll grab a meal there, have a few drinks and pretend that we aren’t trapped in this bloody place. That your brothers aren’t being grilled about the deal as we speak. We can’t help them now and moping around here won’t help. Oh, and wash your hair. I’ll redo the plaits when you’re done because damn that woman’s eyes.”

For a moment Gael just stared, then slowly, he smiled, really smiled. I saw the way the scars made the skin tighten, probably uncomfortably, when he did and that plucked at me.

“Already deciding to rule the roost?” He cocked his head to one side and then shook it. “As if I could deny you anything.”

“You denied me a whole lot when we first met,” I said. “I’m fairly sure you just wanted me to bugger right off…”

But my voice trailed away as he undid his leather armour, tossing it down on a chair beside the fire, revealing the crushed linen shirt beneath it. Then that went as well as he walked into the bathing room, and I got one look from him over his shoulder before he shut the door on me. I scrambled for my saddlebags then, pulling out trews and a shirt and donning them, then standing there uncomfortably, waiting for Gael to finish.

Because when he came out again sometime later, he didn’t swaddle himself with a drying cloth like I had. Instead, he wrapped it tight around his hips, rivulets of water running down a chest that looked like it’d been sculpted by the gods themselves.

Broad shoulders bulky with muscle that bled down into taut pectorals. His abdomen bunched and flexed as he used my discarded towel to dry his hair more thoroughly, then scrubbed it across his front, his hands going down to swipe across the sharp line of muscle at his hips. And then he chuckled, breaking the spell I was under.

“A comb?” I asked, belatedly coming back to myself.

“You don’t want me dressed first?” he asked, but Gael’s voice sounded very different. None of the sharp edge or the raw hunger. Instead, there was something of a purr about it. My eyes roamed then, trying to look at anything else but him and then I chanced upon an unfortunate fact I hadn’t bothered to consider.

“So where will I sleep tonight?” I asked.

“You’ve slept beside me every night since we got across the border,” he replied, rifling through his bags before producing a comb. “That’s not going to change here. I need to know where you are, that you’re safe. The queen said it herself. If she can get rid of you, then she can kill way too many birds with one stone.”

I forced my focus back to him now, feeling a sense of dread rising.

“If you’re dead or gone, that frees the princes up to marry the girls she’s hand-picked for them. If there’s no Darcy, if she could persuade the Granian king that you ran away, then the old deal could potentially be torn up and started afresh. But most of all?”

He moved closer then, pressing the comb between my fingers, them tightening hard around the handle.

“If she can get rid of you, it’ll break me in ways she’s always hoped for but never been able to manage. My wolf knows you, Darcy.” His fingers trailed along the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist, making me shiver. “He’s ready to bide his time, to wait for you to accept us as we do you, but if you’re taken away from us? Well, I’d become exactly what she claimed I was. Feral, out of control, something that needed to be put down.”

And right then, as I stared up into Gael’s eyes, I knew how she’d gotten away with slashing his face. Somehow, some way, she’d pushed a much younger Gael until he lost control and then… Her claws sliced through his face, skated over his eye, all under the pretext of stopping an out-of-control warg.

“You sure we can’t run away?” I asked in a small voice.

“Not yet,” he replied. “Not until they’re ready to come with us. They’re getting close, closer every day they’re with you. Now, let's put these braids in before I think better of it.”

He sat down by the fire, leaving me to take the chair behind him and his bare back pressed against my shins as I went to work. I tried to focus on the job at hand, using Nordred’s trick of focussing on the minutiae to get me through this, but even as I slowly worked the comb through his knots, that same awareness brought me other things.

His woody scent fusing with the lemon of the soap. The hard and unyielding mass of his back. The little smattering of freckles across his shoulders. The way he leaned into my strokes when I managed to untangle his hair. The slow almost inaudible hiss of satisfaction as I began to work.

“I still think warrior’s braids are a mistake,” he said in a strained voice. “But damn me, I cannot find the strength to say no to the feel of it.”

“Does the big bad wolf like his fur being played with?” I said with a snicker, finishing up one braid, but he tipped his head back, fixing me with that endless luminous gaze of his.

“I’ve never been one for being touched,” he said with much seriousness now. “My beast is a prickly bastard, not allowing many close, but you, Darcy? He lays down and rolls over, presenting his belly when you’re around.”

“Will I get to meet him?” I asked, remembering Axe and his shift.

“Not here. Nowhere near the castle,” Gael said in a harsh voice.

“You’ll take me somewhere else then.”

He let out a sigh, went to move, but I started to put in the next braid.

“We’ll find a place that’s safe enough for him to come out,” he assured me. “But you’ll have to promise to stroke his belly for him.”

I ran my fingers through the hair that remained loose and he made a dog-like huff of appreciation. But when I finished the last braid. When he got to his feet, towering over me. When he looked down, the clean, sharp structure of his face revealed by those tight braids, I did something brave, something foolish.

---