Page 45 of Conquering the King of Storms

I fell back asleep as he carried me, one of his gigantic palms wrapped around the back of my head and blocking the sunlight as well as it could.

When he stepped inside an inn, there were a few voices. The voices started to wake me up, but Sirus growled at everyone and they all shut up.

He was the peacemaker between the kings… but he was still one of the kings.

And he was worried about me, maybe?

I didn’t know.

I liked him, and then he pissed me off, and then I liked him again, and then he pissed me off again… it was an endless cycle of uncertainty.

But I was too tired to overthink it.

Sirus got us to an empty, quiet room. He carefully began to lower me to the bed, but I groaned, “Need a shower first.”

He halted, holding me a few feet away from his chest, slanted at a slight angle. The lights were off in the room, but enough sunlight filtered through the curtains off to our side that I could see well without being blinded.

“You’re shaking too much to shower,” he finally said, though he lifted me back up.

“Bath, then?”

“The only baths Flood’s people have are community ones, and that’s a hard fucking pass.” His voice was low and full of warning.

Maybe the water fae were more promiscuous than the others.

Or maybe they just didn’t mind nudity.

Either way, I wasn’t really into that kind of a spectacle.

“Come on, you don’t want to get naked with a bunch of strangers?” I joked.

His eyes burned into me. “I’d sooner cut off my hair.”

Well, guess we were on the same page when it came to bathing in public.

He carried me back to the bathroom, and I studied him.

His knee-jerk reaction to the public bathing thing had me curious.

Maybe I had him pegged wrong.

Maybe he was… uptight?

Or shy, even?

“You’re staring at me,” he said, as he set me down on the bathroom’s small countertop before stepping over to the shower, to turn it on.

“You stare at me all the time,” I pointed out.

“Because you’re fucking gorgeous.” He put a hand in the water stream, checking the temperature.

My cheeks burned.

People usually called me cute, or small, or spunky. Sometimes, pretty. When you’re short, no one looks at you and thinks “elegant” or “beautiful” or “gorgeous”.

“Do the pipes get cold in Bluhm, too?” I asked Sirus, so I could distract myself from feeling so damn flattered by his compliment.

He shot me a confused glance. “Pipes?”

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