Page 10 of Dark & Dreadful Brutes

Perhaps I’d had a small stroke of decent luck.

He surfaced with the soap and stalked toward me. Somehow, he managed to look threatening even in the middle of a river, holding a bar of soap.

“Turn around,” he said.

I turned around.

His soap met the top of my head, and I winced at the pressure. “Too hard.”

He grunted but eased up enough that it felt nice, instead of painful.

“I can wash myself,” I told him, as his soap and fingers deftly worked through the thick length of my hair. “You don’t even know me.”

He ignored my offer and statement.

My eyes closed as his fingers massaged my scalp.

It was truly a bizarre moment. I stood in a river, with a gorgeous fae man cleaning my hair, while Evare’s suns filled the sky with light above my head.

Part of me wondered if I was dreaming.

But I clearly remembered the escape. And when his soap and fingers moved down my arm, I clenched my jaw as they ran over the bruises there.

“How long until you heal?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Depends how much I eat, probably.” I paused. “Did I hurt Gleam? I didn’t mean to catch on fire.”

“No, she has thick skin. You just burned a little hair.”

“It’ll grow back,” she offered, from where she sat on the dirt.

I grimaced anyway, dunking my head into the water enough to rinse the suds from my hair. “I’m still sorry.”

“Take your clothes off,” Ravv said, lifting his soap back to my hair and starting all over again there. I had to imagine there was more dirt than one scrub could take care of.

My body stiffened. “We are not having sex. I don’t care what the handprint means. I have a sex aversion.”

I didn’t know if a sex aversion was really a thing, but I was making it a thing.

“I’m not propositioning you,” he growled back. “Your clothes are filthy.”

“Oh.” I considered it.

The bastard was right—I was utterly disgusting.

I turned my back to him and started undoing the front. The water rose to my waist, so my ass was well-enough hidden that I didn’t think he’d see much. “Alright, as long as you’re not going to grab me or anything. Do you have spare clothes in your bag? I’d rather not walk around in my undergarment.”

“That’s an undergarment?”

“Mmhm. What do fae women wear under their clothes?”

“Significantly less fabric.”

My face heated.

He’d probably been with hundreds of women.

He was probably ancient. He wouldn’t even be interested in my body.

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