Page 78 of Wolf of Ashes
He towers over me even though he keeps a step away. I can’t resist the challenge in his expression, all those shadows that pull me closer.
“Fine,” I huff. “I’ll scrub your back. Since you’re so helpless.”
He laughs as he heads toward the shower, and I’m stunned when his clothing peels itself off his body, somehow working its way around his arms to drop onto the floor.
I catch all the rippling muscles across his back before he turns the corner.
It dawns on me to wonder, if his clothing is an illusion, which it might well be… Is he actually walking around butt-naked all the time?
I give myself a hard shake. Best not to think too much about it.
Leaving the panthers in the bedroom, I follow the trail of discarded apparel, reaching the bathroom to find Diavolo in his underpants.
He has deposited the candles around the bathroom, lit each one of them—but only with the dimmest flame—and now he’s standing in front of the shower, chewing on his bottom lip, his hands hovering over the water controls.
I lean against the doorframe, feeling vindicated when he continues to hesitate.
He reaches for the single faucet, turns it full hot, and my smile grows.
Then he side-eyes me, as if to check that I’m watching before he slowly pulls the faucet further toward the cold side, smirking at me before he turns the water on.
I roll my eyes. “Fine, but you’ve had the advantage of seeing how those things work.”
There’s an overly sympathetic glint in his eye. “You scalded yourself, didn’t you?”
I send him a dark glower. “My soul is forever scarred.”
The gentle steam from the apparently perfectly warm water rises around his near-naked body, white wisps that curl and curve across his thighs, chest, and biceps, fitting themselves to every hard contour.
His smile has softened. “Why don’t you come on over here and heal those scars?”
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
My lips part as I consider Diavolo carefully, aware of the growing warmth in my body as he continues to appraise me. It’s hard to know what he wants from me. At minimum, I’m here to scrub his back, but at most…
He existed in darkness just as I did. The difference is that he had a life before he became the keeper. In that life, he had the opportunity to do things I never could. Even if he can’t remember doing them.
Despite my lack of experience functioning in this world, I’m not naïve about the heat in his expression or where the next hour could lead.
But I’m also clear about my boundaries.
My mother was blunt when it came to talking about sex. She said she would have waited until I was older to tell me all the things, but she already knew she didn’t have long.
Her message was clear: Sex is not about pleasure.
It’s about control and manipulation.
If I’m enjoying it, then I’ve lost control and I’m being manipulated.
I must never allow that to happen.
If I want pleasure, she told me: Give it to yourself.
She was matter-of-fact and descriptive about all things related to sex. All the ways it could be done. All the ways to touch a man—or a woman, for that matter. I have more than enough factual information, but putting any of it into practice with the keeper of dark magic could be a hazardous thing to do.
My lips twitch upward.
Hazards can be fun.
