“Don’t be stupid, I’m never shy,” she blurted. She had disrobed in front of dozens of other soldiers countless of times. She’d had sex with no more privacy than what the cover of a blanket might offer, and she had probably heard every crude joke or epithet the army had in its repertoire. “And I’m not an assassin any longer, I’m a guard.”
“Semantics, my dear.” His lean, angular features were lit with delight. All shadows and marks of pain had vanished. He looked like an entirely different man from the ill, unconscious man that Tiago had brought into her cottage. He glanced over all the items she had placed at random on the table. His sleek eyebrows rose. “So we are having honey, cheese, onions and tea for supper?”
“Of course not!” Her cheeks grew hotter. She scrambled for some kind excuse for her erratic behavior. “I was just going to dust off the shelves.”
He picked up the jar of honey. “Were you going to do that before or after you cook?”
She threw up her hands. “You are distracting me from what I’m supposed to be doing!”
He was laughing then, his face creased with open enjoyment, eyes dancing. “Is that what I’m doing, distracting you? I thought I was teasing you.”
Witnessing him in this unpredictable, playful mode was definitely much more composure-destroying than when he had winked at her. She rushed at him and snatched the jar out of his hands. “Get out of my kitchen, so I can have some hope of cooking something edible.”
He pointed out, “Your kitchen is half the cottage.”
She ducked her head. “You could go outside.”
“I’ve been outside for a significant part of the day already.”
“Go to bed then.”
“I have spent a significant part of the day there too,” he said softly. “And I feel extraordinarily guilty every time I lie in that soft bed. Inevitably I end up thinking of you, and this hard pallet on the floor that must be so very uncomfortable.”
Her breathing hitched again. She picked up the cheese and turned away to start setting things back on the shelves. “I keep telling you, I don’t mind in the slightest. Believe me, I have bunked down under much worse conditions many times.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.” He handed her the onions to set back in their place, and as she turned around again, he handed her the tin of tea. “I propose that I begin to help with the chores around here.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he forestalled her. “I will only do what I feel capable of doing, and each day I will increase my activity. That will help me regain my strength much faster. I simply cannot laze my days away and watch as you shoulder the burden for doing everything. I don’t have it in me.”
She sighed. Increasing his activity each day would help him heal. She also knew some stretching exercises that he could do to help keep his body limber. He was going to carry scars, and those would stiffen if he wasn’t careful. “That makes sense.”
“And as soon as my back muscles have healed enough,” he said, “you and I are going to start taking turns on that pallet.”
“No, we’re not,” she told him.
“Yes,” he said implacably. “We are.”
“I won’t budge on this,” she warned.
His mouth quirked. “What a coincidence; neither will I.”
If they grew stubborn about this, they might both end up sleeping on floor pallets. She clapped a hand over her nose and mouth as a snort of laughter escaped her.
If anyone had told her a sevenday ago that she would be arguing with a barefoot Chancellor of the Dark Fae, she would have thought them deranged. Shaking her head, she turned away from him again to set the tea tin on the shelf.
Then she sensed rather than heard him move up close behind her. She stood frozen, the skin at the back of her neck tingling as she felt the heat of his body along her back and thighs. He was very close, perhaps a scant finger’s breadth away. She turned her head slightly, her attention consumed by his nearness.
She could see him, just barely, out of the corner of her eye, standing there like the shadow of her most secret dream. He tilted his head and put his lips near her ear, still not coming in physical contact with her anywhere.
He whispered, “Am I really the most handsome man you know?”
His warm breath caressed the thin, sensitive area just behind her jaw. She folded her arms around her middle, shaking. A daring stranger took over her voice. She closed her eyes and heard herself whisper back, “Do you really think I’m pretty?”
Pretty. It was a word used for Dark Fae ladies, with their fine clothes, long pale, soft hands and large, lustrous eyes. It didn’t belong to her. Her hands were callused, her skin lightly speckled by the sun. Her feet were callused too. She could kill a man with a single, well placed kick of her bare foot.