“Not that bad,” Caelum said, shaking his head. “We aren’t human anymore, remember? It will heal.”
“What do you need?” I asked, helping him down the hatch and into the tunnels, pulling the stone closed over my head. We turned back toward the main caverns, making our way toward the sure punishment, for his beating of Jensen, that would wait for us.
“To clean it before it heals,” he said. I nodded, trying not to think of what would wait for us as I guided him toward the bathing cavern. The risk of infection was far more important than the risk of other women seeing him naked.
I’d find a way to deal with the jealousy festering inside of me if it meant Caelum himself wouldn’t fester and die. “How are you alive? I don’t understand,” I murmured as we walked.
“Viniculum,” Caelum said, the explanation somehow making sense. I’d seen what mine could do, turning a man into a pile of snow, but where mine seemed to be connected to the winter, something in Caelum’s appeared delighted in the butchering of life.
In dismantling it bit by bit.
His hands were drenched in blood, as if his body had been as involved in the fight as the Faerie magic coursing through him. Or maybe it was his own blood staining his skin, his own blood and bits of flesh embedded under the edges of his nails.
We stepped into the bathing cavern, all attention turning to the man covered in gore as I guided him to the side of the pool. People scurried all around us as I tore his ruined tunic down the front, shoving the scraps of fabric off his shoulders and kneeling at his feet to tug off his boots and socks. He stumbled slightly as he untied the laces of his pants, shucking them down his thighs and stepping down the steps into the water.
Even bathed in blood, he cut an impressive figure that the women nearby couldn’t keep their eyes off of. “Estrella,” one of them said, stepping up beside me as I watched Caelum lower himself into the water. “Are you hurt?” she asked me, glancing down at my bloody clothing and my hands that were covered in Caelum’s blood.
Or the beasts. I didn’t even know.
“He protected me,” I said, shaking my head as he emerged from the surface of the water and turned to look at me. He pinned me with an intense stare, rubbing his hands over his skin to wipe away the worst of the blood.
“What happened?” the woman asked.
“We had an encounter with a cave beast above the tunnels,” I said, shaking my head. If I had it my way, we would never go on another excursion outside the protection the mountain offered. We’d live our lives in peace without the violence above the surface. I couldn’t risk losing him again.
The woman nodded, her attention snagging on one of the men waiting at the mouth of the bathing cavern. He darted off, probably to alert the guards so they could make sure the tunnel entrances were secure.
“He’ll need help getting clean. He’s made it clear that no one but you is permitted to touch him,” she said, holding out a bar of soap for me to take.
I glanced around the cavern, at the men gathered in the room. Several of them were within the waters of the hot spring itself, others bathing in the mouth of the stream that led down into the cavern from the top of the mountain. The water cycled out the side of the bathing cavern, trailing slowly over the notch carved into the edge of the pool.
With a sigh, I held Caelum’s gaze as I kicked off my boots and socks while I untied the laces of my dress. I shoved the sleeves down off my shoulders, letting the fabric drop while I took the soap from her outstretched hand and tried to ignore the feeling of eyes on me.
Caelum’s eyes burned, glittering with menace as he challenged the men watching me with a glare. I stepped into the water slowly, letting the bath warm my overly chilled skin as I approached Caelum. I touched a hand to the gashes, gathering water to rinse it off with my hand, then lathering the soap so that I could wash it into his wound.
He caught my wrist in a gentle vice, stopping me from touching his skin. “I’m not in control right now, Little One. I won’t be gentle with you.”
I glanced around the cavern and the collection of people going about their business. Some still watched us, undoubtedly drawn by the red-stained enigma of a man at the center of the bathing pool. “There are people here,” I murmured, swallowing past my unease.
“Then I suggest you let me wash myself, unless you’re comfortable with having an audience,” Caelum rumbled. “And that you stay in this water. Because if I see your body one more time, if I watch them look at you again, I will not be held responsible for what I do to you. Is that clear, my star?”
I swallowed again, looking around once more and trying to decide if I could tolerate the feeling of eyes on me while Caelum fucked me. If I could allow men to see me in the throes of passion with him.
The idea of women staring at him bothered me, but it was somehow okay when it was tempered with the knowledge that they’d only see him before he plunged into me. Then they’d see me own him, claim him, as mine.
I drew a ragged breath, lifting my eyes to meet Caelum’s intense stare where he searched my face for any sign of what would be my answer.
I touched my hand to his chest.
31
I hadn’t been expecting the growl that rumbled in his chest, making it shudder against the flat of my palm on his skin. I pressed my soapy hand into the slashes on his torso, gently washing away the blood and gore from his injury. I focused my attention on my job of getting it clean before it could heal, my heart thumping in my chest uncontrollably.
I looked back up at him through my lashes, finding him staring down at my face, watching me. He didn’t move, didn’t so much as twitch, even as I cleaned the wound that must have been incredibly painful.
A human wouldn’t have survived without being sewn closed, but already the signs of his flesh knitting back together were evident. Pink skin formed over the very edges of the wounds, healing while I cleaned him.
His dark eyes sparkled with the light of a thousand stars enrobed in the shadows of the night, his gaze heavy lidded and jaw clenched. “Are you afraid, Little One?” he asked, something deeper echoing in his voice. An element that tasted like power coated my skin, making my flesh pebble as if the cold of a winter’s storm brushed over me.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I murmured gently, feeling the truth in those words. At least physically; I had no doubt that my body was safe with Caelum. He would never hurt me, never allow anything to harm me. He’d been willing to sacrifice himself to a cave beast to buy me the time to get away to safety.
If I’d doubted his confession of love before, could there ever be any doubt after that?
His answer was quiet, the words hanging in the air with gentle menace. “You should be.”