by Grace Draven
The smell of food enticed his rumbling stomach. He’d been too sick to eat the first day Ambrose and Gavin had taken him from the cell and too exhausted yesterday.
He retrieved his cloak and threw it over his shoulders. Magda had already seen him at his worst—filthy and incoherent, curled in on himself as he spasmed in agony and retched blood and bile onto her shoes.
She’d just stroked his tangled hair and gone about the business of sponging the muck off him. She’d dressed him in clean clothes, trimmed the claws on his feet, and coaxed him to crawl onto the pallet she’d prepared before the fire.
While this flux had been the worst so far, it was one of several similar episodes, and the stalwart housekeeper had tended him without hesitation.
Only she, of the women in the castle, saw him after a flux. Joan and Clarimond were always banished to another part of the castle while he recovered. They had only witnessed the aftereffects of the curse, the scarring that slowly covered him and turned him from man to monster. His disfigurements were so much worse this time, and he wasn’t interested in hearing the smothered gasps of shock or horror if they saw him. It was best to remain concealed when they arrived with the tub.
He had finished the last of the stew Magda prepared when the door opened on a short knock. Ballard pulled the hood over his head and retreated to a shadowed corner. All the women of his household, except Cinnia, entered in procession, dragging the tub with them, along with pails of water.
Ambrose came through last, a bulging sack slung over his shoulder. He dropped his burden by the hearth with a loud rattle. “A bag of rocks,” he said, holding his lower back as he straightened. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
It took another half hour and continuous parades of water pails before they’d filled the bathtub enough and heated all the rocks to keep the water warm.
Ambrose spread his fingers above the water’s surface and gave Ballard a warning look. “Don’t get used to it. I’ve better things to do with my magic than warm your bath water.” With those words, a ripple spread out in a widening circle across the water. Heat flowed over the tub’s edge, wafting across Ballard’s hands. The sorcerer inclined his head and bowed before leaving.
Only Magda and Louvaen remained in the room, and the former gathered up the dishes to take downstairs. She sniffed. “Well, about time you ate. If you want more, send Louvaen down.” She followed Ambrose out, leaving Ballard to Louvaen’s care.
She trailed her fingertips through the water. Steam undulated across the surface in revenant tendrils. “The water’s hot, my lord.”
He turned away. She’d seen enough of him today—held him in her arms and kissed him. He sorely needed the comfort, but he couldn’t ignore the urge to retreat from her gaze. “I don’t need your help.”
“Who said anything about helping? You’re sharing.”
His eyebrows arched, and he turned in time to see her shrug out of her unlaced bodice. She winked at him before shedding the rest of her clothing to stand nude before him. “Your turn,” she said.
He’d give his sword arm and what was left of his property to see colors again. He could only imagine the rosy glow of the hearth’s light washing over her skin or the red tint to her dark hair bound in braids. She was still beautiful—long-legged and dappled in shades of slate, smoke and iron.
He returned her quiet scrutiny. “Woman, I think you’re truly blind.”
She crossed her arms, hiding the delectable sight of her small nipples tightened with cold, and frowned. “I can see perfectly, maybe better than you see me. Now let’s get a look at the rest of you.”
She was an intractable force, with or without an axe in her hand. Her insistence on having him bare-arsed was far greater than his will to resist her demands. Ballard tossed off the cloak along with his breeches.
Her frown transformed to a delighted smile. She stepped closer to him, her gaze resting on his thighs. To his surprise, he hardened under her regard. He’d thought this last flux had stripped him of desire, turning him into a eunuch without castrating him. He returned her smile. Leave it to the militant Louvaen to make even his cock obey her.
Her hand glided down the length of his shaft, fingers sifting through the curls of soft hair surrounding its base. “Oh,” she said in disappointed voice. “No flowers to pick.” She winked a second time.
He remembered the sharp pinch on his scalp when he yanked one of the curling vines from his hair. His thighs tensed. “One small mercy,” he said.
And it was a clemency. During his first lucid minutes of recovery from the flux, he’d done as any man would and checked between his legs. The thundering heartbeat he refused to acknowledge as terror had calmed once he ascertained that while a great deal of him had changed, one very important part was still human.
Louvaen tied her braids to the top of her head, securing them with a complicated knot. The style accentuated her elegant neck. She took his hand and led him to the tub, affording him a fine view of her graceful back and curved backside as she stepped into the water first. Ballard couldn’t resist and cupped one buttock, careful not to dig his claws into her smooth skin. She paused with one leg in the tub and glanced over her shoulder with a half smile. “Such a gallant knight to help a lady into her bath.”
She climbed in and sat down. Steamy water rose to submerge her to her shoulders. She emitted a low moan that sent heat flooding his body and made him hard as stone. No eunuch here. Louvaen motioned to him with a languid hand. “Are you just going to stand there?”
He joined her, positioning himself so that his back reclined against her front, and he sat cradled between her legs. Louvaen slid an arm under one of his and the other over his opposite shoulder, linking her fingers together just above his heart. He sank low in the tub and laid his head on her shoulder, savoring the feel of her surrounding him. The aches and pains plaguing him lessened, eased by the water’s heat and buoyancy. They’d return full-force once he left the bath, but he’d deal with them later.
Louvaen didn’t immediately set to scrubbing him. Instead, she occupied herself with dropping kisses along his neck, across his cheek and against his temple. Ballard closed his eyes, content to bask in her affections. He’d happily prune up in the tub for hours and let the water go cold if she did this to him the entire time. His peace lasted only a few minutes.
“Did you instruct Ambrose to lock me in my room once the flux was finished?”
His eyes snapped open. Suddenly, the sensuous bath became an avenue for a possible drowning. Had he possessed charm, wit and a less honed sense of survival, he might have attempted to pacify her with false platitudes. He chose to answer her in a way she herself would have done—with straightforward honesty.
“No. I wasn’t capable of speech at the time. Ambrose knows me well enough though. Had I been able to talk, I would have ordered it.”
She twitched against him as if suppressing the urge to shove his head underwater. “Why?” A wealth of annoyance weighted that single word.
Ambrose told him she’d been like a wild thing in a trap, screeching her rage and insistence to be let out. The sorcerer had unspelled the locked door from a safe distance down the hall. Louvaen had burst out of her room and raced to the stairs. “Looked like a crazed ell-woman seeking her next victim,” he said.
With Cinnia’s upcoming marriage to Gavin, Ballard’s time with Louvaen was over. She hadn’t changed her mind and asked to stay; he hadn’t repeated the request he’d made in the stables. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. None of the women could stay at Ketach Tor. In a few days time, only he, Ambrose and Gavin would remain, and in the end only Ambrose. He didn’t want Louvaen to leave his home with her strongest memory of him being that of a gibbering wreck convulsed with agony and too dangerous to help.
“You’re returning to your father,” he said. “I don’t much care for the idea that this is how you’ll remember me, and I’m handsome now compared to the foul thing Ambrose and Gavin pull out of that ce
ll after every flux.”
Silence settled between them, and Louvaen took up the task of untangling the vines matted with his hair.
“Do you know what I remember best about Thomas?” Her lips grazed his temple. “It was the way he laughed. His eyes would crinkle first and then the skin at the top of his nose between his eyebrows. His shoulders would roll, and he’d tuck his chin into his chest.” Ballard envied Thomas the fondness in his widow’s voice. “He’d not uttered a sound until all of a sudden he’d let out this great roaring laugh. I swear he made the windows rattle. Even his hair and beard seemed to laugh.” She tugged on a knot of bittersweet vine resting against Ballard’s neck. “This is nothing compared to Thomas’s mop, and he wasn’t cursed.”
She paused and her voice grew thick with unshed tears. “His laugh was a gift because even in your bleakest mood you couldn’t help but laugh with him when you heard it.” Her arms tightened across Ballard’s chest. “He died of the plague, but it’s his laughter I remember—and will always remember most—about Thomas Duenda.”
Four hundred years earlier he would have paupered himself, defied a king and single-handedly conquered an empire if that’s what it took to win this woman. The irony that all too soon he’d willingly let her ride out of Ketach Tor for the very same reason he once would have fought so fiercely to possess her made him want to howl his fury. He took one of her hands instead and kissed her healing fingertips. He’d learned of her strange magic and how her spinning wheel spun out her grief. “How will you remember me?” he said.
Her soft laughter tickled his ear. “I’ll think of the man, so grave and dignified, who gave me a queen’s dagger. Or maybe the lusty lord who figured out the way to lure me to his bed was to warm the sheets.”
She wiggled from behind him, slippery thighs sliding across his as she changed positions. Water sloshed over the rim of the tub, and Ballard held her hips as she settled into his lap facing him. She curved her palms around his face, her expression teasing and pensive by turns. “From castle lord to forest king. I never thought I’d fall in love with a Green Man.”
She leaned into him, breasts pressed to his chest, as she opened his mouth with hers and swept her tongue inside to entwine with his. She tasted of sorrow sweetened by the cyser Magda brewed. He hoped she’d remember him. He would recall nothing of her, and that knowledge made his own kiss as bitter as the poisonous vine entangled in his hair.
Louvaen ended the kiss first. Her thumbs caressed the ridges of his cheekbones below his eyes. “If I’d known you’d suffer so much for it, I would never have said I loved you. I’m sorry, Ballard.”
Ballard wanted to castigate her for telling him something so profound after he’d fallen asleep. He’d nearly gone to his knees when the sorcerer recounted the events leading up to Gavin’s harsh and sudden transformation. Afterwards, he’d locked Louvaen out of the solar, dreading the moment when he’d reveal himself to her and watch as the love she declared for him turned to revulsion.
His fears had been for naught, but he still wished mightily he had heard those longed-for words from her himself.
He caressed her back from shoulder to hip, tracing the indentation of her spine and the matched pair of dimples just above her buttocks. Her nipples tightened beneath his gaze, the areolas pebbling in anticipation of his touch. He didn’t disappoint her.
She moaned his name and arched into him as he took one breast into his mouth and suckled the tip. Her hands kneaded his shoulders, and her hips rocked back and forth, sending waves of water splashing onto the floor.
Ballard moved to her other breast, kissing an ever diminishing circle around the swell until he caught her nipple and worried it gently between his teeth. Louvaen’s moans turned to growls, and she squeezed his hips between her thighs, the rocking rhythm she’d set picking up speed.
He stroked her sides, descending lower until his hands rode her hips. He pulled away, leaving her panting and wide-eyed. “Tell me, my beautiful Louvaen,” he said in a voice made raspy with days of agonized screaming. “I have no more time and soon no more memory. Give me the words when I’m awake.”
She stilled in his embrace except for her hands. They slid from his shoulders, up his neck and returned to his face. Her gaze, more black than gray now, bore into him. “I love you,” she said softly. They both tensed, but no snapping noise burst in their ears, no floor boards heaved, and no thorny roses broke through the window to attack them.
Ballard lifted Louvaen enough to sit up straighter. “Again,” he said and lowered her slowly onto his lap.
“I love you.” Her hands returned to his shoulders, bracing her weight as the tip of his cock nudged between her thighs, seeking.
“Again,” he repeated. She sank onto him, and he groaned his pleasure as he slid inside her, oblivious to any pain.
“I love you. Love you. Love you,” she chanted on short breaths, the rhythm of her declaration keeping time with the motion of her hips as she rode him in the water.
He followed where she led, guided by the grip of her hands and thighs, the clench of internal muscles and her demanding kisses. His busy hands caressed her wet skin, holding her tightly as he thrust into her. Steam and sweat mingled to trickle down his neck and soak the hair at his temples.
She found her release first, nails digging into his arms before she fell forward and bit him where his neck met his shoulder. The tiny burst of pain, so different from the curse’s lash, sent him over the edge. Ballard cried out her name as his hips surged upward, hard enough to lift them both half out of the water. They sank together, sending another rolling tide over the tub’s rim to douse the floor.
Louvaen rested in his embrace, limp and momentarily docile. Ballard fought to catch his breath and the overwhelming torpor brought on by his climax and the steamy water. He stroked her shoulders and toyed with her knotted braids.
“We’ve destroyed the floor,” she murmured into his neck. “Magda will kill us.”
He undid one of her braids to twirl it around his finger. “I’ll let you hide the axe.”
She chortled and gave him a quick kiss on the tip of his nose. She wiggled out of his arms, and he groaned his disappointment when he slipped from her body. “We can’t stay in here all day, Ballard.”
“Why not?” Ballard thought it a fine idea, and the wedding wasn’t until later. They had a couple of hours still and plenty of hot rocks to keep the water warm.
Louvaen stood, offering him another chance to ogle her. She stepped gracefully out of the tub to retrieve one of the drying cloths stacked on a nearby table. Ballard relaxed in the water and watched as she dried and shrugged into her shift. “As lord of the castle, you can lounge about all day. I need to help my sister prepare for her wedding.” She motioned to him. “Stand up. I’ll scrub your head. You can take care of the rest.”
“High-handed scold,” he muttered before heaving himself to a standing position.”Maybe I should throw you over my shoulder, take you to bed and have my way with you.”
“You’ll not drop me atop those bitter sheets, you lusty tup,” she admonished before dumping a pail of lukewarm water over his head. “Not before they’ve seen a warming pan.”
He stood compliant under her ministrations, wincing only once when even her careful washing of his hair still managed to yank a few of the slender vines. He washed his body while she finished dressing and used all but one of the drying cloths to sop up the puddles staining the floor. He hoped Magda was in a forgiving mood.
He chased her off when it came time for him to don clothing. “See to your sister,” he said. “This is her wedding day; she needs you.” He bowed gallantly. “I’ll visit with my son.”
Louvaen took his face in her hands and kissed him. Ballard thought she’d leave him then, but she paused, her expression somber. “Cinnia can’t remain at Ketach Tor, Ballard—even as Gavin’s wife.”
“No, she can’t. None of the women can.” He wished he could refute her statement, give them both hope tha
t with their admissions of love, she and Cinnia had broken the curse. “The next flux will finish me and Gavin. Ambrose and I planned for such an event long ago.” Her eyes narrowed, suspicion igniting her gaze. “Magda and her maids will leave in a week’s time. We’d thought to send them to a village a few leagues from here.”
“No, they’ll come with us,” she declared. “It would be the worst sort of cruelty to take Cinnia from Gavin right after the wedding. We can wait a sennight before returning home. Magda and the others are welcome to stay with us as long as they want. My father would enjoy the company.”
His heart ached with loving her. She’d offered hearth and home to his household with no promise of monetary help from him. There was no question of him giving it. The Hallis family might not be noble by blood, but his treasury would make them so once he was dead. And she’d given him a week of her company. He’d pay a king’s ransom for such a gift.
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You realize Magda will want Ambrose to join her later.” He tried not to laugh as twin frown lines furrowed the space between her eyebrows.
Her features pinched as if she’d bitten into something sour. “We have a comfortable barn.”
He chuckled, kissed her hand a second time before letting her go and opened the door.
Louvaen ran a caressing hand down his arm before disappearing into the hall.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He finished dressing once she left. The cotehardie and bliaud were the ones he wore for Modrnicht. He felt ridiculous in the finery now, especially when he intended to cover up with a cloak.
“Who wrestled a sea monster and lost?”
Ballard looked up from belting the cotehardie to find Gavin picking his way around the remaining puddles of water scattered across the solar’s floor. The younger man paused and eyed the axe in the corner before turning to stare at the door. He began to laugh. “I’d possess the temperament of a dragon had you two created me.”
