Page 79 of A Vow of Embers

From the tittering giggles that spread through the tables, the servant’s implication as to what the prince “needed” me for was unmistakable. “I am eating with his ... mother and sister.” I would have preferred to call Erisa his stepmother, but if I wanted to make her think I wasn’t a threat, I couldn’t deliberately call her something I knew displeased her.

The servant looked uncomfortable. “He commands that you come right away. He does not wish to wait.”

Every eye in the room was on me. I knew what I had to do. It was humiliating, having to jump at his order. I had finally met some women who shared my ideals and now I was being treated like a wife under her husband’s oppressive thumb.

I would have to do as I was told, even if every step I took felt like knives stabbing at me and went against every single one of my instincts. I didn’t walk slowly, but I certainly wasn’t in a rush, either.

The one consolation I had was that I was going to yell at him so loudly that even the sun god on the other side of the earth would be able to hear me.

When I reached our room, I closed the door and looked for him. He wasn’t there.

I heard a splashing sound and so I marched into the washroom. I opened my mouth to curse at him but fell completely silent. He was naked and sitting in one of the heated pools.

“Good evening, wife. Would you care to join me in my bath?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

My mouth went dry as every nerve ending in my body caught fire. I only saw Jason and my body responded to him, as if he’d been returned to me.

By the goddess, he was a beautiful man.

I forgot everything else and could only drink the sight of him in. He was so masculine, so magnificent. It was as if the goddess herself had designed him solely for my benefit, to appeal to me, to make me choke on my own desire for him.

How could I loathe him so much and still want him? To want to see his blood spill from his neck but also want to take him into our bedroom and tie him to our bed, not letting him leave?

“Why are you naked?” The words sprang unbidden from my mouth and I could feel myself blushing.

“Because I don’t bathe with clothes on.”

That wasn’t what I’d meant and he knew it. He shifted slightly in the water and I felt flushed and overheated, as if I’d been sitting in the sun for too long. I was shocked to discover that I desperately wanted him to kiss me. My heart trembled at the idea, my limbs shook. Unmentionable parts of me tingled in anticipation.

If he asked me again to join him, I would.

My breathing went fast and shallow as I imagined disrobing and stepping into the pool. He would reach for me, pulling me against his slick chest. I would lick the water from his strong throat. His mouthwould descend on mine, ravaging me, his hands crushing me to him as we slid against each other, heat and water and lust so thick and hot that ...

I looked away from him. “Isn’t there something you can put on? To cover up?”

“Are you embarrassed?” he asked.

He knew that I was. I didn’t dignify his question with a response.

“There’s nothing shameful about being naked.”

Not shameful, perhaps, but abhorrently tempting. An overwhelming heat pooled in my abdomen while my heart beat so loudly I was afraid it would break through my rib cage. I couldn’t look at him again. If I did I was afraid I wouldn’t stop.

Did he know the effect he had on me?

“In Ilion maidens help to bathe guests. It’s polite,” he said.

“Then consider me rude,” I snapped.

Long ago Quynh and I had discussed the Ilionian tradition of maidens bathing guests. She had worried that if I were allowed around naked, unarmed Ilionians, I would murder them and we would have to go to war.

She never would have guessed that it would make me go weak-kneed.

Where was the girl I used to be? I forced myself to look at his face. But only his face. Not at the drops of water slowly making their way from his dark, dripping-wet hair down his muscled shoulders to his hard biceps to his strong forearms. Those same drops that trickled down his chest, over the cut ridges of his abdomen and then down to ... I let out a small gasp as my stomach fluttered and dragged my gaze back up again.

Alexandros looked far too amused. I itched to slap that expression off his face.