Page 25 of A Heist for Filthy Rivals (Mythic Holidays #3)

Ignoring her, I plunge my clothes into the sink, swish them around, and wring them out.

Then I pull the sink plug and let the water drain while I drape my laundry on a chair to dry.

The whole process hurts like the devil because of my torn shoulder, which keeps fucking bleeding. Doesn’t seem to want to stop.

I stuff my other possessions into my pack and sling the bag over my good shoulder. Then I strut naked past Devilry, into the pantry.

The chill hits me like a jolt of pain, and I immediately decide that I do not want to stay in there. I re-enter the kitchen, trying not to notice that Devilry has plugged the sink again and is running hot water into it.

I want to see her naked almost as badly as I want Drosselmeyer’s treasure, but I force myself to open another door, which turns out to be a closet full of linens—towels and tablecloths and such. I grab a few small towels, along with a large tablecloth to serve as temporary clothing.

Stepping back into the kitchen, I start dabbing my skin gingerly, trying not to reopen any wounds that have started to clot. I keep my back to Devilry, but my body senses her nearness right before she touches my shoulder.

“You’re bleeding,” she says.

I glance back at her and nearly pass out, because she’s naked. Every stitch of clothing is gone.

Her white skin is covered in bruises—green and black and purple.

The worst is in the center of her chest, over her breastbone.

She’s blood-smeared, dust-covered, grimy.

Her thighs are covered in shallow stab wounds, probably inflicted by Slaughter during their fight.

Her hair is clumped together with sweat and blood, and her full lips are puffier than usual, split and swollen.

I hate that I’m responsible for so much of the damage to her body. I hate that she’s looking at me with a defensive kind of concern, like she doesn’t want me to bleed anymore but she refuses to show too much mercy. She has learned to be ruthless, but it’s not her natural state.

“You’re hurt, too,” I manage to say.

She puckers those pillowy lips, her tongue tracing briefly over the sore, split place. “Maybe we should bandage each other up. Since we have a temporary alliance.”

“Might be the rational thing to do.”

“I’ll wash first.”

When she heads over to the sink, I debate whether or not I should turn my back. She came over to me willingly just now, showed herself to me in her most vulnerable state, but I don’t want to assume anything.

“Should I… should I go in the closet while you… do that?” I hate myself for stumbling through the question.

Devilry frowns at me. “What is wrong with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You broke into my home. Then you saved my life.” She starts counting up my misdeeds on her fingers.

“You ruined my heist, threw bombs at me, came running up to the tower to save me from a member of your crew, gave me an orgasm, then stabbed me, tried to steal back your dagger, came in your pants for me, carried me on your back, and now you want to know if you should wait in the closet while I wash up? I think we’re past that, don’t you? ”

“Just trying to be polite,” I mutter.

“Polite?” she spits, her eyes flaming. “Since when are you polite, Ravager? I don’t want you to be fucking polite.”

“Fine,” I snarl. “Then I’m going to sit here and watch you.”

“Suit your fucking self.”

“I will!”

“Good!”

She turns back to the sink and shuts off the steaming water. Angrily I wrap the tablecloth around my waist, knot it tightly, and sit my ass down, arms folded, mad as hell.

I stare with all my might as she washes her hair first. She bends over the sink to do it, showing me the twin curves of her ass and a glimpse of her pussy.

She straightens, shedding water onto the floor, then begins running the soapy cloth over her entire body.

She moves stiffly, wearily, and a little self-consciously.

Her cheeks are nearly as red as her lips because she knows I’m watching her.

“You’ve got tiny tits,” I say. “How’s that for impolite?”

“You’ve mocked me for that before,” she says dryly. “On the rooftop that night.”

“Yeah? Have I said that they’re the cutest little damn tits I’ve ever seen?”

She glances toward me, and I swear her mouth quivers at the corner. Almost like she was about to smile. But she spins away, toward the sink.

As she’s washing under her left arm, her whole body tenses with pain. Blood runs down with the water from the place where my knife slid between her ribs.

I’m on my feet and at her side in a second. “Let me see.”

She lifts her left arm, looking away from me. Her pale skin is glossy, sheathed with water, pink where the blood runs.

My palm glides up her waist, my thumb stroking just beneath the cut I made, the one I regret more than any other injury I’ve caused her.

My actions didn’t make sense at the time, even to me. The way I felt when I thought Slaughter had killed her was a blend of mad frenzy and pathetic brokenness, a sickening hollow in my soul.

In that moment, I decided I never wanted to feel that way again. I wanted Devilry alive, and yet, when she was coming on my fingers, I had the strangest impulse to end her before she gained a greater hold on me, before she ruined my life and my plans just by existing.

It terrifies me, how close I came to killing her. Now that I’m calm, I understand that it would have been too late anyway; she has already changed me. The act of ending her life wouldn’t have spared me pain.

There is a part of myself that frightens me. I let her see it in that moment, and she didn’t struggle—she succumbed to me. Even if she hadn’t yielded to her fate, I like to think that I would have stopped myself. But I don’t know.

“The cut is deeper than I thought,” I murmur.

“It’s a flesh wound.” Her tone is even, almost careless, but there’s an undercurrent of pain that isn’t just physical.

“Devilry.”

“Stop it.” She shoves my hand away. “Stop pretending you’re sorry.”

“But I am.”

“No.” She says it through gritted teeth. “You’re not. I’m not. This is the life we chose. These are the things we do. Stop complicating it.”

My gaze drops to her wrist. There’s a bruise from when I slammed her forearm against the doorframe.

“Don’t, Ravager,” she whispers. “Don’t look so… stricken. Shit, your arms—they’re all cut up. And your shoulder—it looks awful. Let me finish up here, and then we’ll take care of it.”

She’s done talking about the injury, resistant to discussing my remorse any further, so I retreat to my spot on the floor. When she’s done bathing and washing her own clothes, she joins me.

We cut up another tablecloth to use for bandages, and she brings out the stitching kit from her pack.

I let her bandage my shoulder first. Then while she sits beside me in freshly-washed panties and nothing else, I stitch up the place where I stabbed her.

The act feels like the most intimate kind of penitence.

Part of me—the cautious, beaten, ruined Ravager that slinks around in my soul like a betrayed, wounded animal—that part still wants to fight her again and kill her outright, so she doesn’t get the chance to sneer at what I’m feeling or to hurt me deeper.

She wouldn’t make it easy, but she’s injured and unarmed. I could do it any number of ways.

Another part of me wants to fuck her first. But I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll be lost inside her forever. I won’t be able to get her out of my head. She’ll prowl through my thoughts every damn day until I go fucking insane.

“Ow,” she says tightly, and I realize that while wrapping a bandage around her chest, I accidentally pushed against the bruise on her sternum.

“Sorry.” I fasten the bandage and get to my feet. I keep hurting her, whether I want to or not. The two of us are connected by pain, and we can only ever be painful to each other. It’s best to maintain some distance.

“You come back down here and let me bandage your arms,” Devilry orders.

“No.”

“Coward.” Her voice is cool, incisive, a razor blade across my chest.

With an exasperated sigh, I sit back down, bunching the tablecloth between my thighs so she won’t be able to tell how achingly hard I am. I suffer the touch of her strong, slender fingers as she wraps my forearms with strips of cloth.

Then she traces the heavy bruising on my cheekbone and jaw. “No broken bones.”

“You almost sound disappointed.”

She shrugs, smirking.

“Do you enjoy breaking bones?”

A shadow flickers in her eyes, and she looks away. “Not particularly.”

“And the killing?” I shift my position, seeking her gaze again. “Is that a habit of yours?”

“No. But I’m not afraid to do what is necessary.

” She gets up, rummages in the closet for her own tablecloth, and wraps it around herself.

“Seems odd that they have these linens. In fact, this whole place is very odd. It’s outfitted like a fine manor on some country estate, and yet there are all these magical things, all these spells, both the destructive ones and the everyday magic.

” She gestures to the orb lights floating in two clusters against the kitchen ceiling.

“I suppose it makes a kind of sense. Maven says there has been more human influence in Faerie over the past few decades.”

“Why’s that?”

“The King of the Seelie married a human woman. A love match for the ages, apparently.” She swallows hard, her lips compressing tightly before she says, “We destroyed the mural that told their love story.”

I’m not sure why that grieves her, but I can tell she’s more upset about it than anything else we’ve done to this place.

“I’m sure they can create another one with magic,” I assure her.

“No, they can’t. Not like that one. It was painted by a human.

I could tell.” Her voice is strained, her eyes bright and liquid.

“No spellwork can ever replicate the emotion, the heart, or the imperfection of artistry like that. The person who painted those walls knew the couple, understood them, felt their story on a painfully intimate level. It takes mortal brilliance to create something that fragile, that exquisite. The Fae could never. Magic could never.”