Chapter 20: Nothing to Heal

The palace gave them a tower guest room with a tub the size of a small boat.

A maid brought hot water in relays and left without raising her eyes.

When the door finally shut, Shiori stood in the steam in her shift and could not think of one thing she needed to do.

No dusk.

No burning.

No wolf at the window, no basin, no list of the sick.

Her whole body hummed with the quiet.

Kaedan stood by the tub with his shirt off and his back to her.

She looked at it for a long time.

The skin between his shoulder blades was smooth, pale and unmarked.

There was no ring, no sun, no sealed line, only a long muscled back.

He had freckles she had never seen under the silver, and the pink crescent of her own bite on the left.

"You can look," he said, without turning. "I don't mind."

"I've looked."

"Not like this."

"No," she said. "Not like this."

She crossed the floor and set her palm flat between his shoulder blades.

The skin was warm.

Nothing glowed.

He drew a shuddering breath and she felt it in her hand.

"There's nothing to heal," she said.

"No."

"I don't have a reason."

"You don't need one."

She laughed against his shoulder.

"That's true."

She kissed the freckles one by one, up the line of his spine, and his tail came round her waist and held on.

"Get in," she said. "Before it's cold."

They sank into the hot water together, her back against his chest.

His knees lay on either side of her, and she let her head fall back on his shoulder.

Steam rose around them in curls.

He took the soap and the cloth from the rim and began to wash her.

He did it slowly.

He washed one arm at a time, then the line of her collarbone and the hollow of her throat.

She had been twenty-two years old in a hospital elevator.

Then a stranger in a white hall, and then a woman with a burning back.

She had not been washed by anyone in a very long time.

"I'm thirty-one," he said into her ear, "and I'd like to do this every night."

"I'm twenty-two, and I accept."

The cloth moved lower between her thighs.

She let her knees fall open in the water.

He made a low appreciative sound as his big hand replaced the cloth, his fingers parting her folds.

Warm water lapped around his wrist as his thumb found her clit.

The touch was slow and certain, circling her swollen clit and then sliding two thick fingers deep into her wet pussy.

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