He Bred My Sister, So I Chose the Man He Fears novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Bath

By the third week of May the snow was gone from the bluff, and my grandmother's house smelled of woodsmoke and Axel.

The Kitchen had unlocked it in February.

Knut had padlocked it the week she died, and it took one old woman and a pair of bolt cutters to give it back.

I slept in it now with a bear.

He had fixed the roof and hung a second door.

He had dug a vegetable bed on the south side, and the moose ate it every other night.

That evening I came in from the Cache House with the day's readings still in my head.

There had been nine pups and a woman who only needed to hear that she was fine.

I was tired in a deep, warm way.

Axel had filled the bath.

It stood in the middle of the bathroom floor, a white claw-foot tub my grandmother had bought secondhand in 1989.

It was full to the brim and steaming.

He stood by it in his shirtsleeves with a towel over his shoulder.

"I didn't ask you to do this," I said.

"I know."

"It's the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me."

"Get in," he said.

I undressed.

He watched me do it with his eyes warm and his hands still.

He always watched me as though he were being allowed to, and I loved it.

I stepped into the water and sank to my chin.

It was almost too hot.

I groaned.

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