Unleashed by the Defender (Brides of the Kindred #25) - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,21

him into the bathing area. “Okay now, take off your clothes and get in,” she said, showing him the big marble tub filled with steaming water and pink foamy bubbles.

Without waiting for her to turn her head away, J’are began stripping down the black trousers he’d been wearing. It was impossible to say if they were meant to be black or if they’d been painted with the same stuff that covered his skin but Imani could at least see that where they had covered him, he wasn’t painted. A firm, tan, muscular ass came into view before she could look away as J’are finished undressing and climbed into the tub.

“Warm,” he remarked as he sank into the pink bubbles. “No warm water in the hole. All cold all the time.”

“That sounds terrible,” Imani said. She tried to hand him a sponge. “Do you think you can wash that stuff off yourself?”

But J’are leaned away from the sponge.

“What’s that? Don’t like!”

Imani sighed.

“It’s just a sponge. It will help get you clean—see?” She knelt by the side of the tub and reached both arms into the tub herself. Then she made a show of scrubbing one hand with the sponge while J’are watched. “It’s soft—it doesn’t hurt,” she told him.

His suspicious frown lessened and he held out his own arm to her.

“Make clean,” he said, nodding.

Oh, so he was willing to get scrubbed as long as Imani was the one doing the scrubbing. Well, she didn’t really mind if it made him feel better about getting cleaned up.

“Here we go,” she said, taking his huge hand in her much smaller one and beginning to scrub his arm in long strokes. The black paint stuff seemed stubborn at first, but then it finally began flaking and peeling off in long strips.

As she worked, Imani was reminded again of her friend from high school and how the two of them had spent days on her dad’s farm. She wasn’t thinking of the wolfdogs this time, however, but of the horses. They had spent hours grooming their favorite mounts, currying and brushing the big animals. That was a little like cleaning J’are, because he was so big.

Not that I’d ever want to “mount” him, Imani thought and felt her cheeks get hot with a blush. Now where had that idea come from?

Pushing it out of her head, she continued to peel away the paint. But along with his firm, tan skin, she found something else under the thick, shiny layer.

At first she thought the lines she saw were more paint but they weren’t shiny and they didn’t come off, no matter how hard she scrubbed. J’are watched her trying for some time. Finally he said,

“You scrub hard.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Imani apologized. “It’s just…I can’t get this other stuff off your arm. See?” She pointed to the thick, black marks on his skin. “Is this some other kind of paint?”

J’are shook his head.

“No paint. Those are k’dra—my markings.”

Imani stopped scrubbing at once.

“Oh, so they’re supposed to be there?”

He nodded again. “My k’dra.”

“I see. I’m sorry,” Imani said. She couldn’t tell if the thick black markings were some kind of tribal tattoos or maybe just natural skin colorations but she didn’t think she could get the big Kindred to understand her question, so she didn’t ask.

“Let’s move on to the other arm then,” she said briskly.

Obligingly, J’are gave her his other arm and she scrubbed it free of paint as well. This was a bit easier, since it had been soaking for some time.

Imani did his chest and back as well, noting that the thick black markings—which looked very much like tattoos to her—ran up both arms and across his back and his broad, muscular chest as well. She wondered if they had some special meaning to him or the family he had been taken from as a boy.

There were so many questions she wanted to ask but she didn’t think now was the time to try to get through to the big Kindred. He was letting her scrub him, but he still looked rather wary. He especially didn’t like it when she washed his face and hair.

Remembering the long, flowing hair she’d seen on the evidence vid that had been recorded on the tiny drive, she wondered—as she scrubbed the short stubble that remained—who had cut it. Had he been shorn before he entered the Yonnite jail or was that something that had been done to him down in ‘the hole’ as he had put