Capture the Crown (Gargoyle Queen #1) -Jennifer Estep Page 0,35

answering my taunt with one of his own, he grimaced and quickened his pace, still backing into the bathroom. What was he doing?

Before he could close the door, I moved forward, crossed my arms over my chest, and leaned my shoulder against the doorjamb. Leonidas shot me a sour look, but he didn’t demand that I leave. Instead, still facing me, he grabbed the towel from around his neck and draped it on the sink. Then he reached for his shoulder. He stopped halfway, a loud hiss of pain escaping through his clenched teeth.

I arched an eyebrow. He tried again, with the same hiss of pain. My eyebrow rose a little higher.

He started to try a third time, but he must have thought better of it because he stopped. “Maybe you should do it after all,” he grumbled.

I stepped into the bathroom, dipped my fingers into the ointment, and reached for him. Leonidas jerked back, as skittish as a long-tailed gargoyle in a room full of rocking chairs. My eyebrow crept up even higher, and he finally stilled.

The water had dried on his chest, although a few drops still glimmered in his hair, and I had the oddest urge to run my fingers through his longish, wavy locks and flick the drops away. He smelled faintly of honeysuckle, the scent completely masculine and strangely intoxicating. The only thing that ruined his good looks was the mass of scars on his back, which I could clearly see in the mirror. The scars made Leonidas seem like a coin with two distinct sides—handsome, arrogant prince and wary, weary survivor. I found both halves far more appealing than I should have.

Leonidas tracked my gaze and stiffened. A sharp dagger of pain sliced through my mind, while anger, shame, and embarrassment throbbed like red-hot nails that had been driven into my chest. He might not care if I ogled his bare chest, but he didn’t like me studying his scars. That must have been why he’d so awkwardly backed into the bathroom.

Once again, that treacherous sympathy pricked my heart, and I suddenly longed to tell him that the marks were nothing to be ashamed of and that I had my own deep, painful scars, only mine were on the inside, where no one could see them. But I didn’t want to answer questions about my emotional scars any more than he wanted to talk about his physical ones, so I kept quiet as I eased closer to him, as slowly and carefully as I would approach a wounded animal.

Leonidas sighed, then gingerly lifted his left arm out to the side.

“This might sting,” I murmured.

“Don’t worry,” he muttered. “I’ve had worse.”

Yes, he had, given those horrific scars, although I didn’t voice the obvious thought. Instead, I smeared the ointment onto his wound. The cucumber-ginger scent tickled my nose, and that warm tingling spread through my fingertips again.

It’s just the ointment, I told myself in a stern voice. Just the ointment, and nothing to do with the man—enemy—before me.

Leonidas’s smooth, hard muscles involuntarily bunched and flexed at my touch, although the prince himself remained perfectly still, as though he were a strix about to swoop down from a high perch and attack its prey. His body might be locked in place, but his presence, his magic, brushed up against my own, like a warm, feathery cloak wrapping around me from head to toe. The light sensation was surprisingly heady, made even more so by the obvious strength and power lurking underneath his cold, quiet veneer.

Oh, yes, Leonidas Morricone was most definitely a strix at heart—a beautiful creature that was capable of great violence at any moment.

Despite everything that had happened between us, both today and years ago, I found the Morricone prince highly intriguing in a way that the rich nobles, merchants, and all my other potential suitors at Glitnir were not. Of course we were already bound together by our respective families’ long-standing animosity. And our royal backgrounds, as well as our deep connections to Lyra and Grimley, were quite similar. But perhaps the thing I found most appealing about Leonidas Morricone was that he seemed to feel the same sort of hidden pain and simmering rage that relentlessly stormed in my own heart.

I used the last of the ointment and wrapped another bandage around his torso, careful not to touch the scars on his back. The second I had tied off the bandage, Leonidas shifted away, putting some distance between us. It must be