fulfilled. With our bargain ensuring he’d have to take me to visit Earth as much as I wanted, as well as allowing me freedom of movement within his house, the threat of mental death by boredom and isolation was officially off the table. I could breathe easier knowing I’d have some semblance of a life down here, rather than a semi-comfortable prison sentence.
I could work with that. Everything else would fall into place somehow.
Of course, there was the matter of my side of the bargain…
Now, if Taylor had been here, she’d have grabbed me by my shoulders and tried to shake some sense into me while yelling, “Have you lost your mind?”
Given that neither Tay nor anyone else with a lick of reason was here, though, I was alone with the embarrassingly eager part of myself that looked forward to my little charade with Azazel. Sometimes—okay, all too often—my good sense lost the fight to dangerous defiance, and I lived and breathed for a level of contrariness that was worrisome.
I knew what Azazel was doing. I recognized spite when I saw it. He wanted to put me in my place, punish me for my recalcitrance by making me uncomfortable in my role as his “pet.” Well, if he thought he could embarrass me and would see me cringe, he had another think coming.
I would show him up. I’d play my part so well, he’d be fooled right alongside that bigwig Zaquiel. He wanted to use sex as a means to fluster me? Oh, I’d fluster him. Right then and there, I swore I’d make him so hot under the collar, he’d blow steam even in Hell’s unrelenting heat.
The fragrance of the soap permeated the air, the same slightly spicy note I’d scented on Azazel, and I realized I would step out of this shower smelling like him from head to toe. Not that it affected me in any way.
Nope.
All clean, I shut off the water, rubbed myself dry with the huge fluffy towel hanging nearby, and wrapped it securely around me. It did a great job covering me from my chest down to below my knees, and I didn’t feel quite as exposed as I’d feared. My hair hung still mostly wet around my shoulders, but I hadn’t seen another towel large enough to wrap it up in. Steeling my spine, I opened the door to the bedroom.
His back turned to me, Azazel was in the process of pulling on a new pair of pants, and the one-second glimpse of his bare ass before the fabric covered it was enough to completely jumble my thoughts.
Heat flooded my already shower-warm skin, centered low in my abdomen with an irritating pulse.
It wasn’t fair. Such bitability should be prohibited.
“When you’re done admiring the view,” he said without sparing a glance at me while fastening his pants, “put that on.” He jerked his head at the bed.
Yanking myself out of my trance, I looked at the item he’d indicated.
Draped across the comforter lay a dress from my own wardrobe, and—likely not quite so incidentally—the most revealing piece of clothing I owned, aside from underwear, of course. Skin-tight, the blue sheath-style dress would mold to my body as if painted on, but not just that—it was mainly made of lace, see-through enough around the torso to grant enticing glimpses of anything underneath. It was meant to be worn with a decorative bra teasing through the lace, in a confident display of one’s own goodies at an opportunity that would invite such ostentatious eroticism…a bachelorette party, for example.
I’d never gotten up the nerve to actually wear it, and it had hung untouched in my closet for over a year.
“How did you—” I brushed my fingers over the filigree lace. “Did you run out and get this from my rooms just now?” Remembering the time it had taken to walk from his quarters to my suite that first day we’d arrived, I added, “Don’t tell me you kept this in here all this time.” I threw a salacious smile at him. “If you needed things of mine to sniff at and rub yourself on, my panties would be the more obvious choice, don’t you think?”
His gaze was molten as he raised a hand, and a towel appeared in his palm. “It’s called summoning. I can call on and materialize any object that is physically within my own estate and that I have seen before.” He threw the towel at me. “For your hair.”