Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,29
see the gray smear.
“Ash.” He chuckles. “You’re covered in it.”
“Don’t bother forgiving my impertinence, but you’re no bastion of cleanliness yourself, Your Highness—” I dodge out of his retaliatory kiss, putting a young tree between us.
“Then…” He peers around the trunk. “Should we rectify our sullied states?”
“Common Vetrisian if you please,” I request, sidestepping his hand as he reaches for me. His dark eyes catch red moonlight.
“There’s a creek not far from here—the headman told me it’s where the well’s source begins.”
“And muck up what little water these poor people have left with our sheddings? I counted you better than that, my prince.”
“There’s a pool downstream. It’ll be fine. More than fine—clean. Possibly even romantic.”
“You are exceedingly good at precisely two things, Your Highness.” I rest my chin in a branch and smirk up at him. “The color black, and wooing a woman with the idea of basic hygiene.”
His gaze is a carefully kept smolder. “You’re not going to let me kiss you right now, are you?”
“No.”
“Very well.” He rounds the tree. “Onward to basic hygiene, then.”
With the most unsuitably giddy smile on my face, I follow him over the forest floor, the two of us picking through roots and around mossy boulders in wordless rhythm until the sound of the creek welcomes us. The pool is deep and small, the creek’s waterfall a gentle patter as it empties in and then back out. Summer graces the little oasis with hanging strands of moss threaded with ground violets and white starflowers, the scent like melted sugar and the best parts of an apothecary. The tendrils float in the water, white and purple petals skating over the surface in a gentle, effervescent swirl with the current.
“Far more beautiful than I thought,” Lucien breathes. “He made it sound like a mud hole.”
He turns, and I hear him turn around again when he realizes I’m halfway through pulling my shift over my head. All I can see is gauzy white, and then freedom, my clothes pooled around me and the night air caressing my bare skin and the prince’s back to me.
“Lucien,” I start. “Aren’t you coming?”
“In…” I hear him swallow. “In a moment.”
If my smile gets any bigger, I’m fairly certain my head will split in two. And not in a way that can be healed back up with magic. Triumphant even in nakedness, I hover at the pool’s edge and then slip in.
“Oh! It’s perfect. A little cool, but that’s never stopped me before.”
“I remember it stopping you once,” Lucien counters, unbuttoning his shirt. “When we first met.”
“You were awfully cold, weren’t you?” I laugh, wetting my hair. “Blackmailing me every chance you got.”
“A precaution,” he argues with zero bite to it.
“A way to test me, more like.” I swim over to the side of the pool. “Well? Did I pass?”
I watch him shrug his shirt off, sword-muscles and thief-muscles and prince-muscles rippling beneath skin. His shoulder blades are as wicked sharp as I remember them—his spine a beautiful curve into the hem of his pants.
Pants.
Oh gods.
I look away just in time, the sound of a belt hitting the ground. My skin prickles red-hot under the water, goose bumps and tightness and…I can’t let him see me like this. Cool. Composed. Zera Y’shennria is always cool and composed and ready with some quip. Worldly. Experienced. Never shy. It’s one thing to see myself naked, but seeing him—
“I thought you said the water was cold?” His voice filters out from somewhere to my left, the water rippling as he slides in. “But your face is bright red.”
“It—it is! Cold!” I start, my throat suddenly sand and gravel. “I was just—”
And then he’s there, in front of me, standing chest deep in water and close enough to feel his body heat radiating through it. Droplets gleam on his collarbone as he leans in, putting one broad hand to my forehead.
“Do you have a fever?” He pauses. “Is it foolish of me to even ask if Heartless get sick?”
I can feel the outline of him, the barest skimming of skin against skin—my thighs, his wrist, his ribs, my fingers. Touching me. Just the lightest touch—
he used that against you, the hunger faintly calls from the depths. touch.
My eyes dart up to his face, points crystallizing in the mush he’s made my brain into. I start, my laugh fragmented.
“I was so happy to be with you again, I almost forgot. You—Varia said you’re a skinreader. All those times in Vetris, that kiss—”