When he was nude, he unbuckled her thigh sheaths, unsnapped the back fastening of her bra and slipped her panties off. Then he scooped her up, took her into the bathroom and tipped her over the water. “Check that,” he said.
She wiggled her fingers in the frothy mounds of froufrousmelling stuff, dipped them into the water underneath and sighed. “It’s perfect.”
He deposited her in the tub and climbed in behind her so that she sat sandwiched between his legs. He leaned back in the tub with a grunt and pulled her to him. She moaned and collapsed against his chest. His engorged cock had been on urgent duty call from the moment he had slipped off her dress, and he had to shift a bit to find a comfortable spot. Then he wrapped his arms around her warm, wet naked body and contemplated the concept of perfection.
“We have agreed that you panicked in the study,” he said.
Her head moved in a small nod.
“Do we also agree that you panicked over several things and not just about me?”
Another nod.
“Shall we consider the possibility that this was stress induced?”
“Yes,” she muttered. “But Tiago—”
“No ‘buts,’” he ordered. “And don’t wriggle.” She huffed but subsided, and he bit back a smile. It was a rare moment when she didn’t have a comeback of some sort. She truly must be exhausted. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Perhaps we should then conclude that what you panicked over may not necessarily be of any real concern.”
“Tiago—”
“I’m hearing a ‘but’ attached to that,” he said in warning. “It is implied, but it is still there.” She growled in frustration even as she wrapped her arms around his to hug him back. “You must trust me to look out for myself. I had fun today.”
“You had fun?” She tilted back her head to look at him in surprise.
He swooped in fast to kiss her pillowy mouth. “I did. Furthermore, I learned a lot. I learned things about you, and I learned things about the people around you. You might recall, I also figured out exactly what I need to be doing and how.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that.”
He pulled her up higher so that she was lying on him, their legs entwined.
“You keep picking me up and carting me around,” she muttered. “You know, when I’m not injured or drunk on my ass, I do have two perfectly functional feet.”
“You are just so magnificently portable,” he told her. She snorted out a laugh, her body relaxing against his, her head tucked under his chin. “I like carting you around.” He loved how she felt in his arms. He asked, “So what is the moral of this story?”
She yawned. “Stop panicking?”
“Well, that too.” He rubbed her back. “The moral of the story is you must learn to trust me. Don’t try to do your job and worry about me too. It’s too much and, more important, it’s not necessary. You have an immense undertaking ahead of you. I need to be able to trust you too, that you’re taking your best to your job. We both need you to succeed.”
She kissed his neck. “We both need you to succeed too.”
“I think that works out well,” Tiago said. “Don’t you?”
“Yes. Okay.” The bubble bath was warm and lustrous, and Tiago’s body made the most comforting bed imaginable. She slit her eyes open. His dark muscled chest looked intensely masculine against the mounds of bubbles that surrounded them. She looked at the massive bulge of his bicep as she traced the barbed wire tattoo with a finger. “What did you learn?”
“About you?” His deep, lazy voice reverberated in her ear.
“No, silly, about other people.”
He shifted and kissed her forehead. He said telepathically, From his scent and mannerisms, the bug is most likely an addict of some sort. Unless he can convince me he’s ill and on some kind of medication that produces a chemical tinge to his scent, he has got to go. The guard captain has got to go too. My guess is he has a problem with females in authority, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t like how he responds to you. I like most of the house staff. I don’t have an opinion one way or another about the grounds staff as long as they follow security protocol, and I don’t trust Naida as far as I could throw her.
You could actually manage to toss her quite a distance, she murmured.
He conceded the point. Okay, I trust her much less than as far as I could throw her. You get my point. I haven’t made up my mind about Aubrey. Sorry, but I haven’t. I think Arethusa is genuinely investigating the attacks, and she doesn’t seem to trust anybody else. That makes me cautious. And I think Kellen is likely to be trouble, politically if in no other way. And there’s one last thing.
What is it? Her mental voice was flat, tired.
He could imagine how difficult hearing all this was for her. These were her people, and some of them were people she remembered from a happy childhood. Her instincts must be warring inside as she wondered who she should trust. His arms tightened. He said in as gentle a voice as he could manage, Perhaps the attacks on you were engineered by someone other than the Dark Fae. But taking everything into consideration, including the timeline of events, I think it is most likely that the person behind the attacks is under this roof.
She was silent as she considered his words. What is your reasoning?
She didn’t just accept what he said, or react. Good girl.
I don’t have evidence, he said. And I could be wrong. But consider: who would have had the time to develop an alliance with Geril and entice him to commit a really bad fucking crime? Geril didn’t just attempt murder. He attempted a political assassination. There had to be a damn-strong motive there, and I’m not sure that money alone would have done it.
She stirred. What do you mean?
He explained about the conversation he and Rune had had with Arethusa in the morgue, and the payout Geril had received from the bogus Illinois company that was supposedly owned by Cuelebre Enterprises. Remember, I’m just making suppositions , he said. But given how Urien controlled traffic to and from Adriyel, it seems less likely that an outside agent from another demesne could have had the time to persuade Geril to act. And why would another demesne do that?
They wouldn’t, she whispered. They would have no reason to.
Exactly, he said. There’s no motive. Look at it as a risk/ benefit analysis. You’re already known to all the demesnes, and every last one of them is hoping to develop a good relationship with you. They may not like your connection to Dragos, but at worst they would watch and wait to see what kind of monarch you would make. Assassination could come at a later point if they feel you present an active danger to them. To try to assassinate you now wouldn’t benefit any of them strongly enough to offset the risk of inciting war with the Dark Fae or of incurring Dragos’s wrath.
She was still, huddled against him, and silent.
Again, I have no proof, he said gently. But what makes the most sense from what we know is that our perp was someone who crossed over from Adriyel to Chicago with Geril. Maybe it’s someone with an allegiance to Uriel’s old cronies; I am very interested in pursuing that line of investigation when we reach Adriyel. Our perp would have had time to work on him by promising a big enough reward. At the same time Geril would have perceived our perp as a big enough threat, so that killing you became more important than leaving you alive and trying to curry favor with you.