Page 43 of A City of Smoke and Demons
They stared at one another. Heat settled in Analise’s cheeks, especially when he didn’t say anything, when his expression remained as resigned and blank as the last time she’d bothered to look at him.
‘Are you done?’ she asked at last.
‘I’m done,’ he said briskly. ‘The hot water—’
‘Hot water? There’s hot water?’
A smile ghosted his lips. ‘There is. I was going to say the tap is tight. Takes a bit to get it started.’
‘Are you implying my girlish arms can’t turn on a tap?’
Ezra sighed, rubbing his face. ‘No, Analise, I wasn’t. I’ll get out of your way.’
She stepped to the side, angling her body so he could slip past her, and then found to her mortification, that the doorway was narrower than she thought. Ezra passed close enough that she could feel the heat rising from his skin, and see the droplets of water that clung to his shoulders. She sucked in a breath; the slight pause in his movement told her he’d noticed, but he disappeared down the hall.
She closed the door firmly and rested against it.
The Canem Club wasn’t a small building, not like the safe house, but she had this horrible feeling that whenever she turned around, Ezra would be there. She couldn’t bear that.
Analise wanted to go home.
She dumped her clothes on the stool near the bath and stripped, then reached for the taps with a smile. Hot water. Rarely did she get to have a hot bath. The water in the safe house was lukewarm, which was better than freezing, but it wasn’thot.
It took her less than ten seconds to realise Ezra was right. She couldn’t get the tap to turn. She tried until her knuckles popped, biting her lip to suppress a scream. Analise had no option but to find someone to help.
And by someone, that meant Ezra.
She marched down the hall, dressed only in her towel, trying to arrange her expression into one of calm, but her heart was thundering and her mouth was dry. He answered his door in trousers and a bare chest, towel slung around his shoulders, hair still damp and ruffled. She dropped her eyes.
‘I can’t turn the tap on,’ she mumbled.
Ezra said nothing.
‘Can you help?’ Analise ground out, still looking at the floor.
She stalked back to the bathroom. He didn’t look at her when he came in, going straight to the tub and turning that damn tap on instantly. When he didn’t leave, she raised her eyebrows, then realised that she’d need him to turn the bloody thing off again.
Analise was suddenly extremely conscious that she was virtually naked, backed into the corner of a tiny room with a man who was much larger than she was standing in the doorway. She pulled her towel a little tighter.
He noticed. ‘I told you I’d never touch you unless you wanted me too.’
Water splashed into the tub, steam filling the room. Ezra folded his arms, fingers tapping against his forearm. Analise tried to push away the memory of what those fingers felt like, buried deep inside her, the feral gleam in his eyes as he pushed her back on the table and …
She laughed suddenly, hard and bitter. ‘I let you play me like a bloody instrument, didn’t I? I’m such an idiot. A lonely, fucked up idiot with a drinking problem, death magic in her veins, and the end of the world at her heels.’
‘You think I was trying to manipulate you?’ Ezra asked, disbelief colouring his tone. He looked at her then, and the meagre distance between them was a chasm. ‘I touched you,’ he continued, his voice low, ‘because you wanted me to. We both wanted it, Analise, and if we hadn’t been interrupted, I’d have fucked you on that table, then the lounge, the bed, because once I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop. You don’t …’ He laughed, a dark and hollow sound, and dragged his hand through his damp hair. ‘I’ve been a miserable prick for well over a year. You started to change that.’
‘My mistake,’ she said coldly.
He snorted. ‘Thank you for clarifying.’
Analise wished the water would hurry up so he’d leave. ‘Why did you leave the Unseen?’
‘Now you ask?’ He pushed himself off the door frame and turned the hot water off. The bathroom was suddenly filled with a painful silence, broken only by an errant droplet falling into the tub.
‘Why did you leave?’ she asked again.
‘At this moment in time, that’s none of your fucking business,’ Ezra snapped. ‘Enjoy the bath.’ He stalked from the room before she could say anything else.
