Page 43 of The Beast King's Bride

“My subjects… they want you to like me.”

“That’s up to you, though, surely. Making me like you. Not up to them.”

“True. Elayne…”

“I should go. Turn around. Turn around so that I can get out of the water.”

“Wait.”

I have my hands covering my breasts, even though he can’t see them. It’s the most exposed I have ever been around a man. “What is it?”

He lifts a hand to the gash in his side. “Will you help me?”

“Help you with what?”

“Wash my back.”

I gape at him. “Now I’m your servant? Your handmaid?”

“No. That’s not…” He sounds like he’s gritting his teeth. “I’m only asking for your help. I… could wait for Jassin’s return,” he says quietly. “I can’t reach my back, is all.”

I know I’m staring at his sculpted chest and the wounds on it—the infected iron-wrought gash and the slash from yesterday, and I find he has added a few cuts that barely missed one of his small, pale nipples. It’s as if a big animal has raked its claws over him.

I have to swallow hard. The need to touch him is overruling my rational thoughts. “I’ll help you. If you answer my questions.”

He casts me a wary look. “I promise to answer what I can.”

“Not good enough.”

“It’s what I’m allowed to answer,” he says. “If it’s about the riddle and the curse, magic binds me, keeps me from saying certain things.”

“Fair enough.” I wade to the steps of the pool and reach for the sponge and the bar of hard soap inside the shallow box that Jassin brought. “Now turn around. There is quite a lot of back to scrub and I have quite a few questions, so we’d better get started…”

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