“Really, Conrí.” I lifted a brow. “Must you?”
His snarling gaze raked me, then traveled over me again. “You’re dressed.”
“Indeed. Preferable when one makes public appearances.”
He blinked at me, and I decided he wasn’t up to being teased yet. “I thought you’d sleep longer,” I said more gently. He clearly still needed it, judging by the shadows under his eyes. The dried blood flaking off his chest and the angry-looking wound at his throat didn’t help. Bruises radiated from it where I’d sucked, drawing his blood as I rode him through that astonishing interlude. Feeling my cheeks heat with an unaccustomed blush, I tore my gaze away.
He snorted, then shook his head. Dragged his fingers through his wildly mussed hair. “I woke up alone.” He sagged a little, looking around at the tub still waiting to be emptied, at Ibolya’s discreetly retreating back as she slipped out of the room.
“I left Vesno to keep you company.”
At the sound of his name, the wolfhound trotted over, nudging his head under Con’s hand and gazing at him with rapt adoration. Con ruffled the dog’s ears. “Yes. Thank you for that. When I saw you were gone, I … I overreacted.”
I held out my good hand to him. After a moment’s hesitation, he came over and threaded his fingers through mine. “I’m fine, Con.”
“It might take me a while to feel confident in that,” he confessed.
For me, too. “I’m feeling like Myself again—and there’s a great deal that needs My attention.”
He grimaced ruefully. “There is. There’s a lot of news I should probably tell you.”
“Yes, I understand you held court the other day.”
Narrowing his gaze, he assessed me. “Are you pissed about that?”
I laughed, squeezed his hand, and let go. Ibolya had set out several pairs of heels for me, and I gestured to them. “Which ones, do you think?”
“Stand up and let me see,” he answered, surprising me when I’d expected a gruff disinterest.
Bemused, I stood, then turned when he circled a finger. “No wig?” he asked.
“You said I didn’t need to?” I sighed at myself for making it a question, but it still felt odd to go without that weight, that layer of armor that provided protection and disguise. Checking myself in the mirror, I ran my good hand over the soft shoots of spring colors. “I told Ibolya not to shave it, but she still can.”
“No, don’t.” Con put his hands on my bare shoulders, standing behind me, easily looking over my head with me barefoot. He made a darkly masculine frame for my colorful and slender form. The flesh-and-blood man to my … exotic orchid self. He pressed a kiss to my scalp. “I meant it when I said you should let it grow.”
“It will be very strange,” I warned him.
“Spectacular and unique,” he corrected with a grin. Then he bent and picked up a pair of shoes. “These.”
They were not the ones I would’ve picked. Unobtrusive, with narrow straps nearly the same shade as my skin, only the stiletto heels themselves were striking, a gleaming deep crimson that looked nearly black.
“They’ll show off your gorgeous legs,” Con explained, kneeling to slip one onto my foot, “and that dress. Which is something, by the way.”
Well pleased with Con’s sincere, if gruff compliment, I stepped into the shoe, balancing myself on his broad, naked shoulders while he deftly laced the straps and buckled them, then repeated the process with the other heel. Taking a moment, he rubbed a thumb over my bare toes and glanced up at me. “Nothing to cover your toes, either?”
“No. Nor My nails. It seemed silly with this.” I flicked my twig fingers, which still moved more like a wooden doll’s than human ones. “We thought about trying a glove, but that would just look odd and not really hide anything anyway.”
Nodding, he stroked his rough hands up my calves to my thighs under the filmy skirts. “If you’re going to show yourself as you are, then do it all the way.”
“I was thinking that there’s no point in hiding My nature any longer,” I ventured.
He shook his head in grim agreement. “Hiding won’t do either of us any good.”
“What will?”
He considered me. “I think we have to be prepared to fight.” He said it with some hesitation, the knowledge that we’d argued bitterly about this before in his eyes. Along with guilt that his winning that argument had led to disaster.
“I think we have no choice,” I agreed, smiling at the ghost of surprise crossing his face. “I can acknowledge now that we never did have a choice. And no, Conrí, I’m not at all pissed that you held court. I’m grateful that you handled things when I could not. It’s a great comfort to Me to know that…” So much I couldn’t quite put into words. That I couldn’t afford to say aloud. “That I’m not alone in this.”
A crooked smile lifted one side of his mouth, and he caressed my cheek with a callused knuckle. “Not as long as I’m alive.”
Uneasy, well aware I couldn’t make a similar promise, not with the choices that lay ahead of us, I touched a finger to the wound in his throat. He didn’t flinch, exactly, but definitely twitched. “Does this pain you?”
“Nope.”
“Liar,” I said softly, then took up one wrist to examine, then the other. “These look much better.”
“The neck one got chewed on more,” he replied with an intimate rumble, the heated look in his eyes and slow smile reminding me again of that incandescent sex, unlike anything I’d imagined, much less experienced. “Lia—are you blushing?”
I resisted the urge to clap my hands to my warming cheeks. A great disadvantage of wearing only light makeup. The heavier creams would’ve hidden such a traitorous response. “Obviously not, as I never blush.”
“Obviously not,” he agreed with a widening grin and brushed his fingers over the blush, cupping my cheek. “If we’re making an appearance, I should probably get dressed, too.”
I smiled and kissed his finger, beyond glad that he planned to go with me to face the wilds of my frantic courtiers. “You could always go shirtless,” I said, sliding my palm over his impressive chest. “I went bare-breasted to our wedding ball, after all.”
“As if I could forget. I thought my brains might fall out of my skull.” He feathered his fingers down my jaw and throat, the tenderness in the gesture at odds with the fierce desire in his eyes. The fire burned hotter than ever between us, but born of something different now. Before it had flared like this when we fought. Now it seemed to come from a deeper place, something raw and needy. “Lia,” he breathed. “I—I’m so happy to have you back.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “That’s not what I mean. I wish I had better words for you.”
“It’s all right, Con,” I whispered. I knew what words he’d swallowed back. I wished that I knew how to handle the tumult of emotions he stirred in me, but I didn’t.
“Shirtless would be easier, but I think I’ll wear actual clothes,” he said, breaking the spell. “Preferable when one makes public appearances,” he added in a posh accent completely incompatible with his hoarse voice.