“No,” Dorian clipped. “You may leave us.”
“Thank you, Molly,” Farah added as the maid bobbed a hesitant curtsy and scampered out.
Farah stepped to the basin, more than ready to wash the memory of that fetid hidden chamber and the very breath of Harold Warrington from her flesh.
Dorian followed, silent as a whisper, standing so close his chest grazed her back. “Let me,” he rasped in a voice made husky by darkness.
Farah reached for a soft and absorbent cloth and dipped it in the water. “It’s all right, you don’t have to.”
A warm hand reached from behind and covered hers. His gloves had disappeared, and only scarred male flesh rested against her skin. “Yes, I do,” he breathed against her ear.
New trembles seized Farah’s body as he eased her fingers open and let the cloth fall into the water. These had nothing to do with fear or cold, but a budding relief. A powerful hope. Farah knew the significance of his gentle movements as he eased his cloak from her shoulders. A few soft tugs, and her nightgown floated to the floor.
Her eyes stung with hot tears, her vision blurring until she allowed them to pour down her cheeks at an alarming rate. He’d come for her. Just when she’d thought all was lost.
Using his hands, those strong, scarred hands, Dorian took her bare shoulders in the softest grip and turned her to face him. A tenderness she’d never before seen glowed unnaturally bright in the dim light of the lone candle. His skin against hers felt foreign and familiar all at once. Dorian Blackwell was touching her. Of his own volition. No fear flared in his eyes. No revulsion curled his lips.
Rough knuckles lifted to her cheek. “Why are you crying?” He crooned her first words to him with a look so warm and earnest she could see her Dougan staring out through his eyes. “Did you lose something?”
The tears fell faster, harder, drenching the fingers he brushed against her face. “Yes,” she sobbed. “I thought I’d lost the only family I’ve ever really known, the very moment I’d found him again. And it was worse that you weren’t dead. That you sent me away.”
“What a fool I’ve been.” His hand lifted to cup her jaw, his thumb hovering over the bruise swelling around the small split there. “I thought you were safer without me. That, for once, I was doing the noble thing. It took almost losing you—God, Farah, I’ve never been so afraid.” His jaw clenched and his own eyes seemed to glitter with raw, agonizing emotion. “I thought I could live without you. But there is no life without you. Only existence. And that is a greater hell than what awaits me after death.”
Farah’s breath was stolen by a small hiccup. “Well.” She sniffed. “If you’re feeling noble in the future, just—stop. You’re rather terrible at it.”
That drew the devilish sound of amusement that Farah had come to recognize as Dorian’s chuckle. He gently pressed her down with his palms until she sat on the cushioned trunk at the foot of the bed, truly feeling naked for the first time since he’d undressed her.
“I mean it,” she admonished as she watched him rub the cloth along her favorite lavender-scented soap and wring it into the basin. She wrapped her arms over her breasts and crossed her legs, feeling rather brittle and exposed. “How are you supposed to keep me safe if you’re far away?”
She submitted as he softly brushed the cloth against her lip and chin, and then wiped away the tears from her cheeks, rinsing the fine patina of suds with a clean section of the linen. He noted her nakedness with a banked heat in his eyes, but his concern seemed to outweigh his baser instincts.
“You’ll never be rid of me now.” It would have been a tease from a less serious man, but coming from Dorian, it sounded like a dire warning. “You may come to regret it. My demons will haunt our lives.”
Farah reached for his wrist, stilling his hand and capturing his eyes with her own to make certain he understood her words. “I don’t mind battling a few demons when I’m living with their king.” She smiled. “And I think, after a time, we’ll chase them away together.”
He was silent, pensive, as he continued to wash her. His eyes and hands discovered parts of her for the first time. Parts that, while generally innocuous, became instantly arousing and sensual beneath his touch. He found places that made her gasp. The thin skin on the underside of her forearms. The dip of her waist. The curve behind her knee. The arch of her foot and between her toes.
Though she was generally clean from a previous bath, his ministrations seemed to be as much ritual as they were practical. He washed the fear from her skin. The taint of an evil man. The remembered smell of death and rot. All the while truly discovering her body with his fingers for the very first time through the thin veil of cloth and water.
Farah could tell by the flare of his nose and the strain in his neck and jaw that he struggled to be gentle with her. To complete his task without turning it into an advance. He was being careful, flicking concerned glances from beneath his lashes.
He stopped doing that once Farah poured invitation into her gaze.
She was a puddle of need and sentiment by the time a second knock preceded Gemma’s flounce into the room.
Biting out a curse, Dorian stood to block the view of Farah from the door and opened his mouth to, no doubt, commit a horrid form of verbal abuse on her friend.
“Calm your britches.” Gemma tossed her wild brown curls and held up a simple cotton wrapper. “I brought this for the lady as the doctor’s on the other side o’ that door. It was you wot called for ’im.”