That he still hadn’t told Nyssa her brother was alive, two days after she’d taken the vaccine, and a full day since Areg had been continuously conscious, bothered Jancel.

It didn’t just bother him—it embarrassed him.

But no matter. He’d grown used to living with shame.

He’d tell her first thing tomorrow morning as soon as she woke up in his arms, he promised himself as he marched toward the bathhouse.

He had big plans for tonight.

An hour earlier, he’d taken a glass of his strongest rum and changed into a casual shirt and slacks. Then he’d gone to the furnace room for his first load of steaming hot water. He was carrying the last two buckets at present.

He had granted Wadinnie, Memeen, and most other servants the evening off so the job of filling the rooftop tank with hot water had fallen to him.

As it happened, he was glad for it. Fetching water kept him productively occupied. The alternative would’ve been pacing his room restlessly, glancing at the clock and his watch every two minutes.

When the tank was full, he took off his shoes and stepped inside the bathhouse. Scanning the space for the best observation post, he picked a spot by the wall between the door and the shower.

Nyssa arrived a few minutes later at six sharp.

She fingered a bracelet on her wrist. “Where is Wadinnie?”

He leaned on the wall. “She’s off tonight.”

“Ah.” Nyssa went to the opposite wall and leaned on it. “What about Dame Heidd? What if she wanders into this part of the garden?”

“Mother’s helping out at the Healers’ hospital. She’ll take a cab home around ten.”

Nyssa nodded, her hand clutching the golden ouroboros around her neck.

Was she nervous about this?

Had she agreed to the barter because she needed a “legitimate” excuse to be with him as he’d hoped since her revelations during the vaccine test? Or was she forcing herself for the sake of the important information he’d promised?

Jancel froze as a new thought struck him.

If the latter was the case, how was he different from Ultek? How was he a good man? He thought of himself as Nyssa’s protector, but there was no denying he was also her captor. The only power she held, underneath her defiance and tantrums, was to not give herself to him willingly. Him—he held the power of life and death over her.

Was he abusing that power now?

One of the many unflattering epithets Nyssa treated him to when she raged was “monster.”

Had he really become one?

Clenching his fists, he stared her in the eye. “We don’t need to go through with this. I’ll give you the information anyway.”

She bunched her eyebrows.

“I will.” He nodded for emphasis, shame heating his ears. “Right now, right here. Because—”

“No.”

He shut his mouth and searched her face.

“A deal is a deal.” She curled her lip. “Besides, all that water you carried, and the staff you sent away… It would be a shame to let all of that effort go to waste.”

“If you’re concerned I’ll hold this against you—” he began again.

“I’m not.” Her voice was firm, and her expression businesslike. “So. Let’s get on with it.”

“Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent.”

His heart soared with joy.

She wants this.

He pointed to the faucet. “Will you check if the water is warm enough?”

She ran some over her fingers. “It’s fine.”

“I’m glad.”

They stared at each other.

She stepped out of her clogs, pulled her shirt over her head, and slid her pants down. The underwear came off just as quickly.

Her undressing was deliberately not seductive. She was telling him, I promised to strip naked, but I didn’t promise to apply myself.

It didn’t matter. He was being seduced anyway. How could he not at the sight of her body—firm and shapely and infinitely desirable—bared for his starved eyes?

His gaze caressed her face, her neck, her shoulders, and lingered on her breasts, committing their shape to memory. He tried to find a word for the color of her nipples and areola. Rosewood? Like her lips, just muted. His fingers itched to touch them.

Not until she asks me.

Because she would. It wasn’t just the secrets she’d confessed under the truth serum that gave him that certainty. It was the way her face flushed as she turned on the spray. The way her eyes darkened when she stepped under it and looked at him over her shoulder. The way her tongue darted out to wet her lips while her gaze slid to the bulge in his slacks.

He crossed his left ankle over his right, feeling unusually relaxed. His headache, which had returned briefly after his latest meeting with Boggond, was gone. His mind was clear, perfectly focused on the one thing that had become the center of his universe—Nyssa’s shaved mound.

He’d already glimpsed it once before through the window of this bathhouse that she’d left open… on purpose, he suspected. But on that occasion, Nyssa had been sporting a full bush. He knew it was fashionable among noble-born ladies to remove all body hair, including their groin thatch. She must have given up on that habit.

Until today.

He stared, appreciative and unapologetic. The absence of pubic hair revealed the top of her nether lips, and it was the sexiest thing he’d ever laid eyes on. If his hands had been itching to touch her breasts, now they burned to cup her sweet cleft, find her bud and rub it, plunge a finger into her heat…

With a gasp, she turned away from him.

She picked up a bar of soap and rubbed it over her throat and her round, full breasts. Then she slid her hand down to her tummy and legs.

When she reached behind her, he opened his mouth to offer to soap her back but stopped himself at the last moment.

She must ask for my touch.

Rivulets of water ran down her face and shoulders, coming together between her breasts to kiss her serpent pendant and rush farther down, over her slit, and down her legs. She put the soap aside and lathered herself, stroking the sides of her breasts, palming underneath, squeezing lightly. Circling around their erect peaks without touching them.

“Rub your nipples,” he rasped.

She stopped moving and quirked a brow at him. “Your giving me directions wasn’t part of the deal.”

He held her gaze. “Touch them, Nyssa.”

Surprising him—and herself, judging by her confused expression—she did.

His breath hitched.

Her eyes bored into his as she closed her thumbs and index fingers around her nipples and rubbed.

He stared, enthralled.

Goodness, she was beautiful!

Slowly, her eyes grew hooded and her gaze lost focus.

Jancel knew doing this for his benefit aroused her as much as it aroused him. He detached himself from the wall, leaning forward a little in a pathetic attempt to get closer to her. But he didn’t step forward.

Not yet. Not until she asks for it.

His erection lifted his trousers like a tent pole. He nearly shook with the suppressed need to be all over her, in her.

His breathing was pained when he rasped, “Between your legs now.”

She closed her eyes and slid her right hand down.

He groaned something unintelligible before he pulled himself together enough to say, “Spread them.”

She bent her left leg at the knee and slowly opened it, pushing the knee to the side. Brushing her fingers over her folds, she rubbed the little pearl between them, up and down at first, and then in a circular motion. Her head tipped back and a flush of arousal reddened her face.

In his whole life he’d never wanted anyone as much as he wanted this woman, not even his late wife.

“Rub harder.” He’d meant it as a request, but the edge in his voice made it sound like an order.

She seemed beyond caring if this was part of the deal. She rubbed harder, shifting the weight of her body against her hand, pressing her fingers into her slick, swollen flesh. Water slid down her face and body, making her skin silky.

His chest rose and fell. It was getting increasingly hard to stay where he was.

“Nyssa,” he whispered.

My bristling wildcat. My purring little kitten. The woman I crave.

Abandoning all decorum, he reached inside the waistband of his slacks and wrapped his fingers around the base of his member.

She bit her lower lip.

“Slip a finger inside you,” he ordered, vaguely aware that he should’ve asked more politely.

But she obeyed his command the instant it was out. And then she went above and beyond, pumping, adding a second finger, pumping harder.

His cock swelled in his hand until it was as hard as a metal rod. His balls stirred, working. “Open, show me.”

She spread her folds. “Is this enough?”

He ogled the bright pink treasure between them. “No. But I’ll make do.”

Suddenly, all he could think of was her feminine nectar. How it would feel coating his fingers, his sex… How it would taste on his tongue…

“Are you wet, kitten?” he asked.

She laughed as water rained over her. “Is that a trick question?”

“Inside, Nyssa.” He was too far gone, too crazed to smile at her joke. “Are you wet inside?”

Her grin gave way to an entirely different expression. Intense. Sultry.

“Why?” she asked in a husky voice.

“I need to know.”

She eyed him. “Bring your ass over here and find out.”