“Come here,” he commanded in that soft, low growl of a voice, “and I will help you in.”

“Come nearer, and I will help you,” said the wolf to the foolish little lamb. The words from one of the old fairy fables Tildy used to read to her when she was a child popped into Khamsin’s head, the story of a headstrong little lamb who had so wanted to be free of her belled collar that she’d trusted a wolf’s offer of assistance rather than heeding her instincts and fleeing to the safety of the flock.

Feeling very like the little lamb, Kham silenced the inner alarms clanging their desperate warning and walked with slow deliberation around the perimeter of the tub. As she rounded the curved corner, she lost the last veil of protection hiding her body from Wynter’s gaze.

He examined her with slow deliberation. Pride kept her arms at her side when what she really wanted to do was cover herself and run for shelter. She was slight and had always been. After the last week of illness, she was even thinner now than she’d ever been, but if he found her wanting, he did not show it.

His broad hands slid round her middle, spanning her waist with inches to spare. He lifted her with the barest flex of the heavy muscles bunched beneath his skin, and she rose. When her feet lost contact with the ground, she instinctively clutched his wrists for balance.

Gunterfys. Giant killer. So, he’d named his sword. Feeling the rock-hard bone and unyielding muscle beneath his golden skin, she had no trouble imagining him battling toe to toe, fist to fist, with those ferocious monsters of the high mountains.

He lifted her higher, up over his head. Her br**sts brushed against his chin. Wickedly, he held her there for a moment, letting her br**sts dangle the merest breath from his lips, watching her with eyes of ice blue flame.

“Lift your feet, little flower,” he growled. His breath was not hot but cold, yet it swirled around her ni**les like a breath of fire, making them leap to aching attention.

She bent her knees and lifted her feet clear of the tub’s edge. A moment later, she was immersed, tingling from neck to toe where the heat of the water penetrated the chill of her skin. Jasmine steam filled her nostrils with heady scent.

He reached for the bar of soap and a scrap of linen, ducking both into the water and rubbing them together. Her eyes widened when he set the soap aside and began to run the foamy cloth over her arm.

“There’s no need for you to bathe me. I can do it myself, or Bella can.”

He gripped her wrist, refusing to let her pull away, and continued to scrub. Hand, fingers, up her forearm. “Bella is gone.”

Kham’s breath stalled. “Gone?” She hardly knew Bella, they’d only been together those few awful first days of travel, but the little maid was all Kham had of Summerlea. A face from home.

“I sent her on ahead to the Craig.” His lips thinned. “I should have sent her packing back to Vera Sola. She was worse than useless. Hiding your illness.”

“On my command.”

His eyes shot up, pinning her with sudden, burning cold. “You think I don’t know that?” He finished with her arm and quickly soaped the other. “If she’d acted on her own to deceive me, she wouldn’t be headed for the Craig. Or still drawing breath.”

He rubbed more soap into the cloth and reached for her br**sts. Her hands shot out, one closing around his wrist, the other reaching for the washcloth. “I can do it.”

He pushed past her resistance with effortless strength. “Be silent and be still.” The cloth touched her breast and began scrubbing in small, brisk circles. “I’ve already done more than touch every inch of your body and will do so again. This false modesty has no place between us.” The cloth scrubbing her br**sts slowed. His fingers toyed in the slick, foaming suds, sliding over her skin, cupping her br**sts. The pads of his thumbs brushed across her ni**les, then lingered to tease the small beads that formed in response. “You have beautiful br**sts.”

Her brows drew together. “If there’s no room for false modesty, there’s no room for false compliments either,” she snapped. “I know I’m not beautiful.”

His gaze lifted. “No,” he agreed. “Beauty is too tame a word to describe you.” He held her gaze for a long moment, and it wasn’t until he turned his attention back to her br**sts that she realized she’d forgotten to breathe. “But these,” he murmured, filling his palms with the weight of her br**sts, “are indeed beautiful. Perfect. You don’t know how much I’ve thought about them. About the way they fit in my hands.” Her ni**les tightened to tiny pebbles. He smiled a little before coolness shuttered his expression once more. “Stand.”

Forcing her hands to remain at her side, she obeyed. Her chin lifted and she refused to look at him as he soaped her abdomen, her hips, her legs. Think of him as a servant, Kham. A woman servant. His hands slid up the backs of her legs and stroked her inner thighs. An old, wrinkled woman servant, she added frantically.

But the broad hand that slipped between her legs was so large and strong and masculine, she couldn’t hold the other images no matter how hard she tried.

Summer Sun! The cloth stroked back and forth between her legs, and there was nothing impersonal or servile about it. Each pass was a languid caress, slow, teasing. Testing. The cloth shifted, and then it was his fingers that stroked her, skin to skin, slick with soap and the warm, feminine cream that betrayed her will.

She sat down with a splash and glared at him.