Golden and muscled, his chest was sprinkled with light hair that disappeared around his gorgeous pectorals and didn’t reappear again until it formed the line that began below his navel and disappeared beneath the towel.
Mina swallowed.
She had seen the naked human form before, but never like this. Never so visceral and hot and alive. Never so commanding. Never so cut.
It had been hard enough to focus during their hours of hiking, when only his chest had been exposed. There was no way she would make it through dinner knowing he had nothing on under the towel.
What would her grandmother think of her wild thoughts? How could she sit at a table and eat her grandmother’s recipe while her mind took off on a carnal tear, presenting her with crisp images of kissing a trail from his jaw all the way down his chest and along that oh-so-kindly marked path she’d observed.
She was going to combust while he laid out utensils on the table.
Human immolation was rare, but scientifically possible, given the right conditions. And the growing internal inferno that threatened to engulf her entire body seemed like the right conditions.
Shoving her hands into oven mitts, at this point more to protect the pan from her heat than the other way round, she carried the dish to the trivet Zayn had laid on the table.
“Mina...” His voice was a seductive caress. “That looks delicious.”
Since it wasn’t possible to blush any more than she already was, Mina tried playing it cool as she joined him at the table. “Thank you. It helps to have such high-quality ingredients.”
Zayn smiled and her toes curled in her socks.
“My dad used to say the same thing,” he said.
His dad. King Alden. She wondered if she would ever get used to such casual references to royalty. But to Zayn, the royal family wasn’t the pinnacle of the aristocracy. It was just family.
“Your father cooked?” she asked, placing the serving spoon and turning to collect the rice and the teff. Zayn had chosen the small dining nook for their dinner, and Mina was grateful. The large table she’d seen in the dining room reminded her too much of breakfast.
“He did,” he said. And after a beat, he added, “He insisted I learn as well.”
Mina snorted. “You call heating up a can of vegetables cooking?”
He shrugged. “Your words, not mine.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re telling me you know how to cook?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“What can you make?”
She couldn’t picture Zayn in a kitchen outside of the image he presented now, sitting at the table, shirtless.
“Simple things.Pesce al grappa, polle al grappa, paella, polle dominga, jamon e quez...”
Mina was impressed with the list. It was classic Cyranese cooking, much of it considered common food, but all the more delicious for it.
But rather than tell him that she said, “Well, next time you’re cooking, then.”
He smiled, and in the intimate lighting of the nook it lit his face with ease. “Gladly. I would love to feed you.”
His words carried promises far beyond those of a shared meal and Mina shivered.
“Did your mother cook?” she asked.
Zayn chuckled, shaking his head slightly. “No. The noble Singuenza daughters were not allowed anywhere near the kitchens during their formative years and later it was always beyond my mother. I imagine it’s the same for Aunt Seraphina. She was never the rebel.”
“I hear the sound of family stories there.” Mina leaned in, observing her own ease for the first time she could remember in months—certainly since long before she’d learned of her parliamentary interview.
He lifted his hands, palms up to her. “You’ll have to ask my mother yourself. Everything I know I learned secondhand from my cousin Helene, who learned it piecemeal from her mother. There are rumors that my mother was quite the wild child in her youth, though.”