“Queen Barbara? Absolutely not. She is dignity personified.”
Zayn lifted an eyebrow. “You buy the image? For shame, Mina.”
She laughed. “Well, I’ll just have to ask the source.”
“What about you? Do you have any wild stories from your youth?”
She knew a frown flashed across her face at his words, but it was gone as soon as it appeared.
“Not me,” she said, with a self-deprecating smile. “I really just studied. Nothing exciting about my past—I’m just your average citizen,”
Zayn snorted. “I find that hard to believe. You were about to be appointed to the King’s council, you speak multiple languages, you’ve been to Ecuador on a research expedition. That’s a lot more than the average citizen.”
Mina smiled. “When you put it like that...”
He laughed, and she wondered if he knew that the low rumble of that sound was the key to the lock that kept the heat of her core at bay.
“I do,” he insisted.
He was iron and charm, threaded together through both King and man, and the combination created a powerful magnetism.
Heat bloomed in her cheeks, her breath catching a bit as she said, “Well, it takes a lot of study to do those things, which doesn’t leave much time for wild stories.”
He raised an eyebrow. “In my experience, wild stories make time for themselves.”
The heat in Mina’s cheeks took on a different nature at his words. Wild stories, it would seem, had just purposely avoided her then—because she had none. She had stories of falling asleep with her nose in a book, and spending her rare free nights tucked away in her mother’s living room. All to keep alive the memory of a man she apparently hadn’t ever really known.
“Not even a love affair to distract from your focus?” he asked.
She shook her head in response. “Not even a love affair, I’m afraid. Just boring study, night after night.” She blushed again. She hadn’t meant to say that, emphasizing that her nights all the rest of the life she had spent alone. She took a sip of her water to wash down the knot of embarrassment lodged in her throat.
“It sounds like you’re ripe for something wild, then.”
His tone implied that he was open to being the one to introduce wild into her life, and she choked on her water before trying to brush it off as a chuckle.
“Ha-ha.” She enunciated the sound as if she was new to the process of laughter, before adding, “The only thing I’m ripe for is a bath.”
He shook his head, amusement alive in his eyes, but simply said, “I can handle the dishes, Mina. Go upstairs and take your bath.”
She didn’t wait for him to say it twice. Making her way into the living room, it was impossible for her to miss the gorgeous wide staircase that led to the second floor. Taking it, she wandered the hallways, every now and then stealing a glance down through the open-plan living room into the kitchen to see Zayn in his towel.
It occurred to her that the towel was the first thing she’d seen him wear that wasn’t black. A bubble of laughter escaped at the thought, and the edge to its sound reminded her that, regardless of how relaxed things were now, she’d pushed her body past its limits over the course of the day.
Away from Zayn’s temperature-raising presence, the aches and pains of the day made themselves felt. And why shouldn’t they? She had drunk and danced late into the night the night before, been woken up too early, with a hangover, survived an emergency plane landing, and gone on a four-hour hike within the last twenty-four hours. It was a wonder she was even upright at this point. A hot bath and a date with a pillow were exactly what the doctor ordered.
Offset from the other doors, at the far end of the long upper hallway, was a pair of large French doors. The master suite, if she had to guess and, she suspected, the location of the hot tub.
Inside, the bedroom was bright, plush, and clean. A massive bed covered with a well-stuffed white duvet demanded attention, but it didn’t begin to dominate the enormous room. Much like the Queen’s Suite at the palace, small archways led form it to what she assumed were closets and additional rooms.
Moments later, she squealed with delight to find the bathroom.
She searched the cabinets, gleeful when she discovered a gratuitous selection of luxury bath salts and balms. She turned the water on in the tub while reading the package labels. Settling on a combination of relaxation and muscle-soothing, she added the salts and quickly peeled off her clothes, before stepping over the high edge of tub and into heaven on earth.
A moan slipped free from her lips as she sank in, feeling hot jets of water working her tender muscles the whole time.
The tub was everything Zayn had promised and more—deep, powerful, big enough to drown in—and she couldn’t have designed it better in her imagination.
“Mmm...” Her hum of pleasure was unstoppable.