I was still a prisoner, I knew, but at least I wasn’t in a cage anymore. I was one step closer to getting some control over my own life. Whatever Apex had said to Queen Lieja about me, it had obviously worked.
Just as I was starting to finally relax and ease into all the pampering, I heard the door open. I was hoping that it was just another servant with a fresh bucket of hot water, or maybe someone who knew how to do a pedicure—but then I caught sight of a tall, orange body out of the corner of my eye.
Apex.
Of course, now that he’d saved me from the dungeons, he felt more than entitled to walk in on me while I was bare-bum naked in a tub with only a fluffy layer of bubbles to cover my body from his ever-staring eyes.
“You seem to be enjoying your newfound freedom, Atlanta.” His voice was deep and cold as ever. As it hit my ears, it sent a shiver down my spine all over again. “I trust that you are happy with this new arrangement?”
“So far, so good.” I didn’t know Apex very well, but I had a sense of how he expected me to act. He’d caught me nude and helpless. Surprising me in the bath was a dirty trick, and he must have known it. I suspected he thought I’d blush and hurry to cover my breasts up while he stood over me and gawked. I was half-tempted to do it anyway. But I didn’t want to give him the pleasure. If he was going to intrude on me like this, he didn’t deserve to see me unsettled by it.
“You will not be returned to the dungeons when this is over, either. I have arranged for you to be given a room here in the palace, albeit a small one. It is not much, but I imagine it will be better than being collared and caged.”
“Great,” I said stiffly. I knew I should have thanked him, but…maybe now that my bath was coming to an end, I was starting to feel a little greedy. “So when do I get to leave?”
“I did not promise you that, Atlanta.”
I put on my best bitch face and stared him down. Thankfully, his eyes were on mine. If his gaze had been straying any lower…I might have actually blushed.
“You promised you’d help me, Apex. That means more than just getting me out of a dungeon I never should have been in in the first place. I didn’t ask to be kidnapped. I didn’t ask to be brought here. I want to find my sister, and I want to be taken home. Ideally, that would have happened weeks ago—but barring that, I’ll accept ASAP.”
“I do not know this aay-ess-aay-pee.” Apex blinked at me, then narrowed his eyes. “But I have done as I promised you. I said you would be released from the dungeons. The fact that you are here before me now, being doted upon by Lieja’s servants, instead of scrambling around that dark little cell, should suffice as proof that I kept my word.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but the servant who’d been washing my hair chose that moment to dump a bucket of water over my head. I spat and sputtered as my bangs were forced down over my eyes. There was a shuffling behind me, and by the time I cleared my vision again, all the servants were gone.
“Here.” Apex offered me a dark, fluffy towel from a rack by the fogged-up windows.
I sank beneath the water, tilting my head back on the way back up so that my hair wouldn’t be hanging in scraggly strings in front of my face, then snatched it from him and rubbed the water from my eyes.
“Thanks,” I said, a little half-heartedly.
Now, I had a different issue to face. The bath was over. If I stayed in any longer, I was going to look like a raisin pretty soon. But if I got out, then I’d be naked. Right in front of Apex, his muscle-bound black-clad body, and his ever-watching eyes. For a second, I thought about taking the towel beneath the bubbles and somehow wrapping it around my body, but…
Before I could, it was like my inner floozy took over.
If he wants to look, then let him look, she said flippantly, and she had me up out of the tub before I could try to push her back into her floozy-cage again.
I stood in the tub for a second, half-stunned with myself. What was I doing? I’d been in some pretty skimpy costumes before, but being naked in front of a member of the opposite sex…I’d always been a lot bolder than my sister, but even I knew that was going too far. A woman should only bare herself to her husband. The sectors and their puritanical beliefs about sex and marriage had been pretty clear about that.
But since I was already up…
And Apex was already staring, without even doing me the courtesy of lowering his gaze…
I pushed my shoulders back, held my head high and put my bitch gaze back on.
If he wants to look, then let him look.
I wasn’t an actress or anything, but I was a damn good dancer. On stage, the two weren’t so far apart as you might think. I imagined myself as a ballerina in some kind of dark, twisted, erotic ballet. If I was going to play a part here, I wasn’t going to come off as some kind of
