Page 112 of The Discount Damsel

“In the back of the cupboard under the kitchen sink. I found it when I was looking for more bar soap. That sponge is too feisty for its own good.”

“There was a reason it was shoved in the back, Tula. It’s concentrated lye soap.” He tossed back the folds of the towel to reveal her legs.

Millie quickly covered them back up. The cheek of this man! She had no problem flashing a bit of skin at him to make him blush, but only when she chose to. “Well I didn’t know that, did I?”

“And that catastrophe in the oven?” Bradley moved the towel again, smacked her hands away when she tried to stop him.

“I was trying to make scones. You know, for breakfast? Or an afternoon snack, though they really aren’t as fitting for tea as I hoped they’d be. They soften too quickly when they’re dunked.” She flapped the towel over her legs and gave the handsy apprentice a whack. “And what are you doing, sir?”

“You want the healing balm or not?”

“I’m fully capable of treating my own legs, thank you very much.”

“I’ve seen you with my bath oils—absolutely no restraint. This was made by my mother with seaweed from the Crystal Sea. No way am I letting you get your hands on this. Now hold still.”

She yanked the letter opener from her corset. “I will use this.”

He snorted, then shifted the towel up past her knees until all of the burned flesh was exposed. Releasing a low whistle, Bradley scooped out a glob of pastel-green ointment and spread it over his palms.

Millie flinched when he cupped her calf in both hands, the ointment sending chills racing along the swaths of burned skin. With slow, gentle movements, the apprentice smoothed the ointment from the tips of her toes to just beyond her knees. The letter opener slipped from her hand, and she sagged back with a moan of blissful relief.

Bradley’s hands stilled at that sound, just for a second, then resumed the languid strokes. He kept his gaze firmly on the red skin in front of him, and nowhere else, even as his pulse strangely quickened. He discovered his was slightly light-headed, too, and realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled in a rush.

Millie tensed.

“Relax.” He said it as much for himself as for her.

Remembering to breathe, he dipped his fingers into the jar of sea glass to treat the princess’s other leg. Legs, he noticed, that had firmed and strengthened since he’d first met her. She had attractive ankles, too, a detail he hadn’t expected to notice or even care about. He discovered the soles of her feet had thickened, probably because Sir Roger and Jax both insisted she go barefoot whenever possible to increase foot grip and flexibility. Their roughness irritated him for some reason, and he spent a little more time massaging the ointment into her feet.

The princess moaned again, relaxing fully against the mattress. She pulled out her hairpin and let her hair unravel across the bedspread. Bradley knew the very moment she went boneless, and it had nothing to do with the deep sigh escaping past her lips.

“That feels wonderful,” she whispered, and wriggled into a more comfortable position. She touched his hand when it slid to the burn above her knee. “Thank you, Mr. Donmarin.”

Startled, the apprentice cut his eyes to the princess’s face. She’d never thanked him so candidly before, and from her soft expression, the way she seemed almost asleep under his gentle ministrations, he knew she was sincere. The combative pirate aspirant and the spicy princess were gone. Only the woman remained. Driven, passionate, and . . . kind.

That simple phrase and the sentiment behind it were a salve to unhealed wounds. A match struck in a world of darkness. It was softness, for him.

Bradley ceased to breathe, just for a moment, but it was a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity. A moment where anything was possible and permitted. That he was worthy enough to run his fingers through that beautiful auburn hair or drag his lips along her shoulder and up her neck in pursuit of that faint scent of jasmine. To kiss those full pink lips that smiled at him.

This. This was a very good reason to keep that parchment locked away forever. No woman would want him with the black ichor of a corrupted soul coursing through his veins and polluting his eyes. Yet what he craved was deeper than want.

The Kraken take me, I’ve been alone too long.

Bradley shut his eyes. Blocked the image of the princess in her corset and unbound hair and his towel sweeping across her thighs. Forgot that he was clad only in his sleeveless undershirt and boxer briefs, both of which were rather form-fitting and would definitely reveal a very particular part of his anatomy should the princess open her eyes before he got a handle on himself.

He distracted himself by humming the tune his mother used when she was treating sailors with rope burns. She said it mimicked the song of the sea and activated special compounds in the seaweed. He could be imagining it, but he felt a tingling sensation in his hands whenever they stroked along the princess’s skin. Calmer now, he opened his eyes and found a few places he’d missed and gently rubbed the ointment in there.

Laundry. Cooking. Two of the tasks he’d accused her of neglecting. They’d both ended in disaster, but she’d at least tried. And not the kind of trying where she purposefully sabotaged the endeavor to excuse herself from the task in the future. That kitchen had been spotless when he’d arrived to extract the burning scones from the oven. Not a sack of flour out of place nor a cup left beside the kitchen sink.

She had listened to him.

Something taut unraveled within him, allowing for another sensation to bloom. It was relief, he realized. The relief of being heard. Of being seen and included, his wants and needs recognized and not brushed aside.

Wetting his lips, he glanced down at the pastel-green ointment in the jar of sea glass. It was precious medicine, not a drop to be wasted. He could spare a little more for the princess.

“This will take some time to heal,” he said, breaking the spell of silence between them. “A week, at least. You’ll need thick, breathable socks.”

Her eyelids flashed open. “But I’m not supposed to wear⁠—”