Chapter 354: Four Words Found Their Way Home

Maddox turned the water off and reached for one of Blair’s towels.

It was the kind of soft that made you angry because you knew you’d been using inferior towels your entire existence and nobody had told you.

He wrapped it around Guinevere and dried her gently like she was something precious.

She stood there and let him do it. The trust required to stand still while a man dried every inch of her skin was the kind of trust that lived below thought, in the part of her that recognized him even when her memories didn’t.

He grabbed a short silk robe from the hook behind the door. Navy. He held it open for her and she slid her arms in and the silk hit her skin like cool water. He tied it at her waist, one pull, snug, with the practiced ease of a man who had done this before even if neither of them could remember when.

Guinevere looked down at the robe then at the towels, then grinned so wide it made him smile too.

"What is so funny?" he asked, as he dried himself off.

"It matches," she said softly.

Maddox hadn’t gotten Guinevere that robe. There was zero question in his mind who got that robe and that the matching was intentional.

She didn’t know any of that. All she knew was he was naked and standing in front of her.

The gold light on his skin was steady. He was beautiful. She had the thought before she could stop it, and it was the kind of thought that didn’t need stopping because it was just true. He was glowing and wet and looking at her with gold eyes.

She watched his chest rise and fall. Watched his jaw relax by a degree she had never seen on him. Watched the tension that lived permanently in his shoulders ease by a fraction that most people would have missed. He was happy. She could feel it through their matebond. The man in front of her was happy because she was here and she was his. It was that simple.

He picked her up. One arm under her thighs. She was on the counter before she registered the lift, marble cool through the silk, her legs dangling off the edge while Maddox grabbed a second towel.

He started drying her hair.

His fingers worked through the white strands with a patience that didn’t match a single other thing about him. He squeezed sections of it in the towel, working from the ends up. The gold glow pulsed brighter where his hands touched her hair and the light traveled down each strand like current through a wire.

She had never had a man do this. Omegas, yes. Women who were gentle and efficient, but this was different. The Dragon King was drying her hair like it was the most normal thing in the world. He could have a servant come help her, or let her dry her hair on her own. He was choosing to do it and doing it with such care that it brought a lump to the back of her throat.

"Keep looking at me like that and we’re going to have a problem," he said.

Her face went from glowing gold to glowing crimson in under a second and that’s when she noticed he was hard again.

The robe was short. His towel was gone. The math was right there, throbbing and impossible to ignore, and her eyes did the thing where they looked, then looked away, then looked again because her dignity had suggestions but her curiosity had a louder voice.

He smirked.

"That’s permanent around you. Get used to it."

Her blush deepened to a shade that scientists had no name for. She opened her mouth to say something. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again. The fish-out-of-water cycle lasted three full rounds before she settled on staring at the wall behind his left ear like it contained the secrets of the universe.

He pulled her forward. Her legs wrapped around his waist on instinct and the silk robe rode up and suddenly she was straddling the Dragon King in a bathing chamber with zero fabric between them below the waist and every piece of fabric in the wrong position above it.

His arms locked around her lower back. Her chest pressed against his. The gold glow where their skin touched flared bright enough to cast shadows on Blair’s expensive marble.

That’s when she saw it.

A mark was forming on Maddox’s neck. Right where his pulse beat against the tendon, low and to the left, catching the gold light in a way that made it shimmer like something alive. It was small. Incomplete. The lines were still writing themselves into his skin in real time, gold threads weaving a pattern that looked familiar because she had seen it on herself.

It was the same design as the glowing one on her neck. The same architecture. The same three-color threading, gold and silver and white, except his was less defined.

Her lips parted. Her fingers reached for it on instinct, wanting to touch it, wanting to understand what she was looking at and why it matched hers and what it meant that his skin was writing a story she couldn’t read.

Before her fingers made contact, Maddox pressed his forehead to hers. His breath was warm and uneven and his hands tightened on her lower back.

"I love you, baby."

The sound she made was small and involuntary and came from somewhere below her lungs. The words were unexpected and hit her in the chest. She couldn’t remember anyone ever saying that to her. Maybe Maddox had in memories she didn’t have access to.

It was so pure and vulnerable and the last thing she had been expecting.

She felt the words land. Felt them travel through their matebond and settle into a place in her chest that had been empty and waiting.

And underneath it, she could feel his nerves. She could feel him bracing through the matebond. The same man who had pinned her to marble ten minutes ago was now standing in front of her terrified that four words were too much and was waiting for her response.

She loved him. She knew it with the irrational, bone-deep, evidence-free certainty of a woman whose body remembered what her mind couldn’t. She loved this man. She had loved this man before the memories went dark and she loved him now in the ruins of whatever life they had built and she was going to say it back because it was true and he deserved to hear it.

"I—"

The door opened.