Chapter 48
Chapter 48
“Drown you? I was saving you!” Her brows furrowed automatically as she combated him, her entire body still fully aware of their closeness, still fully aware of how they had been tightly pressed against each other not even a minute ago.
“I thought we were partners, so you wanted me dead? First with fire, now with water?,” he asked. Aria opened her mouth, ready to defend herself when she heard the note of amusement in his tone.
Oh.
“Maybe if you had stayed dead with the fire I wouldn’t need to simulate flooding you,” she fired back, folding her arms.
Aston’s lips quirked up and he ran a hand through his matted hair, his movements jerky and unnatural. He leaned down and before Aria could blink, she was in a hug.
Aston was hugging her? His face had buried into her neck again and she could feel his faint tremors. The water had been impossibly cold.
“Thank you for saving me, my lady”, he said against her neck, the heat from his breath still enough to warm her.
“You’re welcome. For a reasonable fee of course. I was the victim,” she said, trying not to feel shy or sheepish.
A miniature Aria was drawing with her toe in the sand, going “oh stawp”. Griffins didn’t do shy or sheepish.
The pipe was still spraying away.
He chuckled, the sound traveling through her ears and straight to her brain. He pulled away and inspected her carefully, his eyes lingering on her neck, her jaw, and finally her mouth.
Aria felt herself heating up, her eyes focusing firmly on his forehead. She had never kissed anyone she had such intense chemistry with before. And they had certainly not spent a few seconds inspecting their work after.
His eyes narrowed, but there was still a small lingering curve on his lips. “Forgive my assault, my lady. You will be duly compensated.”
Sigh.
Aston was really back.
It hurt a little, that he considered what had happened a clinical misfortune. It was. But Aria had still held a little hope that after… all that, he wouldn’t treat it like another transaction or mission.
“Good. Let’s go take hot showers before we freeze to death,” she said, brushing off his gaze and forcing an enthusiastic countenance.
Aston turned to look at the rapidly flooding floor, and walked to the pipe’s entrance to the basement, tightening another wheel.
The waterfall slowed into a simple shower, but he kept tinkering with it. It seemed like he intended to stop it fully.
“Ladies first. I’ll need to get a few plumbers on it. I have a very strong lady.”
Aria preened subconsciously. Yeah. She’d been strong enough to break the seal on the wheel, and he’d said he had a strong lady, meaning technically he was kinda claiming she was his.
Her logic was as loose as a sieve but Aria didn’t care.
“I’ll leave you be, Mr. Handyman,” and started climbing the stairs to reach the exit of the basement. She couldn’t be out of there fast enough.
She never thought there would ever be a day that she would thank Zaphen but the day was today. For weeks on end she had replayed their kiss in his private study, it had been on loop and on repeat in her head.
Now she had new material, excess material, and she had to escape with Aston’s last memory of her being his nonchalant savior, not the wife he didn’t care about.
As she opened the door and stepped into the stairwell that led upstairs, she heard his voice below her.
“My lady.”
She was startled and turned her head to look at him.
His eyes were intensely focused on her, that small lingering curve in his lips that always had her biting her lip to shut herself up before she said something embarrassing widening into a grin, and Aria felt electricity — or maybe the cold — shoot up her spine.
“Yes?”
“Between you and I…,” Aria waited patiently, her heart banging in her chest. He was about to say something that would ruin her, she could bet on it. He was about to say something that would make her cry into her pillow. He was about to say he was disgusted, that he would never have touched her if not for Zaphen’s poison, that she was a useless tainted delusional woman that he only kept around for Arthur’s sake.
“I didn’t want to be saved.”
Aria froze, her heart either skipping a beat or adding an extra beat where it didn’t need to be.
He bent down again to continue his tinkering. Like he hadn’t just absolutely murdered Aria. She let the door close on its own before dashing up the stairs like a mad woman.
“I didn’t want to be saved.”
“I didn’t want to be saved.”
“I didn’t want to be saved.”
It played on loop as she sank into the warm bathtub. Now that she could see herself in the mirror over the tub, she could fully acknowledge that she had been beet red for the entire duration she had been in the basement.
With every new replay, she got redder, rapidly sinking more and more into her bubbles.