Chapter 190 - 188: Look But Can’t Touch.

Chapter 190: Chapter 188: Look But Can’t Touch.

Khobi is pretty sure he’s being dramatic, although the colour the water’s turned in the minutes he’s spent scrubbing is decidedly darker than it was when he got in. And growing murkier.

​"It was muddy," he points out, fidgeting as Binny inspects his arms for the third time as though trying to figure out if Khobi’s secretly hiding clods of earth in his armpits.

​"It was muddy," he parrots back in disbelief, fetching what feels like the hundredth fresh bucket of water, "...Better you than me, I guess."

​He says that, but Khobi would bet a handful of gold –if he had it –that Binny’s been out in the rain for longer than him today.

​"I guess," Khobi shrugs back, and then cracks open one eye to reveal a sliver of red, focused dead on Binny’s turned back.

"You’ll come tomorrow though, right?"

​"...If that’s what you want me to do." The chipper response from Binny comes just a beat too late to be entirely casual.

Khobi sits up in the bath, arms reaching out along the side of the tub.

​"Do you want to?" he asks, and Binny rolls his eyes.

​"’Course I do."

​"Then come with," Khobi tells him easily, because it’s what he promised, and he seriously wants to see what Binny can do, "And don’t go easy on them."

​"...Is that an order?" He’s being cheeky, Khobi knows he is because he always is, but just in case he’s not –in case he’s looking for permission, he nods.

​"Yeah. It is."

​Binny’s grin spreads up to his eyes.

​"The usual time, then."

​There’s a slam from the other room as the shutters clatter open, and they both jump as a sudden gust of wind blasts the bathroom door open.

A chill wind surges into the room, and Khobi sinks deeper into the warmth of the bath as the dim light seeping through the window reveals that they’ve got company.

​Well, Loac’s back.

​And Khobi had been having such a nice bath. Binny had even left some of his skin on this time.

​"...Do you mind?" Khobi grits out, because he’s in the bath, and he’s tired, and he’s not in the mood.

If he’s hoping that his tone conveys that enough to stop Loac in his tracks, he’s sorely disappointed, because instead of backing off, or closing the door, or just generally leaving him be, Loac saunters closer, shape swallowing up the space in the doorway.

​He looks annoyed, which is a deviation from his typically narrow range of emotions.

​Khobi exhales out his nose and runs a hand back through his hair, equally annoyed.

More, maybe, and largely at himself, because while this morning he didn’t get the chance; too focused on their fight and caught up in the adrenaline, now that they’re here with nothing but water between them, he remembers bleakly, their encounter last night, and the heady, visceral reaction his body had had at being up in his space.

​Parts of the night are fuzzy, but the memory of how Loac’s touch had set his body alight is concerningly vivid. And if he lingers on it too long and too deeply, there’s a very real danger that that same heat will start to stir.

​So he doesn’t linger. Can’t.

​"...Drogger bailed you out this morning, you know that?" Loac states coolly, and an immediate pang of irritation snaps Khobi out of his thoughts.

"Again."

​"Hah?"

​This guy was fucking unbelievable!

​Blue eyes appraise him darkly, then narrow.

​"I had you, and you know it," he bites out, infuriatingly matter-of-fact for someone who is completely, totally wrong.

By Khobi’s reckoning, it was the other way around.

​"Hardly," Khobi scoffs, temperature and temper spiking as he sits up in the bath, bare arms hanging off the side of the tub. "If that’s what you think happened –"

​"It’s what happened."

​So they’re in disagreement.

And there’s obviously only one, definitive way to settle things.

​With exaggerated slowness, Khobi rolls a crack out of his neck and, to Binny’s mild horror, rises out of the bath.

Thick waterfalls form off the sharp ridges of his body as his naked form breaks the surface; steam billowing up off his skin as trails of water drip from his hair and down the chiselled lines of his chest.

​"Again, then," Khobi decides, snatching up a towel from an uncharacteristically speechless Binny, and settling Loac with a challenging glower –daring him to look.

And for a long moment, Loac holds his gaze, but then his eyes catch on the rivulets and linger as they pool on his hips and trek down the thick muscles of his thighs.

​So predictable.

​Khobi scoffs, and deliberately uses the towel to dry his hair first as he steps out of the tub, pleased to find that his body is as unaffected by Loac’s wandering gaze as it’s supposed to be.

​Let him look. That’s all he’s ever gonna get.

​Whatever weakness had overcome him under the influence of a heated night and too much wine had been misplaced, fleeting, and was now, most importantly, gone.

​"Same time, tomorrow?"

​Loac’s eyes run the full length of his body before settling on his face, and Khobi is mildly alarmed that despite his resolve, he finds the low-burning heat in those blue eyes oddly, and dangerously...enticing.

​"...See you there."

...

For all their brazen smack talk and bluster, when Binny goes to check in on Khobi that next morning at the usual time he finds him fast asleep on the floor, with Loac nowhere to be found.

The bed looks slept in, but otherwise there’s no sign of his. Binny supposes it’s not so unusual.

Loac tends to come and go as he pleases --sometimes for days at a time --and even the servants don’t always know where he goes.

It’s never worth losing sleep over. He always comes back. And Binny thinks he has a pretty good idea of where he might be this morning.

The same place Khobi should probably already be.