Gisela emerged from the bathing chamber, the ghost of cold water still clinging to her skin. Her face was scrubbed pale, a blank canvas against the lurid backdrop of the dress she still wore. The red velvet was a vulgar, unhealed wound in the morning light, its crushed bodice and stained skirts a detailed log of the night's humiliations.
The room had been colonized in her absence.
A silent procession filed past the rumpled bed—maids with eyes fixed on the middle distance, their movements a hushed, synchronized ritual. Henry observed from his seated perch, his gaze one of idle ownership, tracing their path as a landowner might watch obedient livestock. Without a glance at Gisela, they glided into the chamber she had just left. The sounds that followed were muffled yet distinct: the gush of fresh, heated water, the slap of a testing palm, the crystalline chime of vials being placed just so. They were not cleaning her mess; they were preparing his sanctuary.
They filed out, leaving behind only the evidence of their service: steam, coiling like a beckoning finger from the doorway, and the crisp, expensive scent of sandalwood and rosemary. His scent.
Henry's eyes found her, a pale statue in her scarlet shroud. A phantom of a smile—devoid of warmth, rich with implication—touched his lips. He flicked his fingers, a minute gesture of dismissal.
"You may go."
The maids vanished, leaving the silence heavier, charged with the implication of the waiting water.
Before the echo of their steps faded, he was before her. He did not speak. His hands went to the buttons of his shirt. Each flick of a button through its slit was a deliberate, audible snick in the quiet. The pale linen fell open, revealing the unmarked, powerful plane of his chest. She stared, her mind a trapped bird beating against glass.
"Wh—what are you doing?" The question was a broken thing.
He let the shirt hang, a parody of casualness. He leaned close, his breath a winter draft against her ear. "What does it appear I am doing?" he murmured. He drew back just enough to watch her reaction. "I am preparing to bathe. Has your imagination become so thoroughly debased, little one?"
"No, I—" The denial was ash.
A sly, knowing cruelty curved his mouth. "You thought I intended to take you. To be blunt: you thought I would bury myself inside you and make you weep my name." He stated it as a dispassionate observation, relishing the violent flush that suffused her skin. "Your mind wallows in the mire. How predictable."
He turned his attention to his belt. The leather slithered free with a soft, intimate sigh. He stepped out of his trousers. He stood before her, fully revealed in the grey light—a study of arrogant, unassailable power. Her gaze, against all will, dipped.
A faint, shocked sound escaped her—less a word than a exhalation of pure, daunting comprehension. The sight was not erotic; it was apocalyptic. A primal, brutal fact of his dominance. She jerked her face away, her cheek pressing into the cold wall, her breath sawing in her throat.
"Will you not join me?" His voice floated to her, cool as the tiles. "We shall bathe together."
It was not an invitation. It was a sentencing.
He moved then. His arm banded around her waist, lifting her as if she were weightless. The world upended. The heavy dress funneled its weight against her ribs, and she hung over his shoulder, a bundle of discarded finery. All she saw was the floor retreating, the muscles of his back shifting like machinery beneath skin.
"Henry—" The name was crushed from her lungs.
He carried her into the steam, a humidity so thick it felt like drowning. He released her. She slid down his body, stumbling, her hands slapping against the cold, slick tiles for purchase. He did not steady her. He turned his back, stepped over the high lip of the copper tub, and sank into the water with a deep, visceral sigh of pleasure. The water embraced him like a lover.
Silence, broken only by the liquid lap of water.
Then, his voice, smooth and absolute through the vaporous air. "Come. Undress."
She stood pinned against the wall, the chill of the tile seeping through the velvet into her spine. Her mind was a void. "I…" The syllable died.
Her hands rose of their own accord. They found the first hook at the nape of her neck. Her fingers, numb and clumsy, worked it free. A tiny, metallic click. Then the next. And the next. Each unfastening was a surrender, a small, irreversible defeat. The stiff, wine-scented velvet sighed open, its grip failing piece by piece, until the entire garment slumped in a heap of bloody crimson at her feet.
She stood in only her thin chemise. The damp air rendered the linen nearly transparent, clinging to every curve and hollow, outlining the frantic flutter of her heartbeat against her ribs. She was a creature of bone and terrified pallor, displayed against the dark tile.
He watched from his bath, his head resting against the rim, his eyes open and utterly alert. He did not speak. He did not need to. His gaze was a physical pressure, a demand that she complete the stripping he had begun. The silence insisted. The last vestige of privacy was not in the linen, but in the moment of hesitation itself. And he was waiting for her to sacrifice that, too.
She stood, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. The chemise, for a moment, was still a dry, thin veil—a final, fragile membrane of separation. His gaze was a weight, pressing against that flimsy boundary.
Step by reluctant step, she approached the bath. The steam curled around her, a humid promise of dissolution. She stopped at the copper rim. His eyes, dark and unblinking, held hers.
Slowly, she lifted one leg over the side. The air above the water was thick and hot. She placed a foot in the space between his submerged legs, the surface tension breaking with a soft ripple. As she brought her other leg over, the sleek metal of the tub's bottom offered no purchase. Her balance shattered.
"Hen—!"
The cry was a gasp of pure instability. But the fall was not hers to take.
His hands shot out, capturing her waist in a vice-like grip. He arrested her plunge, holding her suspended over the water, her body taut, her feet barely touching the bottom. For a heartbeat, she was poised there, the dry chemise still her own.
Then, he pulled her down.
The hot water engulfed her, and the change was instantaneous. The thin linen drank greedily, transforming from a veil into a transparent second skin. It clung, suctioned to every contour, rendering her not just naked, but revealed—every line, every curve, the stark contrast of peaks against wet fabric, laid bare. The modesty it had offered was exposed as a lie, dissolved in the element he commanded.
His grip did not relent. One hand slid upward from her waist, a slow, deliberate ascent over the slick, fabric-clad plane of her ribs, until his palm came to rest, heavy and possessive, over her breast. The touch was not intimate; it was analytical, a confirmation of a hypothesis.
Then he pulled her close and found her mouth.
The kiss was a verdict. It was the hot, wet seal on her dissolution, the final collapse of the last border into the steam and the scent of sandalwood and him.