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her
body and washed her hair. Then she climbed out and dried off with the luxuriant
towel. She reached for her wrinkled sundress, but then paused. The robe was far
nicer and scented with perfume, certainly more pleasant than her gritty
clothes. She slipped on the robe, and the sensuous glide of silk against her
bare skin stirred her thoughts of Dominick. She tried to smile at her
reflection in the pool. “Hey, Aulair, you look hot.” But her voice shook like
the ripples flowing over the water.
     
    She padded barefoot
into the other room. She was so tired she could barely stand, but she felt too
exposed to sleep. The bed consisted of no more than layers of rugs covered by
velvet. She sat on it in the corner, with the wall at her back, facing the door
as she drew pillows around her. It wasn’t until they crumpled in her grip that
she realized how tightly she had clenched them.
     
    Her eyelids drooped,
and she forced them up. She wouldn’t sleep. The lamp swung on its hook, moving
shadows on the walls, back and forth, back and forth...
     
    The scrape of wood
against stone roused Janelle. She lifted her head, disoriented. She had slid
down and was lying amid the pillows. The lamp had burned low, leaving the room
swathed in velvety shadows.
     
    The scrape came
again. She thought she said, Who is it? but no words came out.
     
    The door swung
inward, moving slowly. Dominick stood in the archway, filling it with his
height and his presence. The dim light turned his shirt a darker blue and
glinted on the hilt of his sheathed dagger. The way he loomed, his face harsh
and starkly intense, evoked the specter of conquerors who swept across
continents, laying waste to their enemies.
     
    “Hello.” Janelle
barely managed the word. Such a quiet greeting for so dramatic a man.
     
    “May I come in?” he
asked.
     
    She appreciated that
he asked, given that he could have done whatever he wanted. “Yes,” she said.
     
    He entered, and the
room seemed to shrink. He closed the door, then came over and knelt on the
other side of the bed. His shirt was open at the neck, revealing a tuft of
chest hair, black and curly.
     
    “Have you slept?” he
asked.
     
    “A little.” She
wondered how the rest of his chest looked.
     
    He watched her
watching him, and his lips curved upward. The shadows eased the hard edges of
his face. Sitting on the bed, he tugged off one of his boots.
     
    Janelle froze. Now he
was taking off the other boot. He set it next to the first and started to undo
his shirt.
     
    “Wait.” Her cheeks
flamed. If she hadn’t been so groggy, she would have realized sooner what she
might be agreeing to when she invited him into her room.
     
    Dominick paused. “No?”
     
    “I can’t. I mean—that
is—”
     
    He waited. Then he
asked, “Do you want me to leave?”
     
    “I don’t want to be
alone. But I don’t—” She stuttered to a halt, feeling like an idiot.
     
    “It’s all right.” He
slid across the rugs and stretched out on his side facing her, with his head
propped up on one hand. He took up the entire length of the bed. She could see
why he might like sleeping on the floor; his legs were too long for a mattress.
     
    “My monks checked
your hair,” he said. “You are Janelle Aulair.”
     
    She flushed,
unsettled to have him so near. “Well, I knew that.”
     
    He trailed his finger
along her hip, sliding up the robe, which suddenly seemed too short. “This is
pretty.”
     
    She put his hand back
on the bedspread. Maybe she should ask him to leave. But she dreaded being
alone. He continued to watch her, his head tilted to the side as if she were a
puzzle.
     
    “You must have more
names than Dominick,” she said, flustered.
     
    “Indeed I do.
Dominick-Michael Alexander Constantine.”
     
    Now that was a
moniker. “Those names are famous in my universe.” She was talking too fast
again. “Like Alexander the Great.”
     
    “The Great.” His gaze
turned sleepy, as if he were a