Hell For Hire: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons by Rachel Aaron

Author:Rachel Aaron [Aaron, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aaron/Bach
Published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Bex woke to the most incredible feeling. It was so pleasant and unusual that it took her a staggeringly long time to realize she wasn’t in pain. The eternal ache in her side was gone, replaced by warmth and a feeling of weightlessness, almost as if she were floating in a pool of—

She opened her eyes with a start, splashing water all over herself before she realized she was in a bathtub. A moment later, Bex decided that couldn’t be right. Bathtubs were white and filled with water and soap. She was in a basin carved from a single gigantic piece of greenish-gray soapstone. It was long enough to hold a much taller person and deep enough to keep her whole body submerged in something that looked like pond water but smelled like fancy herbal tea.

Whatever it was, it was stuffed with plants. The water around her was so thick with leaves and grasses and flower petals, Bex couldn’t actually see her body until she sat all the way up, which was when she realized she was naked.

“You’re awake!”

Practically half the tub sloshed over the edge as Bex dove back under the water. She pressed her back against the tub’s curved bottom, frantically swishing the floating leaves over herself as Adrian suddenly walked into view. His hat and coat were gone, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, but while his face looked exhausted, the expression on it was proud.

“I was starting to worry,” he said, reaching down to unhook the loose cloth strap that prevented her unconscious head from actually dipping under the water. He took a seat on the wooden chair beside the tub next, which was when Bex finally realized the dark room wasn’t a bathroom. They were inside the glassed-in patio at the back of Adrian’s cabin, the one she’d always thought of as a greenhouse because it was crammed with plants.

The foliage looked even thicker in the dark, the trailing leaves and vines catching in Adrian’s curling hair when he leaned down to rebuild the fire in the little iron stove that heated the tub, the only source of light in the otherwise pitch-black garden.

“You lost a great deal of blood,” he continued when the flames were going strong again. “The wound in your side wouldn’t stop bleeding no matter what I did. That’s why I had to put you in the tub.”

“Did you have to strip me?” Bex snapped. Much more sharply than he deserved, but she was just so embarrassed. She hadn’t been naked in front of anyone except Lys since she was a child, and never in her current state. The idea of Adrian seeing her like this—bony, wounded, weak—made Bex want to vanish under the floor, but the witch just waved her words away.

“I had to take your clothes off to treat your injuries,” he explained in a calm, practical voice. “But I promise I had no ulterior motives. I’m a Witch of the Flesh. My entire magical tradition revolves around life and the body, which means I’ve seen a lot of naked people.

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