Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2) by Sandy Nathan Page B

her, drinking in the contact. When she was finished with an area, she dried him with another cloth, one that was a little rougher.
    “You look so much like your grandfather. Or whatever he was.” The cloth caressed him across his forehead and then over his cheekbones. She spoke to him as though she was sure he couldn’t hear.
    “Sam Baahuhd was the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.” She stroked his nose with the wet cloth. She paused, as though she was taking a good look at him.
    “Are you in your fifties?” He wanted to shake his head and say, “No, I’m not that old,” but he didn’t. “Your skin probably makes you look older. You look like an alligator from dead skin building up. You could soak for a month.”
    She ran the wet rag around his neck and then over his chest, moving it slowly and softly. Her gentleness shocked Sam. She kept the cloth moving, across his chest and down his torso, being careful not to get near his bandage.
    The rag kept moving. Sometimes she was silent, concentrating, wiping a spot two or three times. He expected her to do something to hurt him, or shame him, but she didn’t. She kept the rag moving, stroking him over and over. She touched him everywhere, places that no one had. The contact felt OK, not like it dirtied him.
    “I was in love with Sam Baahuhd.” Her voice was low.
    He knew that and listened very attentively. The Bigs and those from the lineage of Sam Baahuhd’s first wife said she was his whore. That he’d taken her all over the village, in front of everyone. In the old days, photos of the lady were prized. As time passed, those who had never seen her had pumped their seed on her image and cursed her as a witch for making them do it. When the photographs were ruined by all the men who’d used them, the stories remained. “A picture of her is better than any cunnie,” they’d joke.
    Only those of the line of Emily knew the truth. Mrs. Edgarton wasn’t Sam Baahuhd’s woman, and never had been. After Sam died, what he had been to the lady changed and shifted, being soiled by every mouth repeating it. Only those of Emily kept the truth.
    Sam knew what they would do with her underground. They wouldn’t kill her. They’d keep her alive. He had to protect her from that, no matter what it cost him.
    “I only touched him once,” she was saying. The cloth continued its progress as her voice whispered. “I put my hand on the front of his pants when we were thirteen. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do, actually.
    “But it was impossible.”
    She carefully rolled him over on his side. Her touch moved up and down his spine. He wanted to cry out in pleasure, but kept still. She’d stop talking if she knew he was awake.
    She rolled him over on the other side and kept washing. “I was awful to him. I’d go out to the estate with any silly boy I could find and make out in front of Sam.” Her touches stopped.
    “I’m not a very nice person.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
    “I got what was coming to me.” She finished washing his back and gently laid him down the way he’d been. “I got the general.” A teardrop splashed on his chest. She wiped it off.
    She knelt next to him, his hand resting on her thigh. Bending forward, she held up his arm and carefully cleansed his armpit. He heard the intake of her breath when she saw the scar there. “Oh, you poor thing.” She wrapped the cloth around his arm and pulled it down to his hand, wiping each finger and then the palm of his hand. She saw what was there, too. She kissed the palm of his hand. “You and I know, don’t we? What the rest of the world doesn’t know.”
    She got up. “You need some moisturizer.” She went into the container and came back. He felt a cold liquid and then her hands touching him again. She smoothed the liquid all over him, releasing a wonderful fragrance. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t imagine anything like what was happening to him. His body trembled.
    “Oh,