Daniel frowned. A concerned look was on his face during the entire examination that should have been loving instead of a pure analysis.
"You are wounded," he finally said.
Mariana touched her chest. She had not noticed that she was bleeding. She could have argued, of course, that since she had failed to notice it, it was nothing more than a little nick, but somehow she didn't want to be contrary right now. There was a real chance of getting Daniel to care for her, in private, with none of his bodyguards, and that was just plain good business - whether for assassinations or for reconciliation.
"Don't say it is nothing," the pirate king said, coming closer to her with his hands ready to take off the upper part of her dress. "I know how you are, you have always had an insane tolerance for pain."
Mariana thought that there was a snappy joke hidden there, but she refrained from fishing it out of his words. It would not have mattered, or if it would have mattered, it was not worth the interpersonal damage.
"I will send my guards away. Shoo!"
The pirate in the corner nodded and started talking to himself while he walked out.
"That's odd, he never did that before." Daniel shook himself, as if there had been an epidemic of insane behavior amidst his men. "Well, I can't treat you if you have your dress on. I will take it off now."
So, that was why he didn't want any guards around. Plain and simple; he wanted to undress her in a situation where they were in privacy, entwined in this weird dance of love and hate with him unquestionably having the upper hand.
Gods knew that Mariana liked this more than she cared to admit.
She did have more layers under her dress, so that technically speaking, she would still be decent, but that was if she considered herself a normal woman, someone who could do shopping for groceries with the hat part of her night attire constricting poorly crafted curls. That was a sort of common, scruffy, sensible decency. She didn't like to relate to women like that in any real or visceral sense.
"Here is the first button," Daniel muttered, his breath tickling her neck. He was so close to her, but something about the ease with unbuttoning her dress made Mariana a bit queasy, although the joy she got from his touch - pure, unfiltered bliss, like chocolate, but for the sense of touch - ,did override it. Mostly.
Then she realized that to button or unbutton a piece of fashion of this magnitude, one had to have lots of experience with high-end women's clothing.
A dark lump of dread fell into Mariana's chest. He had been with women.
With women who were not her.
He had wooed others, touched others, and she had no idea how to feel about it. After all, she had been engaged, although the premises for that ordeal had been faulty, to say the least.
She was not in a position to start degrading him based on not being able to keep his eyes away from others. They were still in the prime of their short - so far – lives, and they had to explore all options…yadda yadda, the truth was that she had been disgusted by every man who had touched her after him. She wondered if he had felt the same while unbuttoning a courtesan's dress.
While telling her that her hairdo didn't matter.
While kissing the queens of the seaside brothels who swore up and down that they didn't normally do things like that.
"Am I the prettiest woman you know?" she asked, instinct and insecurity taking over the rational part of her mind.
"No, and you should not speak while I try to avoid damaging this nice dress of yours," he replied without missing a beat and attacked another tightly sewn and a bit too big button. "You are the most beautiful woman I know. There is a difference. I'd rather not have you take pride in being pretty, when beauty is so much more. Hold still, I think the fabric is sticking into the wound. I need alcohol. This will hurt."
"Ow," Mariana said in advance.
"Stop being like that."
"Like what?" She pouted.
"You're too adorable, it is disturbing me and diverting my attention. You should use big and scientific words right now so that I don't have to listen to your cutesy talk."
Hardly able to keep the spark of laughter within her, she diverted her own attention from him, although it was the hardest thing she had ever done, and this was when she counted in all the hydras and every catch.
Were her men dying for her while she had fun being undressed by the pirate king for whom she had caused all this? Was she sending everyone to be slaughtered, or was she at least partially liberating herself when she said: I am a prisoner, might as well enjoy it - such things started buzzing around in her head like violently angry wasps guarding their nest. Once the negative thoughts came, she was no longer able to stop them. Except…
…Except that his skin smelled so good as he squeezed fifteen minutes of tedious undressing and unbuttoning into five minutes of heavenly, soft touches, and fingers barely even brushing her skin, as she breathed him into her lungs, hoping that when all was said and done, he would dress her up again, this time in his clothes, clothes that had his scent and the freshness of the open sea on them. She couldn't help leaning into his arms, but something, a form of self-restraint was stopping her.
"You have layers and layers of clothing," he said, chuckling, like he was not as worried anymore. "But the camisole…or whatever this thing is…this should not intervene with cleaning the wound. I'm telling you that the guard will be whipped for needlessly wounding you."
"I did fight back. A lot, and viciously," Mariana said. She didn't remember if that was a lie or not.
"You are saying this to sound hardened or to protect him…don't deny it."
She winced.