Lissa faltered a little. She'd apparently had big plans for this massage thing. But, she had a hard time refusing me and spoke to the receptionist again. It sounded like the receptionist had to do a bit of juggling with her schedule, but she said she could make it work.
"Of course, Princess." She smiled happily, entranced by Lissa's natural charisma. Half the time, Lissa didn't even need spirit to get people to help her.
"I don't want to be an inconvenience," Lissa said.
"No, no. Definitely not!"
We soon found ourselves sitting at adjacent tables while Moroi women soaked our hands in hot water and started scrubbing them with weird combinations of sugar and seaweed.
"Why the manicure?" Lissa wanted to know. I explained my reasoning to her, about how I hardly had time for makeup anymore and how the abuse my hands went through made any sort of pampering impractical. Her face turned thoughtful. "I never thought about that before. I just figured you weren't into it lately. Or, well, that you didn't need it. Not with your looks."
"Whatever," I said. "You're the one guys worship."
"Because of my name. You're the one that guys - like a certain one we know - actually want for other reasons."
Gee, I wondered who she could be referring to. "Yeah, but those other reasons aren't very noble."
She shrugged. "The point's the same. You don't need makeup for them to drool all over you."
Then I felt the weirdest thing through the bond. I saw myself through her eyes. It was like looking in a mirror, except she only had a profile view of me. But when she looked at me, she really did think I was beautiful. With my tan and dark brown hair, I seemed exotic to her. She felt pale and washed out compared to me, skinny next to my curves. It was surreal, considering how often I felt scruffy next to her luminous beauty. Her envy wasn't malicious; that wasn't in her nature. It was more wistful, an admiration of a look she could never have.
I wanted to reassure her but had a feeling she didn't want me knowing about her insecurities. Besides, my thoughts were interrupted when the woman doing my nails asked what color I wanted. I picked a color that looked like gold glitter. Gaudy, perhaps, but I actually thought it looked kind of cool, and it wasn't like it was going to last long anyway. Lissa picked pale pink, a color as refined and elegant as she was. Hers got painted a lot faster than mine, though, because my manicurist had to spend so long softening my hands and filing the nails. Lissa finished long before I did.
When we both had glamorous hands, we proudly held them up side by side. "You look gorgeous, darling," she declared, affecting a sophisticated air.
Laughing, we went off to the massage area. Lissa had originally scheduled us for extensive massages, but the manicure had cut into a chunk of that time. So we modified the full-body massage into a foot massage, which was just as well since we couldn't have put on robes or any other changes of clothes with our nails still wet. All we had to do was remove our shoes and roll up our pants. I sat down in a chair while my feet soaked in warm, bubbling water. Someone put something into the tub that smelled like violets, but I didn't pay much attention. I was too entranced by my hands. They were perfect. The manicurist had buffed and hydrated them to silky softness, and my nails had been transformed into gleaming gold ovals.
"Rose," I heard Lissa say.
"Hmm?" The lady had also put a clear coat of nail polish over the gold. I wondered if that would give the nails a longer lease on life.
"Rose."
Sensing that Lissa wanted my undivided attention, I finally looked up from my awesome hands. She was grinning from ear to ear. I could feel that excited news burning in her again, the secret she'd had while we'd been walking over here.
"What's up?" I asked.
She nodded downward. "Rose, this is Ambrose."
I glanced absentmindedly toward the masseuse at my feet. "Hey, Ambrose, how's it - " I cut myself off before the words holy crap or whoa left my lips.
The guy massaging my feet couldn't have been much older than me. He had curly black hair and muscles everywhere. I knew this for a fact because he was shirtless and offered us both a good view of his sculpted pecs and biceps. His deep golden skin was a color achievable only by excessive time in the sun, indicating he was human. The bite marks on his neck confirmed it. A pretty boy feeder. Very pretty.
His attractiveness was almost unreal, though. Dimitri was gorgeous, but he had little flaws that made him that much more gorgeous. Ambrose was too perfect, like a piece of art. I didn't want to throw myself into his arms or anything, but he was certainly nice to look at.
Lissa, still worried about my love life, had apparently thought this was exactly what I needed. Her masseuse was female.
"It's very nice to meet you, Rose," said Ambrose. He had a musical voice.
"It's nice to meet you too," I said, suddenly self-conscious as he lifted my feet out of the water and toweled them off. I was especially self-conscious of the appearance of my feet. They weren't gross or anything, since they weren't usually exposed to the elements like my hands. I just kind of wished they'd been polished up too if this male model was going to handle them so much.
Lissa, astute enough to sense me being flustered, could barely stop from laughing. I heard her thoughts in my head: Cute, huh? I cut her a look, refusing to voice my thoughts out loud. He's Tatiana's personal masseuse. That practically makes you royalty. I sighed loudly to let her know she wasn't as funny as she thought she was. And when I say personal, I mean personal.
I jerked in surprise, accidentally kicking one of my feet out. Ambrose's deft hands caught it before I hit him in his pretty face, thankfully. I might not have been able to communicate telepathically but I was pretty sure there could be no question to Lissa that the look on my face said, You can't be serious because if you are, you're in big trouble.
Her grin widened. I thought you'd like that. Pampered by the queen's secret lover.
Pampered wasn't exactly the word that came to mind. Looking at Ambrose's young, beautiful features, I just couldn't picture him getting it on with that old hag. Of course, that denial might have just been my brain's way of refusing to acknowledge that someone who had touched her was now touching me. Ew.
Ambrose's hands were checking out my calves along with my feet, and he struck up a conversation about what elegant legs I had. His dazzling white smile never left his face, but most of my answers were curt. I still couldn't get over the thought of him and Tatiana together.
Silently, Lissa groaned. He's flirting with you, Rose! she thought to me. What are you doing? You can do better than that. I went to all this trouble to get you the hottest guy here, and this is what I get!