Chapter 29
Graysen
Asensual daze gloriously stupefied my head.
Nelle brazenly stood before me in just her underthings, deathly still. Both of us were. I almost dared not breathe while we waited for the other to make a move.
She suddenly tapped her toes on the stone floor, and my tortured cock bobbed in reply.
Hells…
My teeth ground together as I screwed my eyes shut. I thought at the barest touch of her fingertips over a patch of innocent skin, and I’d explode in a sticky splatter.
When I pried my eyes open, I met the ghost of a wicked smirk gleaming in her gaze, and I knew she’d done it on purpose.
Beneath all that innocence was a razor-sharp hunter.
Nelle shifted, her bare feet stepping across stone marked with shallow grooves and splashes of water as she half-circled.
Tension and lust crackled in the moist air, skating over my skin like a lingering caress, ricocheting my heart faster.
The blood drumming in my ears was a hedonistic beat, pulling me under her bewitchment.
She swiveled gracefully to face me once more. Her slender fingers were splayed across her hips, and her forefingers were arrowed right there. Right where I wanted to kiss her most. I couldn’t look anywhere else.
“You want to get me off?” she asked, her voice low and sultry.
My gaze snapped back up to hers.
More than anything.
“Yeah.” My voice cracked, and inside I winced at how pathetic I sounded.
Amusement lightened the gray in her eyes.
Then, challenge darkened them. They hadn’t turned black when I’d kissed her, but right now the pupils were slowly dilating back and forth as she slowly looked over my body.
Every single inch of skin smoldered beneath her glance, and gasoline flowed through my veins awaiting a struck match.
She lifted her gaze to blink back at me before asking softly. “Would you kneel before me?”
Without hesitation.
I dropped my gaze to the tips of those diminutive toes, running leisurely up toned legs to the scalloped trim of her panties that banded her hips and dipped between her thighs. White and plain and innocent. My favorite kind.
My mouth watered, and I swallowed hard. Right now, I didn’t know which one of us was the hunter and which was the prey.
My kiss-swollen lips still tingled and stung with the memory of her mouth on mine, delicious sunshine melting over my tongue like candy.
That kiss.
That godsdamned mind-obliterating kiss.
She’d branded me with her kiss.
Written poetry across my skin.
Bitten it into my flesh and scratched it in red sweeping lines.
Made me bleed and hurt and want and crave.
Fuck, I wanted her.
Her lush lips had imprinted themselves on mine with kisses that were savage, then soft. Brutal bites, then soothing licks. Her tongue had caressed mine in a slow, sensual rhythm, like she was fucking me already.
My hands roamed and clasped every inch of her body. I couldn’t get enough of her sunshine kisses. But there’d been something lingering beneath those golden rays, as if a cloud had passed overhead and cast cold shadows.
The raw edge of guilt sliced through my heart.
The last time I’d kissed her was the morning of my betrayal, on the rickety porch of the whitewashed cottage, sitting on a swing chair with her lying down, resting her head on my lap as the sun rose higher.
In the background, insects buzzed, a gentle rustle of rushes and distant bird calls, while water gently lapped the rocky shore of the lake.
I’d stroked my fingers gently through her tangled hair as she’d fallen into a waking dream and whispered what was in my heart and kissed her with the bleak sting of despair on my lips.
Movement brought me back to the present, snapping me out of melancholy and straight into excitement. Nelle moved her weight to one hip, casually bending one knee, the tips of her toes resting on stone.
She eased her thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties.
Get. Them. Off!
She stretched the fabric taut and away from the curve of her hips, taunting me with a wiggle. “How much do you want me? Want this?”
Pretty fucking badly.
But for some stupid reason, I couldn’t voice it.
Nelle slyly grinned back at me as if she had read the desperation in my mind.
She let the panties go with a snap.
My entire body jolted in response, and my godsdamned balls almost unleashed.
Holy hellsgate…
My fist wrapped around my cock’s angry length and pumped a slow stroke, one more, to stop myself from coming.
I blew out a long, unsteady breath.
So godsdamned close.
My eyes squeezed shut briefly on their own accord as I tried to regain control, but my head was drunkenly spinning under the intoxicating spell she’d woven.
I was supposed to be in control of this situation.
Me, fuck it.
Nelle pushed into motion, so I did too.
We prowled around one another, circling like restless wolves. Nelle tiptoed between fallen bottles of facial products, and I tried hard to ignore them scattered haphazardly on the floor. Really fucking hard.
Nelle lazily drifted a hand over the vanity’s surface, a finger smearing condensation.
She snatched up the towel I’d used to dry myself, gripping each end as she spun around to face me, hiding her panties behind the fluffy material.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” she teased, shimmying the towel back and forth.
My nostrils flared. “Maybe we should.”
She laughed, light and carefree. “So desperate.”
Fucking desperate.
She angled her head. “See that showerhead over there.”
Yeah, I did. An elaborate and luxurious rainfall shower was set into the ceiling, but the wall also had an additional system with the usual paraphernalia.
Excitement barreled through me because shower sex was fun sex.
Water raining down, our bodies lathered up with fragrant froth, sliding her lithe body up and down soapy walls as I bounced her on my cock.
“It’s detachable,” she pointed out.
Fuck yes, it was.
“I can change the flow of water,” she said, ending on a thoughtful hum as she twisted the towel in her hands.
Her voice became husky and low. The words carefully spoken.
And I leaned in closer, entirely on edge, wondering what she was going to say.
“I can make the flow of water sharp and hard, soft and gentle. Pulse it. Let it vibrate faster and faster.”
Holy hells, yes!
I was hanging on every word, seeing it in my mind, how the cascading water would pour over her gorgeous naked figure. How I could use the spray to heighten the pleasure.
Nelle took a step closer. “I’m going to take that showerhead and detach it from the wall. I’ll turn it on and spray silky water right up between my legs…and get myself off.”
Wait…what?
I blinked rapidly, throwing up a hand. No, that’s what I intended to do. Getting her off was my job. Mine!
Suddenly her sensual gaze became cruel as she stabbed a finger at my face. “Because you sure as hells haven’t earned the right to kneel between my legs!”
What the actual fuck?!
She hooked her thumb toward the showerhead. “It’s reliable. Dependable. And better yet—it doesn’t do lame-ass pillow talk, Crowther!”
Nelle lunged sideways, fast.
Before I registered what was happening, the tip of the towel whirled outward to snap across my ass.
Fuuuck!
Holy shit!
I hadn’t been paying any attention to what she was doing with her hands. Because. I. Was. A. Dumbass.
While she’d been teasing me with the showerhead, she’d twisted the towel into a tight rope like my brothers and I had done as kids with tea towels, fighting one another while doing the dishes. A vicious flick of the tip against skin that hurt like fuck.
Nelle darted back and forth, whipping the towel’s tail end to keep up her onslaught. “Get the hells out of here!”
Snap—
Crack—
Snap—
I dodged. Springing sideways, evading her wild strikes, and before I knew it, I was driven outside the bathroom.
The door slammed in my face with a thunderous boom.
FUCK!
“Oh, and your kiss, Crowther,” she yelled with a parting shot, “was godsdamned awful!”
I slammed my fist onto the wall. Pain jarred through my fingers. What the fuck was this? My kiss was awful?
Taunting me with the promise of sinking into one another, putting up with my godsdamned awful kisses, so she could teach me a lesson like a naughty schoolboy by denying me? Putting me in my place?
Darkness from my quarters folded around me, and the change to a cooler temperature prickled my flesh.
Is she seriously going to get off using the showerhead?
Yet, I couldn’t hear raining water.
Uncertainty tightened my chest.
Was she in there laughing at my desperation and stupidity for falling for her tricks?
My wet feet dampened the carpet as I paced in front of the door, rubbing the ache from my throbbing ass while I debated what to do.
Dress and leave?
Roar back at her?
Slam my fist against the wall some more like an asshole?
The soap.
The soap had fallen from my grip when I discovered she was in the bathroom watching me while I jerked off. And she’d swept all her girly products from the vanity.
They were lying on the floor on their sides. I was pretty sure one cap had come off and white goopy shit was leaking from it.
What if she slips on the soap or facial gunk and smacks her head on the stone floor?
This was a health and safety issue for fucking sure.
I should have left it alone, but it would seem I was a masochist for her personal brand of pain and humiliation.
I braced myself internally for Nelle’s mocking laugh and indifferent attitude. No doubt chuckling to herself at how easily I’d fallen for her ruse. She’d probably gone straight for the mouthwash and was sterilizing my terrible kiss away.
The door swung silently open. I took one step inside the room, swirling with steam and dripping with condensation, and froze mid-step.
My jaw slackened, and what was about to spill from my mouth evaporated.
Wonder and warmth filled my chest.
Everything she’d just said and done was undone in an instant.
Every cruel word she’d spat at me.
She’d slumped against the stone wall with an unguarded expression.
Open and vulnerable and utterly lovely. Her fingertips brushed back and forth along her lips as if she still felt the echo of my mouth on hers.
As if, like mine, they still tingled with desire and heat.
She tipped her head back to stare up at the ceiling, flustered and flushed, trying to analyze her wild emotions and why our kiss was so fucking good.
Small white teeth nipped her bottom lip as her smile broadened into a wide, delightful grin.
A grin she couldn’t contain as she suddenly stamped her feet excitedly.
She liked the kiss.
A lot.
A fuck lot.
Nelle finally realized I was there, eyes widening in horror.
I stared at her, and she stared back.
The tumbling emotions swiftly shifted, mortification surging to the surface.
A thousand blades slashed my chest to see the alluring feminine thoughts crumble away. Beautiful, but so wrong.
“What the hells are you doing back here?!” she shrieked.
“The soap,” I croaked dumbly, pointing to the cake of soap that was melting away on the pebbled floor in the shower area.
She lunged downward, scooped up the soapy bar, and hurled it at me. “Get the fuck out!”
I dodged, ducking low as it whizzed overhead to smack the wall right behind me. She moved fast, going for the girly bottles and tubs on the floor.
They came in a barrage of strikes.
I sprang back, ducking and weaving, dashing through the doorway, and pulled the door shut, hearing a cascade of thuds against the wood.
I heard a shriek of frustration.
“There’s a place for the soap!” I yelled. A fucking recess in the shower wall. “Can you please use it!”
“I’ll do what I like, Crowther!”
“And the caps on the shampoo and conditioner. You need to close them after you finish using them!”
“You know you have a problem, right, Mr. Neat Freak?!”
“I like things just right!” I yelled back. Is that so fucking hard to understand?
Silence reigned for a long-drawn moment.
Then a huff.
The door gently rattled as if she’d leaned against it, then came a low, “Fuck.”
She wasn’t cursing at me. It was the kind of tone that was directed at herself.
I twisted slowly around and leaned my shoulder against the bathroom door, too. A wide grin bloomed on my face. I couldn’t have hidden it even if I’d wanted to.
I’d caught Little Miss Fire and Brimstone out.
She’d ruined her move against me all on her own.
And now I knew that deep down inside, she didn’t entirely hate me.
But I also knew that she would be seriously pissed from this point onward.