Chapter Seventeen
KHALIL
Hold still,” I order gently as I move the razor through the shaving cream with a gentle hand. “I don’t want to nick you.”
A naked Aurelia giggles and twitches on the chair I pulled from the dining table as if my touch is ticklish to her.
She looks like a queen and the chair her throne.
She has one foot planted on the floor and the other rests on the lip of the tub while I kneel between her legs.
Her breathing quickens and her eyes glow as they rake my arms, chest, and shoulders for the thousandth time.
She never can hide how much she enjoys seeing one of us on our knees for her. But not nearly as much as we enjoy it.
“That would be a shame.”
“Yes, it fucking would.” Aurelia was fucking stunning.
Every complicated inch of her. She had the face and body of an angel with the fiery temperament of a hellion.
And I was too fucking gone for her to ever turn back.
“If you cause me to mar this pretty pussy or shed one drop of your blood, you’ll have me to deal with. ”
“Sorry.” She giggles again. “I just never had anyone…shave me…before.”
Pleasure and possessiveness spear through my chest as I dip the razor in the warm water filling the tub before shaving away another strip of the fine hairs growing from her mons pubis.
It takes an incredible amount of will to bite back the urge to demand that she never allow anyone other than me near her perfect pussy.
She was in a relationship with two other men—my best friends—after all.
“Back home, I’d get laser treatments, so I guess it’s not all that different, but it feels different, you know?” Quietly, she adds, “More intimate.”
“It definitely feels intimate,” I agree since it really seems like she needs me to.
It’s just the two of us in the cabin. Thorin and Zeke were gone when Aurelia and I returned from her ranch.
While she got to work unpacking the bags, I unloaded the mattress and box spring from the truck and got it set up in Aurelia’s new bed.
When I returned upstairs, I caught her escaping to Thorin’s bathroom with the shaving kit she’d picked up from town in hand.
The air in the bathroom is still damp from the shower we’d taken together before I ordered her into the chair.
I swish the blades through the warm, soapy water once more and shave away the last of the hair on the fleshy mound. There isn’t a lot even though it’s been months since her last treatment, so it only takes a few more stripes before I’m done with that part.
I tap her thigh. “Lift your leg.”
Aurelia hesitates, and I raise both brows, silently reminding her that I’ve seen and put her in more exposing positions.
She sits back in the chair and tilts her pelvis as she lifts her leg, which allows me to reach her vulva.
I carefully shave away the hairs on her puffy lips followed by her perineum.
Once I’m done, I towel away the rest of the shaving cream, grab the jar on the floor next to me, and scoop some into my palm before massaging it into her newly shaved skin. I can’t resist leaning over to kiss her glistening pussy.
I’m not done though, so I clean the razor before lifting her foot into my lap and spreading more shaving cream over her leg.
“Ooh, my legs too?” Aurelia says excitedly while wiggling her pretty little toes.
Focused on my task, I nod without looking up. “I meant what I said. I don’t mind your pussy having a little hair, but the ones on your legs have got to go, Goldilocks. You be scratching the hell out of me while I’m asleep.”
“Stop!” she squeals while shoving my shoulder with her other foot. “I do not.”
“You do. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and I got to check because I don’t know if I’m in bed with you or Thorin.”
Aurelia’s cheeks turn pink with shame, and then she’s laughing so hard she almost falls off the chair. I smirk when she stops suddenly to check my seriousness. “You do not.”
“I do.”
“Oh my God.” Embarrassed, Aurelia covers her face with her hands and shakes her head with a groan.
I gently pry her fingers away. “I’m just playing, baby.”
Wearing a little smile, she kicks me. “Shut up. You were not.”
“Nah, I really wasn’t, but I love you anyway.”
“I—” All the breath seems to leave Aurelia at once. “I love you too, Khalil.”
“I know.” I can’t fake surprise even a little.
She’d taken so fucking long telling me that I figured I might as well tell her first. It wasn’t planned, but it felt right.
I’d never said those words to a girl before.
I always imagined immediately regretting it the day I finally did, but instead, I feel nothing out of the ordinary—as if loving Aurelia to the depths of my soul and having her love me back was just an irrefutable fact and not some great epiphany.
My heart had known all along, even if my head sometimes doubted I was worthy.
I take my time shaving her legs because I’ve got nothing better to do than make sure my girl is good. I take so long and such tender care that Aurelia starts to tease me about enjoying it too much, but I don’t care. Aurelia’s body is my temple, and I’d pray to it every minute of the day if I could.
Once I run a hand over her smooth calf and shin, I’m finally satisfied, so I let out the water and clean the tub while Aurelia remains motionless—likely fighting to stave off the dizzying feeling of how fast our relationship is moving.
At least, it feels that way for me.
Never in my life had I imagined ever shaving a girl’s pussy. Fuck it, finger it, suck it, and pass it on to the next player once I’m through, yes. Most definitely. I never found myself wanting to care for it as if it were an extension of me.
I meant what I said earlier—I didn’t care if she was bare or had a full bush. Her pussy as well as her heart belonged to me, and I’d care for both in any way she needed me to.
After I was done cleaning the tub and putting away her shaving kit, I stand and gather Aurelia to her feet before kneeling to work some fresh panties over her legs.
I stand and pull a T-shirt over her head.
One of mine, I think. She practically falls into my arms after that, and I wrap them around her waist. Her eyes still have that glazed look in them, and her smile is lazy, as if she’s high on drugs.
It’s how she always looks when she feels cherished.
“What do you say, Goldilocks?”
“Mm-hmm… It’s your turn?”
I snort out a laugh and let her go as I step over to the sink to wash my hands. “Appreciate it, but I think I’ll pass, baby girl. Ain’t nobody shaving my damn balls.”
“No.” She snorts out a laugh. “Not that. I meant the hair on your head, silly.” She wrinkles her nose at my braids, so I glance at the mirror and run my hand over them, silently admitting that they were getting a little tired.
Seeing the look on my face, Aurelia grabs my hand and leads me out of Thorin’s bathroom.
She directs me to one of the dining chairs and tells me to sit before returning to Thorin’s bathroom and making a pit stop in the one downstairs in order to grab everything she needs.
When she returns, she begins undoing the six cornrows in my hair.
At first, she works in silence, and even though I can’t see her face, I know something’s heavy on her mind, so I sit and wait patiently for her to tell me what it is.
It’s not until my hair is detangled and I’m sitting at the kitchen sink, facing away from the running water, that she does.
“Can I ask you something?” she says as she squirts some shampoo into my hair.
I sigh, feeling my shoulders ease from the weight of her worries now that she’s unburdening herself to me. “Is it about your uncle?”
“No, but we should talk about that too when Thorin and—” She stops herself when she realizes she was about to say Zeke’s name. “When Thorin is back,” she amends.
I reach up and grab her wrist while I twist in the chair to meet her sad eyes. “Whatever it is, Zeke will want to help too. He cares more than you think.”
Aurelia sighs and goes back to lathering my hair. “Actually, it’s Zeke I wanted to talk to you about.”
I don’t react other than to readjust in my seat. “Go on.”
It’s another minute before she finally asks her question. “You said Bane only awakens if Zeke is in danger. Is that the only way?”
“No. Bane has a trigger word. You say it, and all hell breaks loose.”
I wait for her to ask me what it is, but she doesn’t. Either she already knows it—which is possible considering Seth’s reckless obsession to give her anything she wants—or she knows I won’t tell her.
Against my will, my eyes drift closed when I feel her fingers massaging my scalp. “But are you sure those are the only reasons?”
I feel my frown but my eyes remain closed under the workings of her magical fingers.
“DID is a proven disorder, but it isn’t an exact science.
Much of what Zeke’s alters can or will do is bound to whatever the main identity needs in order to cope, so…
Yes, I guess it’s possible that Bane can choose for himself when to step in, but he never has.
Only when Zeke feels threatened.” Aurelia’s fingers pause, and I feel the hair on my arms rise. “Why?”
Rather than answer my question, she asks one of her own. “Would Zeke be aware if he does?”
“Not really. He said it’s just like falling asleep.
One moment he’s there and the next he’s not.
And he never remembers anything when he wakes up.
Not unless he goes looking for the memories himself, but he never does for two reasons.
One, they’re not easy to retrieve—like any of the memories we have before the age of five, except these are only moments, days, weeks old. ”
“And the second?”
“He doesn’t want to know what Seth and Bane did while his subconscious was locked inside the cage of his own mind.”