Chapter 25
BIRDIE
Less than ten minutes later and I’m naked in the shower, my arms wrapped around my middle as I stand out of the spray and watch Bell strip off his clothes through the glass.
I drop my eyes when he starts undressing—an unbearable kind of preciousness given that there’s a used condom in a trash can downstairs—but it’s only partially my wounded chastity that begs me to look away.
It’s mostly the very same aversion I had to looking at him when he was my student…
the aversion to a lower being beholding something celestial, the inclination of clay to hide itself from starlight.
But I’ve never been able to help myself entirely when it comes to Bell.
The sculptor in me is compelled to look, to stare, to measure, to absorb—always has been—and now the compulsion is weighted with an artist’s pride because I want to know how close I came with the statue of Lucifer, if the fractures of memory and fantasy were enough to re-create him as he actually is.
The answer is almost. The breadth of the shoulders and the lean corrugations of my Lucifer’s stomach match the man currently undressing before me.
The power in those arms and the muscles moving under the skin of his back and the harmonized architecture of his collarbone and throat—they all match too, as does the hair arrowing down from his flat navel, which I’d accurately remembered as a trail of flattened curls from the one glimpse I’d had that fateful evening at Evelyn.
But I hadn’t known about the sprinkling of gold across his chest or the constellation of moles on one side of his navel.
The muscles feathering down from the joins of his arms to fan over his rib cage are so much more finely delineated than I ever could have imagined, and he has freckles on his shoulders that I wouldn’t have carved but I would have liked to think of while I was carving…
He’s been watching me all this while, and the smile on his face is much closer to a smirk when he finally kicks his underwear over to the pile of clothes on the floor and saunters toward the shower.
He’s erect again, but it doesn’t detract from the slow insolence of him as he approaches; if anything, it adds to it, to the sense of prerogative as he strolls through the opening in the glass and joins me with his penis jutting hard from his hips, its insistence traced in the arrogant veins winding up its length.
He stops before he reaches me, standing with the spray hitting his back and sending up a hot mist, his eyes moving down from my face to my naked breasts partly covered by my arms.
“Arms down, Birdie.” The words are arrogantly gentle—a lord thinking he’s showing great manners to his vassal. “I want to see you.”
It cannot matter at this point that he sees me without clothes on, but I find it impossible to unwrap my arms, to fully expose myself.
It is something biological, I think, because I can’t get any more exposed than having my uncovered sex fully available to view as it is now, but showing him my belly feels unbearable.
Like I’ll drop my arms and he’ll attack me with teeth out, a gnashing wolf, tearing prey and shedding blood.
He steps closer, his wet hands finding my wrists and pushing my arms down, keeping them pinned next to my hips as his eyes blaze a path from my neck to my thighs.
He takes his time, the greed in his face evident, but there’s a savoring kind of leisure too, a man determined to enjoy this to the fullest. His stare follows a drop of gathering mist as it collects at the hollow of my throat and then rolls down my breast, dripping off a furled nipple to the tile.
He lets out a heavy breath, gusting in the building steam. “The things you make me think. The end of anything good in me is in you, Birdie Cooper.”
When his eyes find mine again, I know he means it.
Whatever is good inside him can’t survive me.
I think of the cool chalkboard against my face, that terrifying moment with him between my legs and how it ended with his mouth in my hair and his heart pounding hard enough in his chest that I could feel it against my back.
It’s too late for you. I’ve tasted. I’ve seen.
A shameful thrill flutters through my chest at the idea, an answering cut of peculiar happiness.
My throat hurts, and I can’t believe myself, that I’m reacting as if Bell has just confessed an undying and extravagant love for me.
Like this is romantic. I wouldn’t believe romance, though; I wouldn’t believe he loved me.
But that I was the death of anything good in him?
That he wants to manipulate me? Violate me? I do believe that.
I only wish I could hate him for it instead of feeling so breathlessly chosen.
I only wish the anticipation of his touch didn’t feel so much like the crush of a summer storm, calling to something that exists deeper than any words can hope to describe.
Deeper than civilization, deeper than anything, something so elemental that it only responds to pressure, danger, light.
“Come here,” he says softly and pulls me close, backs us up so we shuffle deeper into the spray.
He reaches over to a ledge, and soon I’m being lathered in a bodywash that feels like silk and smells like Ryan Bell.
He has a net sponge in one hand, but eventually, he just uses his hands to wash me, his lips parted and his erection bobbing against my stomach or nudging my back as he rubs my soapy body.
It’s…lovely, actually. The hot spray, the firm sweeps of his hands or the gentle scrub of the sponge. There’s a lingering soreness in my sex, a pinch whenever I shift my weight or turn, but the sensation of being washed, so thoroughly fondled, is enough to make me languid. Torpid.
I could fall asleep right now standing up, despite the fact that I’ve slept better in the last week and a half than I have since before my father died. As if finally getting a full night’s sleep has only given me a taste for it, and now I’m ravenous.
My drowsiness must show on my face because Bell huffs a laugh and pulls me into him, turning me so my back is to his chest and my head is resting back against his shoulder.
“Surely I haven’t fucked all the energy out of you just yet,” he murmurs, amused.
One hand arranges my hair so it falls over his shoulder and down his back, angling both of us so my scalp is under the water.
His other hand drifts down to make soapy circles around my breasts and ribs.
“But I can’t complain about having a warm, dozy Birdie in my arms either. ”
“I can’t complain about being here,” I admit dazedly, surprised both that I said it aloud and that it’s entirely true.
The man I’m leaning against—the man now toying with the delta of curls below my stomach, tugging at them, caressing them—is twisted and possessive and only barely concerned with my consent, and I don’t know that I’m safe with him in any meaningful sense.
And yet this all feels so good, so nice, so unreal—a dream of being clean and cared for and doted on.
“Good,” he replies, and there’s a fresh depth to his voice, like the word has come from somewhere below his lungs.
He places a hard kiss to the side of my jaw, and then he reaches over for the shampoo and starts washing my hair.
The scent of apples rises all around us, and he’s so, so conscientious, so careful not to let soap get in my eyes, so thorough as he works the shampoo into my scalp and down through my curls, and thorough again as he rinses and then does the same with the conditioner.
When he’s finished, he sits me on a teak stool against the shower wall and then goes to wash himself with quick and functional movements.
I’m still dreamy and loose-limbed, but my fingers twitch watching him, watching the soap and water stream in rivulets down his chest and stomach, watching the water gather in the muscular furrow of his spine only to run over the high, firm rounds of his rear.
When it’s time for him to wash the straining flesh between his hips, he turns to face me, his hand indolently working the lather over himself, dropping now and again to cup the heavy part below.
His eyes are on my face the entire time, but I shamefully cannot claim that I behave likewise.
My own gaze is glued to the shuttling of his hand, the swinging of his testicles, the way his erection looks when it’s wet and dripping.
I am so fascinated that I don’t even mind when he tells me to stand up and come over to him.
“Wrap your fingers around it,” he says. He gives a rough groan when I do. “Yeah. That’s right.”
I give an experimental squeeze, and it jumps in my hand. My lips part in shock. I didn’t know it could do that.
He laughs at my surprise. “God, you’re sweet,” he says. “It makes me want to come again. Fuck.” His grip closes around mine and he guides me in stroking him, tighter than can possibly feel good, except his eyes close and his head drops forward and he makes a noise that’s almost helpless.
The answering helplessness in my blood is a drug slowly filtering into my tissues, my organs.
Everything in the center of me feels shimmering and molten, and my clitoris is as swollen as the flesh burning against the palm of my hand.
My nipples are so erect that the spray of the shower is too much on the sensitive tips.
I don’t feel like I’ve only just had my virginity taken thirty minutes ago.
I feel like a born hedonist, like I’ve spent all my adult life craving this.
But it’s even worse than that, because it’s not as if I’m some voluptuary willingly crawling all over him.
He’s forcing me to stroke him, insisting that I jerk him off, his hand enveloping mine and refusing to let go as he works my grip over those thick, ruddy inches.
He’s making me do it, and instead of feeling repulsed or solely afraid, I am panting.