7. Learning the King
SEVEN
Learning the King
"Now it's your turn to wash me."
The words hang in the steam between us. I'm still trembling from the orgasm, still trying to reassemble the pieces of myself that shattered in his hands, and now he wants me to touch him.
He reaches past me, his chest brushing mine, his heat everywhere, and retrieves the bottle of soap from the shelf. Presses it into my hands.
"Take your time." His voice is rougher than before. The predator still showing through the cracks. "Learn me the way I learned you."
My fingers close around the bottle. It's slippery, warm from the water. I stare at it like it might tell me how to do this, how to put my hands on the man who just took me apart and not lose what's left of myself.
"Turn around." The words come out before I can think about them.
Something flickers across his face. Surprise? Amusement? But he turns, presenting me with the broad expanse of his back, and I'm grateful for the reprieve. I don't have to look at his face. I don't have to see those frozen eyes watching me while I touch him.
I pour soap into my palm. The eucalyptus scent rises through the steam, familiar now, forever linked to the memory of his hands on my body.
I put my hands on him.
His shoulders are massive. That's my first thought. Stupid, obvious, but true. My hands look small against the span of muscle, pale against his golden skin. He's warm despite the water, radiating heat like a furnace, and when my palms make contact he exhales slowly, deliberately.
I start to wash.
Shoulders first. Mimicking what he did to me.
Slow, circular strokes, learning the shape of him.
His muscles are carved, defined in a way that suggests dedicated effort.
This body wasn't inherited; it was built.
Hours in the gym, discipline and sweat and the kind of single-minded focus that probably terrifies his business rivals.
My hands slide down his back. The muscles there shift beneath my touch, responding to the pressure, and an unexpected surge of...
something rises through me. Power, maybe.
Or fascination. My fingers are making this body react.
This man who owns me, who controls everything in his world, his muscles are twitching under my hands.
Then I find the scar.
It runs along his left side, just below the ribs. A jagged line, maybe four inches long, raised and silvered with age. Not surgical. Too uneven, too rough. This was violence. Someone put a blade into Sebastian York's body.
My fingers trace the line before I can stop myself.
"Knife fight." His voice is matter-of-fact. "I was twenty-two. Young, reckless, and convinced I was immortal."
"What happened?"
"I won." A pause. "The other man didn't."
I should be horrified. I should pull my hands away, should remember that this man is a monster, that he's killed people, that he's capable of violence I can't imagine.
Instead, I keep tracing the scar. This imperfection in his perfect body. This evidence that he was once young and foolish, that he bled like anyone else.
"Keep going."
I keep going.
Down his back. Over his hips. I kneel behind him. The marble is hard under my knees, but the water is warm. And wash his legs the way he washed mine. Calf to thigh, methodical, thorough. My hands are shaking, but not from cold anymore.
His ass is next. I hesitate, then force myself forward. He's just a body. Just flesh, muscle, and bone. I've touched him everywhere else; I can touch him here.
He's perfect. Firm and sculpted, and I hate myself for noticing, for caring, for the way my hands linger longer than they need to.
"Stand."
I stand. He turns to face me.
And now I have to look at him.
The front of Sebastian York is worse than the back. His chest is a landscape of defined muscle, pectorals, abs, and the V of his hips leading down to?—
I wrench my gaze up.
"Eyes are fine." There's amusement in his voice. "But hands need to follow."
I start on his chest. More soap, more slow strokes. His nipples pebble under my palms, and a flash of savage satisfaction cuts through. He's responsive too. Not just a statue. Not just a machine. His body reacts to touch the same as anyone's.
Then I find the tattoo.
It's small, easy to miss if you weren't looking. On his chest, just over his heart. A compass rose, delicately inked, the lines fine and faded with age. Old. He got this years ago, probably around the same time as the knife fight.
"What does it mean?"
He looks down at my fingers tracing the ink. Something shifts in his expression. There and gone, too fast to read.
"It was a reminder." His voice is quieter now. "That I'd lost my way. That I needed to find a direction that was mine."
I want to ask more. What did he lose? What direction did he find? How did the reckless twenty-two-year-old with knife scars become this cold, controlled king?
But his hand covers mine, pressing my palm flat against the compass, against his heart.
"Keep going."
I keep going.
Down his stomach. The muscles there ripple under my touch, tensing and releasing. He's affected. His breathing changes, his jaw tightens. This isn't one-sided. This isn't just me falling apart while he watches unmoved.
I reach his hips and stop.
His cock is right there. Hard, flushed, jutting toward me like an accusation. I've been avoiding looking at it, avoiding thinking about it, but I can't avoid it anymore.
"Chloe." His voice is dark with amusement. "I said wash all of me."
"I know." My voice comes out strangled. "I just?—"
"You just what? You've had a cock in your hand before."
Not one like this. Not attached to a man like this. The few fumbling encounters of my past were nothing. Quick, awkward, forgettable. This is Sebastian York standing in front of me, hard because of me, waiting for me to touch him.
"All of me," he repeats. "That includes my cock. My balls. Everything."
I pour more soap into my palm. My hands are shaking visibly now.
"We'll know everything about each other soon." His voice softens. Or what passes for soft with him. "Every inch. Every response. Every secret your body keeps from your mind. There's no point in modesty anymore."
He's right. I hate that he's right.
I wrap my hand around him.
He sucks in a breath.
The sound sends a bolt of heat straight to my core. I made him do that. Me, with my hand on his cock, made Sebastian York gasp.
He's hot in my palm. Hard like steel wrapped in silk, thick enough that my fingers don't quite meet. His pulse throbs against my grip, rapid and strong.
"Stroke me." The command comes out rougher than before. "Slowly."
I stroke. Base to tip, slow like he said, learning the shape of him the way I learned everything else. The ridge of his head. The vein that runs along the underside. The way his whole body tenses when I reach the top.
"Harder."
I tighten my grip. Stroke again.
"Good." The word is a growl. "That's good. You're doing so well."
The praise hits me somewhere deep. Some part of me that's been starving for approval, for acknowledgment, for someone to tell me I'm doing something right.
"Twist your wrist at the top—yes, like that." His hips jerk forward, just slightly, pushing into my grip. "Perfect. You're perfect."
I'm touching Sebastian York's cock in his marble shower while he tells me I'm perfect, and I'm wet again.
The arousal is back full force, the Protocol amplifying every sensation, and the shame barely registers anymore.
How can I be ashamed when he's looking at me like this?
When he's losing composure because of what I'm doing?
"Don't forget my balls."
I reach lower. Cup them in my other hand, feeling the weight of them, the heat. He groans—actually groans—and the sound makes me clench around nothing.
"Fuck." The curse escapes him, rough and unguarded. "Your hands?—"
He doesn't finish the sentence. His jaw is tight, his eyes dark, his breathing ragged. The control he wears like armor is cracking. It's happening right in front of me. I'm making it happen.
There's power in this. I thought I had no power here, thought I was nothing but a possession, but he's shaking under my hands. His thighs are trembling. His cock is leaking onto my fingers.
I own this moment.
"Enough."
The word is sharp. Sudden. His hand closes around my wrist, stopping my movement.
I look up at him, confused—did I do something wrong? Did I?—
His control shatters.
He moves so fast I don't process it. One moment I'm standing there, his cock in my hand, the next I'm spun around, slammed against the shower wall, his body a wall of heat behind me.
"I didn't plan this." His voice is gravel in my ear, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise. "I was going to wait. Make you earn it. But you—" He grinds against me, his cock sliding between my thighs, finding the slick heat there. "Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me."
I brace my hands against the tile. The marble is cool against my palms, a counterpoint to the inferno pressed against my back. His teeth scrape my shoulder. His cock notches at my entrance.
"Tell me no." It sounds like it costs him something. "If you're going to say no, say it now."
I should say no. Some part of me, the stubborn, defiant part that still thinks of herself as free, screams that I should refuse. This is too fast. Too much. I'm not ready.
But I can't hide from what I want anymore. The Protocol won't let me. My body won't let me.
"Don't stop."
He thrusts into me.
I cry out—the stretch is overwhelming, too much, he's too big—but he doesn't stop, doesn't hesitate, just buries himself to the hilt in one relentless stroke. My vision whites out. My hands scrabble for purchase on the slick marble.
"Fuck." The word tears out of him. "You're so tight. So fucking perfect."
He pulls back. Slams in again.
I'm grateful, God, I'm so grateful, that he's behind me. That I don't have to see his face, don't have to look into those ice-blue eyes while he takes me apart. I can press my forehead to the cool tile and feel, just feel, every inch of him driving into me.
His rhythm is punishing. Not gentle, not slow. He's taking what he wants, using my body the way he promised he would. One hand grips my hip, anchoring me. The other slides around to my front, finds my clit, and I scream.
"That's it." His breath is harsh against my ear. "Let me hear you. Don't hold back."
I couldn't hold back if I tried. The Protocol has turned me into a live wire, every nerve ending on fire, every thrust pushing me higher. His fingers work my clit in tight circles, perfectly timed to the snap of his hips, and I'm climbing, climbing?—
"Come for me." A command. An order. "Come on my cock like a good girl."
I break.
The orgasm crashes over me like a wave, like drowning, like dying and being reborn.
I convulse around him, clenching so hard it almost hurts, my whole body shaking with the force of it.
I'm dimly aware that I'm screaming, that my nails are leaving marks on the marble, and that I've never felt anything like this in my life.
He fucks me through it. Doesn't slow down, doesn't let up, just keeps driving into me while I fall apart. And then?—
"Fuck—Chloe?—"
He slams in one last time and holds. He pulses inside me, heat flooding, his whole body shuddering against my back. His forehead drops to my shoulder. His grip on my hip turns bruising.
We stay like that. Pinned together under the spray. His cock still inside me, both of us gasping for air.
The water pounds down around us. Steam rises. My legs feel like they might give out at any moment.
Slowly, carefully, he pulls out of me. The loss is immediate. The emptiness where he was, the slick evidence of what just happened sliding down my thighs.
"Turn around."
I turn. Face him for the first time since he lost control.
He looks... different. Younger, almost. The predator is still there, but something else too. Something almost soft around the edges.
"You were perfect." He cups my face in his hands, tilts my head back to meet his gaze. "Absolutely perfect. The way you took me..."
He doesn't finish. Just shakes his head. Presses his lips to my forehead.
The tenderness is worse than the violence. I don't know what to do with tenderness.
He reaches past me, turns off the water. The sudden silence is deafening.
"Come." He takes my hand, actually takes my hand, like we're something other than owner and property, and leads me out of the shower.
There are towels waiting on a heated rack. He wraps one around his waist, then picks up another and begins to dry me off.
I stand there, mute and docile, while Sebastian York pats water from my body like I'm something precious. He's thorough. Gentle. The contrast with what just happened, the bruising grip, the punishing thrusts, makes my head spin.
When I'm dry, he wraps the towel around me. Tucks it in above my breasts like he's dressing a child.
"Your clothes will be ready by the time you're done here." His voice is calm again. Controlled. The mask slipping back into place. "Get dressed. Eat breakfast. You'll need your strength."
"For what?"
He pauses at the bathroom door. Looks back at me.
"For your first day of service." Something glints in those ice-blue eyes. "I have meetings this morning. You'll attend me. Then this afternoon, we'll discuss the rules in more detail."
"Attend you?"
"Kneel beside me while I work. Pour my coffee. Be available." His mouth curves. Not quite a smile. "You didn't think the shower was all there was, did you?"
No. Of course not. This is my life now. The shower was just the beginning.
"Be ready in thirty minutes." He opens the door, steps through. Pauses. "And Chloe?"
"Yes?"
"What happened in there—" He doesn't turn around. "I don't lose control. Ever."
He walks away.
I stand in the middle of his bathroom, wrapped in his towel, and the truth of what just happened lands.
Sebastian York didn't plan to fuck me this morning. He was going to wait, make me earn it, draw out the anticipation. But I touched him and he broke.
I made him lose control.
For a man who has built his entire existence on control, that has to mean something.
I don't know what yet. But I file the information away, a small weapon in an empty arsenal.
He broke for me.
Maybe someday, I can use that.