Chapter 16 #3
“Enjoying your shower?” His voice was thick with smoke.
He knew exactly how much I was enjoying it, and the knowledge that he could scent my arousal enflamed me instead of embarrassing me. I nodded anyway. “Are you being responsible?”
“Of course.” His hand slipped between my thighs. “Just being thorough,” he said, swirling his thumb across the bundle of nerves there.
I gasped, rising on tiptoe. The ache twisted deeply as my lips parted. I moaned as my hips lifted to meet his hand.
He kissed my shoulder as he eased his hands away. My eyes snapped open, and I started to turn toward him. “I’m not finished,” he said before I could speak. “Your legs still need to be cleaned.”
My brows rose. “Seriously?”
His eyes were like pools of warm honey. “Very serious.”
I couldn’t care less about my legs. “Casteel—”
“I would never forgive myself if you didn’t find your first shower to be as effective as a bath,” he said, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “But you should sit. You’re looking a little…flushed.”
“I wonder why.”
He chuckled deeply, and I briefly considered hitting him but decided against it even though he truly deserved it for teasing me like this. I let him take me to the bench and sat, sucking in a soft breath of surprise as I realized a faint mist of water fell over the space.
Casteel added more soap to his hands and lowered himself to his knees before me. “Comfortable?”
I glanced down between his legs as I nodded. He wasn’t even remotely unaffected by this.
“Good. Your comfort is my utmost concern.” Water clung to his lashes as he curled one hand around an ankle. He grinned, his gaze rising to mine as he lifted my leg. My breath snagged as he placed my foot on his shoulder. The position left me…oh, gods, it left me utterly exposed to him.
A shaky breath left me as I watched him shift his gaze to my very center.
A hint of fang appeared behind his parted lips, and everything inside me twisted most deliciously.
My palms flattened against the smooth bench as he drew his soapy hands up my calf and then my thigh.
I held my breath as his fingers reached the crease between my hip and thigh.
He dragged his hand along the inside of my leg, his knuckles brushing my most sensitive area. Air punched out of my lungs.
Casteel’s hand stopped there as he met my gaze. “Still comfortable?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
That sensually cruel smile of his appeared, and tension gathered sweetly in my body.
He dragged his hand back down as the mist of water continued wetting my skin.
When he finished, he placed my foot back on the floor and then lifted my other leg.
Cooler air rushed against my heated flesh.
He did the same as before, sliding the soap between my toes, over the pad of my foot, and then up and up my leg.
I tensed, nearly straining in anticipation, my heart pounding as his knuckles once more grazed my core.
Drawing his hand back down the length of my leg, he wiped away the soap and bent his head, kissing the jagged scar on the inside of my knee.
Hooking his arm around my calf, Casteel didn’t put my foot down on the floor. He moved in closer, the width of his shoulders widening my legs.
My heart stuttered as my eyes widened. A wave of taut shivers cascaded through me. Not even that morning he’d woken from the nightmare and had been close to bloodlust had I been this exposed to him. A flutter moved from my chest to my stomach.
“Are you…are you still being thorough?” I asked, my voice husky.
“Yes. I think I missed a spot.” He kissed the space above the old scar. “I think I see many more spaces I missed. And you know me, I’m a perfectionist. I also wouldn’t want those spots to feel left out. Do you?”
“No.” My heart pounded so much that I wondered if he could see it, but when I looked down, all I saw was the turgid peaks of my breasts between soaked strands of coppery hair.
I lost a bit more breath as I took in the sight of myself—my shoulders back against the tile, my breasts thrust out, and my legs open wide for Casteel.
My eyes remained open as my head fell back against the wall.
I watched him as his wet hair teased my skin.
“How about here?” He kissed the inside of my thigh as his palm ran up the back of my leg.
“Or here?” His lips found one of those ragged scars on the insides of my thighs.
He shifted his head as he brushed his lips over the pulsing flesh between my legs.
I jerked. “Yeah, I think this spot is especially dirty and lonely.”
I moved beyond words as his head bowed. The wet slide of his tongue over me dragged a throaty moan from me.
My eyes fluttered shut and reopened only halfway when he said, “I need to pay extra special attention to this area.” He made another pass with his tongue, this time swirling it around the tight bud of nerves. “It may take me a while.”
I trembled as his tongue flicked the skin and then slipped inside me.
A dizzying burst of pleasure shocked my senses.
He tilted his head again, and his lick was deep and slow and wonderfully indecent.
My hips tilted up, matching his strokes—his teasing, shallow strokes.
What he was doing was decadent and not anything I had ever imagined when thinking about bathing.
I would never be able to think of anything else when I was near water now.
My hips twitched as I felt a long finger replace his tongue, trailing lightly over the swollen flesh then slipping inside me a fraction with each sweep. My body was becoming an inferno.
“Cas,” I breathed, shuddering as I teetered closer and closer to the precipice.
He halted, looking up at me with eyes that were now luminous. “You should hold onto the bench.”
With shaking hands, I gripped the edge of the seat.
One side of his lips curved up. “Good girl.”
He dipped his head, his breath hot against me. A heartbeat passed. I felt his lips and then the erotic graze of a fang—
I cried out as the sharp, brief sting sent a shockwave through my entire body.
A knotted whirl of burning pleasure shot down my legs and up my spine.
My eyes were wide-open, but I swore I saw bursts of white light.
Then his mouth closed over the throbbing bundle of nerves as his finger thrust inside me.
He sucked deep and hard, coaxing not only my arousal but the thin bit of blood I knew he’d also drawn.
My entire body reared off the bench, my grip slipping—
He placed his other hand on my stomach, pressing me back down to the seat.
He feasted from me as his finger pumped in and out.
He consumed me, and I was lost—willingly lost in the raw sensations flooding me, devoured by the groan he unleashed against my flesh.
I squirmed against him in senseless desperation.
The feel of him was too much, and yet, it wasn’t enough.
The pleasure bordered on pain wrapped in beauty.
It was exhilarating and frightening as the intense heat coiled deeper and tighter inside me.
“Cas,” I moaned again, not even recognizing my voice as his hand left my stomach.
Tipping forward on the edge of the bench, I gained leverage with my other foot.
My chin dropped as my hips lifted from the tile and rolled against his finger, against his mouth.
The sight of me churning against him became branded in my mind.
The sight of the muscles in his upper arm flexing and tensing as his hand moved between his legs was imprinted on my skin.
His lashes swept up, and his gaze locked with mine as his arm made quick and jerky, hard movements and pushed me over the edge.
I came apart, screaming his name as he gave a hoarse shout against my skin.
I shattered, over and over, breaking into pleasure-wrapped shards.
The release was devastating and glorious in its intensity, coming in on endless waves that left me boneless against the tile.
When he eased his finger out of me, tiny bursts of pleasure still sparked through me.
His lips curled into a smile against my swollen flesh. “Honeydew.”
Casteel wrapped a towel around me. Before I could take one step, he lifted me into his arms.
I grasped one shoulder. “I can walk.”
“I know.” He carried me into the shadow-filled bedchamber.
“This is not necessary.”
“Everything that has to do with you is necessary.” Casteel deposited me on the bed, and within a heartbeat, he had me stretched out on my side and was seated beside me. He was fully and unabashedly naked while I was still wrapped in the fluffy towel. “So, how did you enjoy your first shower?”
My cheeks warmed as I grinned. “It was very…life-changing.”
“Agreed.” One side of his lips curved up as he reached over, tucking a strand of my wet hair back from my face. “Hungry?”
I nodded, smothering a yawn.
“I’ll see what I can wrangle up for us.” He leaned over me, capturing my lips. The kiss was soft and languid and wrapped my heart in warmth and light.
He withdrew, rising from the bed, and I watched him through half-open eyes as he walked to the oak wardrobe. He pulled on a pair of black breeches. As he made his way back to me, he unsheathed the wolven dagger. “The wolven are outside right now, patrolling.”
My brows rose. “They are?” When he nodded, a sleepy frown pulled at my lips. “Why can’t I feel them, and you can?”
“Because I’m special,” he replied with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes.
He chuckled. “I can’t feel them. I can hear them. Still makes me special,” he added, and I sighed.
I thought about what I’d thought had happened with Kieran and Delano. “Do you think that Primal bond thing means that I can feel them in a different way?”
“I think you mean Primal notam .”
“Whatever.”
“But what do you mean feel them in a different way?”
“I don’t know.” I gave a half-shrug. “A couple of times since I woke up in the cabin, I thought I heard Delano and Kieran in my mind.”
One eyebrow rose. “What?”
“Yeah, I heard their voices in my head.” I sighed.
“When I was in the Skotos, having that dream? I heard Delano answer something in that nightmare, and I heard him say that I was their… Liessa ,” I told him.
“And then I swore I heard Kieran’s voice when we waited outside the Temple of Saion.
I didn’t get a chance to ask either of them, but with Delano I also felt more than his emotions when I focused on him in the mountains.
I felt, like…I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like his unique imprint.
His mark. I’ve never felt that before. I know it sounds unreal—”
“I don’t think it sounds unreal,” Casteel said, his brows knitting. “I think anything is possible. We should definitely ask Kieran if he heard you or if he even knows if it’s possible. I know it wasn’t for us when we were bonded.”
Pressing my lips together, I nodded.
Casteel stared down at me for a moment. “You’re utterly unique, Poppy. You know that, right?”
I gave another lazy, one-shouldered shrug.
A faint smile appeared and then disappeared. “You’re safe here,” he told me as he placed the dagger beside my hand. “But just in case, if anyone comes in here, stab first and ask questions later. You should be familiar with that mentality.”
“Why does everyone act like I run around stabbing people?”
Casteel stared back at me and then looked pointedly at his chest.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “You deserved it.”
“I did.” He grinned as he placed a knee on the bed and lowered the upper half of his body over mine. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be here.” I picked up the dagger. “Hopefully, not stabbing anyone.”
The dimple in his right cheek appeared, and he dipped his head, kissing just above my brow and then lower, over the scar. “Princess?”
My lips curved up. What had started as a nickname had become a reality. “Yes?”
His mouth moved over mine. “I love you.”
The smile on my face grew as my heart did a little skip in my chest. “I love you.”
He made that rough, rumbling sound. “I will never get tired of hearing that. Say it over and over, a hundred thousand times, and it will feel like I’m hearing it for the first time.”
I tipped my head up, kissing him. He was slow to leave, but he finally did, and my tired gaze moved to the lattice doors.
Night had fallen outside, and I strained to hear what had been so obvious to Casteel.
I heard nothing but the low hum of insects and the melody of nightbirds.
My grip tightened on the cool bone handle of my dagger.
Casteel didn’t have to worry. If anyone came into this room, I would be ready.