CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #3
Afraid that I’d lose my nerve if I stood there any longer, I rolled my eyes, then grabbed his wrist and gave it a quick tug.
It wasn’t enough to force him to go anywhere, but it implied a certain insistence nonetheless.
"Are you coming or not?" I asked, as I headed down the hallway. I phrased it that way carefully – a request, not a demand. I was aware that Xel wasn’t compelled to obey me, the way he had been with my uncle, but even so, giving him a direct order to allow me to molest him was treading on dangerous ground. I’d rather skirt around the issue with insinuations and implicit flirting, then, if he objected, he had a clear avenue to say so.
“Yes, sir,” Xel said, his tone sassy, almost mocking. “So you finally decided you couldn’t resist me?”
I shut the bathroom door behind us and glanced pointedly down at his erection – which had sprung to life in the last thirty seconds or so.
“I couldn’t help noticing the massive erection you were carrying around for half the morning,” I said, feigning boldness to cover up the fact that my heart was thumping so hard I was surprised Xel couldn’t hear it.
Not wanting to get caught up in more verbal sparring – for fear I’d reveal more than I intended to – I stripped off my clothes, dumping them on the floor, since I was intending to get a clean set before we started the real work for the day.
Then, largely ignoring Xel, I turned on the shower and stepped into the bathtub.
I hoped like hell that Xel was following suit, and that he wasn’t just going to stand there and think I was a lunatic.
A moment later, I jumped halfway out of my own skin as I felt a warm hand on my hip. Xel nudged me gently out of the way, to give him space to join me in the tub. He was naked, and yes, he was very erect.
He turned me to face him, and I found myself staring at his chest – not because I was appreciating his muscles, but because I was suddenly unable to look him in the eye.
Maybe this had been a bad idea, after all.
It was more than I was ready for, and as impulsive as it had been, I’d given no thought at all to how this was actually going to play out.
Sex in the shower was never terribly comfortable, and Rohinavon was sitting outside, waiting for breakfast, and maybe we should just stick to something simple, like blow jobs, except that I wasn’t the slightest bit hard, and what the hell was Xel going to think, when I’d been the one to start this, but now I was completely incapable of following through?
“We don’t have to do this,” he said gently, and I could feel his eyes on me, as I continued to stare at the beautiful sky-blue scales across his chest. “We can just have a shower. Get clean.”
I looked up at him, determined to get a handle on the chaos in my own head.
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought… I wanted…” I sighed.
What had I wanted, exactly? “I don’t like the idea of leaving you frustrated all the time,” I said eventually, and that had been at the root of this idea.
He both wanted and needed sex, and despite giving him permission to masturbate, I was doing nothing to take responsibility for my end of that.
I understood now why Aiden had said, right at the start, that parts of this were going to be uncomfortable.
And also why he hadn’t told me about the sex part of it during that first meeting.
If he had done, I’d probably have run a hundred miles in the opposite direction.
Xel smirked, a tiny lifting of the corner of his mouth that nonetheless said clearly that he thought I was nuts. “I don’t have to be frustrated,” he said coyly. And then he reached down and wrapped his large hand loosely around his own cock. “Perhaps you would just like to watch?”
That was tempting. Tempting to watch him put on a show for me, as he inevitably would, but also tempting to delegate my own responsibility in this.
But according to Aiden’s manual, that would not be enough in the long run.
I leaned into him, nudging his hand out of the way.
“How about I do that for you?” I asked, my voice suddenly husky.
God, he was tall, standing so close to me, and I looked up into his piercing blue eyes, as bright as the sky on a summer’s day.
He was staring down at me just as intently, and then his body twitched as I tightened my hand on him.
He felt so much bigger than me; not so much longer as thicker, and I glanced down, seeing how well he filled my hand. I gave a few experimental strokes, and Xel gasped, then reached out to steady himself against the tiled wall. “Oh, sir… that is wonderful…”
I kept it up, running my thumb over the head on the up stroke, watching the muscles of his abdomen tense and flutter.
Remembering something else Aiden had said, I told Xel, “You can come any time you like.” Given the permission to masturbate, I wasn’t sure if I needed to give separate permission now, but figured it couldn’t hurt to make sure.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, his voice deep and desperate. “Oh stars, I… uhhnnnnn…” A moment later, I felt a hot spurt of fluid over my hand, and I glanced up to see Xel’s head thrown back, his eyes closed.
That had been quicker than I’d been expecting, but if Xel had enjoyed it, I wasn’t going to complain.
But at the same time, the ease with which he’d climaxed niggled at my guilt again.
If his sex drive was high enough that he was practically bursting after just a couple of days, then I was going to have to pay a lot more attention to how often I was touching him.
I gave him a minute to catch his breath, then reached for the wash cloth. “Come on,” I prompted him. “We do actually need to get clean. I get the feeling it’s going to be another long day.”
With gentle fingers, he took the cloth from me, then worked up a lather with the soap.
And then I was suddenly being treated to a whole new understanding of what his training as an erotic companion meant.
He lifted my left arm and began to wash me, paying close attention to every inch of my skin.
He washed each finger, then my thumb, then the inside of my wrist, which suddenly seemed more sensitive than usual.
He continued on up my arm, being quick but thorough, his eyes on mine the entire time.
And I understood that he had been trained to do this, to please his master in such a slow and sensual way.
There was apparently a whole lot more to being an erotic companion than just sex, and I felt a nervous thrill at the idea of finding out what else he’d learned to do.
He kept going, all the way around my back, and I let him, every nerve tingling as my body revelled in the sensation of being touched for the first time in five long years. But then Xel paused, and it took me a moment to realise why.
“Is this sore at all?” he asked, being exceptionally gentle as he reached the edge of the scar tissue on my shoulder.
I shook my head, clamping down on a wave of emotion. “No. Not anymore. It’s numb in some places, which feels kind of weird, and in other places, it’s just kind of tingly. But it doesn’t hurt.”
It had hurt. So much so that I’d spent a couple of weeks doped up on the galaxy’s best pain killers, and then a couple more literally wishing I could die.
Being the backwater fringe planet that it was, Rendol didn’t have access to some of the newer medical technology, and if I’d had the same accident on somewhere like Dranva, the home of the Alliance Parliament, I’d probably have ended up with less than a quarter of the scarring.
As it was, I was lucky to be alive, and I knew perfectly well that there was no point in dwelling on all the things that might have been.
“There you are,” Xel said, once he’d worked his way all the way around me and back to the front. “I thought perhaps you would prefer to do your lower half yourself?”
It was a beautifully polite way of saying that he’d intentionally avoided touching my groin without permission, and while I appreciated the consideration, I was also just a little disappointed that he’d stopped when he had.
But that could wait for another day. I took the cloth from him and finished my shower, steadfastly ignoring the half-hard erection sprouting between my thighs.