Chapter 49 #2
Nelle crouched down on the other side of the wraith-wolf, petting beneath his chin, petulantly stealing his attention. She gave Sage a pouty face as slapped my hand away from him, so she could stroke his ears flat. “No one, not even this dumbass, would ever make me kick you, puppy.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to my phone. My fingers flew over the screen as I sent a quick message to Penn.
Me: When the hells is the poison oak antidote arriving from House Simonis?
Gods, it had better be arriving soon. I wasn’t sure I’d survive her fury when the poison oak hit full force.
Flicking my gaze to Nelle fussing over Sage, my mind wandered back to the sway. “What did the sway feel like?” I asked, straightening to my full height.
“Awful,” she snipped back, rising and falling back into her trademark attitude pose. A hand on her hip, popping a shoulder out, with that fucking duh face directed at me.
Gods, she just couldn’t help herself. She refused to give an inch to me every single time. She’d been happy, content, and peaceful under the sway. I had too. I liked the harmony flowing between us.
My phone pinged.
Penn: It should be here within the hour. I’m at the airfield awaiting its arrival.
Thank fuck. But also—fuck. This wasn’t going to help with things right now.
Nelle dropped her pose to itch furiously at the lesion bubbling with blisters running down her forearm, and finally, she noticed her naked flesh ravaged by festering rashes.
Her eyes shot round as she flung her arms wide.
Pale tresses danced when her head jerked back and forth as she glanced furtively at all the cruel lesions springing up in red streaks all over her skin.
“The poison oak,” she breathed in horror.
“THE POISON OAK!” she shrieked, jittering and flapping her hands in panic. “Ohmygodsohmygodsohmygods!”
I hitched a shoulder in mock commiseration because part of me remembered yesterday morning and how godsdamn hot and itchy it had been. “Residue, I guess, from when I spanked you and then we made out.”
“Hells, hells, hells!” She scratched at herself manically. “It hurts. It burns. It’s so fucking itchy!”
“Tell me about it,” I hissed, a little gleeful
She lunged at me, beating my chest with her tiny fists and slapping at my face. “DO SOMETHING!” she screeched. “NOW! FUCKING NOW! MAKE IT STOP!”
Her horror and agonized emotions erupted beneath my skin. The ear-shattering screeches of pain blew my calm state right out of my head. I jittered from foot to foot, fending off her blows before falling into panic-stricken motion, acting, not thinking.
Dropping my phone, I scooped her up into my arms while she itched and wriggled and cursed me out. Dashing through the threshold of the bathroom, I did the only thing that came to mind to get her into the pool as fast as possible.
I hurled her at the sunken bath.
She flew through the air, her limbs flailing and hair whipping behind her like the trail of a shooting star, as she shrieked in fright. “AAAHHHHHHHH!”
She fell like a heavy rock into the deep pool.
Fat splashes of water exploded everywhere, and choppy waves slapped up against the bath’s rim as she disappeared beneath the frothy water.
I slapped a hand across my mouth, realizing what I’d just done.
Oh, shit…
Nelle surfaced a few seconds later, coughing and spluttering out a mouthful of water, looking like a drowned rat with her hair plastered to her skull. Her mouth curled downward in misery. “Couldn’t you have just let me get in myself?” she said in a small voice.
“I panicked,” I replied honestly, giving her an apologetic grimace.
Shucking off my boxer briefs, I crouched down and braced a hand on the stone floor, sliding one leg into the tub, then the other.
The soles of my bare feet met the pebbled bottom of the bath, and standing, the warm water lapped up around my waist.
“Next time,” she replied, as I sank into the water to await the arrival of the antidote with her, “don’t panic. I’d rather not be hurled across a room like a cannonball, Crowther.”
Half an hour later, I left a trail of wet footprints across the carpet as I made my way back to the bathroom with the medical cooler Penn had delivered to my residence.
Penn had said nothing about my attire, or lack of it, when I’d answered her knock on the door in just a towel hooked around my hips and water drizzling down my body, with the oaty scent of the soothing itch treatment wisping off my skin.
I didn’t offer an explanation either, but I figured she knew where both of us were and why, judging by the way she’d clamped her teeth down on her bottom lip to stop the smile when she’d turned to leave.
When I re-entered the bathroom, Nelle was submerged up to her neck in the milky water, covertly scratching away at her hip.
She glanced over, and her gaze slid eagerly over the medical cooler.
“The antidote for poison oak, fresh from Lower House Simonis,” I said, popping the cooler on the vanity’s counter and opening the box up.
Plucking the antidote out, I held the vial pinched between my fingers.
The gummy liquid was the color of pomegranate.
Nelle snatched the antidote out of the air when I tossed it to her.
She quickly uncapped the vial and tipped her head back to swallow the concoction down.
Her nose wrinkled and mouth puckered at its foul taste as she smacked her lips.
She leaned over to offer back the empty vessel, and I packed it away.
Unwinding the towel from my hips, I wandered over to the warming rack and hung it over the metal railing. Slipping back into the bath, my body stirred the water and parted tendrils of steam as I waded toward Nelle.
“Thank Skalki and the Simonises,” she breathed with relief, as the medicine boosted with magic worked its way through her system. Both of us watched in fascination as the rashes faded from her flesh until finally, it was only her natural honeyed skin glowing in the bathroom.
“Better?”
“So much better,” she grinned.
I stood behind her and continued where we’d left off before Penn’s arrival disturbed us. My fingers followed the grooves of her spine, and I kneaded all the knotted, stressed muscles.
Earlier, Nelle had removed her underthings and allowed me to lather her up with the special soap to help the itching, and I’d carefully glided the bar all over the curves of her soft body.
Surprisingly, she’d surrendered completely, allowing me to gather up her long hair and froth it up with shampoo before she’d dipped back to half-float, the blond locks fanning and whirling in the water, while I carefully dragged my fingers through the silky length, teasing out the suds.
Afterward, I’d applied conditioner, and she’d pressed back, almost purring in contentment as I’d massaged her head until she’d become limp and compliant, sighing in pleasure.
Now, Nelle canted forward, her hands braced over the lip of the bath while I stood behind and massaged down her back. “Oh my gods… So good,” she moaned, before urging me, “Lower… Yes, right there.”
We’d talked for the past half hour, and occasionally actually laughed.
I’d asked more about her childhood to keep her distracted from itching her raw skin, but there were times we’d fallen into a comfortable silence, entirely at ease with one another without the necessary urge to fill the dead air with chatter.
However, there was something I was curious about. “You made a wyrm burrow.”
Nelle’s spine stiffened beneath my palms, and I instantly regretted mentioning it.
“Yes, it would seem so,” she replied in a too-quick, too-sharp voice, indicating she didn’t want to talk about it.
A moment later, her body softened along with her voice.
She twisted around to face me, and my hands fell away to drift by my sides in the water.
She hesitantly met my gaze. “The sway…it wasn’t awful,” she confessed quietly. “I was content.”
“Happy?”
She nodded with a shy smile.
“Did you want to kiss me?” I asked. Unease scraped along my bones regarding our kiss in the burrow. Nelle couldn’t look at me. Those dark lashes fluttered anxiously before they lowered to brush the swell of her upper cheeks to hide her gaze. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Do you want to kiss me again?” I husked, shifting closer.
Mutual desire swirled through the steamy air as she opened her eyes. Her pupils waxed dark as a new moon as they slipped over my face to linger on my lips. “Yes,” she breathed.
My heart rapped a riotous beat as I bowed my head.
“Do you want to do more than just kiss me?” She didn’t answer me with words.
Instead, she reached upward. Her delicate hands electrified my skin wherever they touched as she glided them through the wet ends of my hair and around the back of my neck.
She drew me down as she rose on her tippy-toes to press her pomegranate-red lips against mine.
“Maybe while we’re here,” I murmured against her lips, my hands sliding down her sides to wrap around her thighs and lift her up.
She hitched her legs around my waist, and I sank us both down into the water.
“How about I dirty you up all over again?”
Her joyous laugh vibrated inside my mouth.
So I did, holding off until I’d kissed and touched and tasted almost every part of her body and she was begging me to take her. I turned her around to kneel on the sunken seat that encircled the bath, and buried myself inside her from behind with a lustful groan.