Chapter 27 Callie
twenty-seven
Callie
I woke up while being lowered into hot water.
Once Rathal had me situated perfectly on his lap, he let his head fall back against a black cushion with a sigh and closed his eyes.
I shifted a little closer, resting my head on his shoulder, and enjoying the hot water for a few silent moments before I couldn’t help it any longer and let my eyes roam over Rathal.
He had one arm supporting me, but the other was stretched out along the edge of the pool.
Usually he would have looked the picture of male satisfaction, but not this time.
I snickered. He had the appearance of a man gone to war, one who saw some shit and was forever changed.
One eye slit open, bloodshot and hollow and eyed me sourly. “And what, pray tell, gives you the energy to laugh at me?”
I snickered harder at the raspy, broken quality to his usually suave voice.
I’d done snatched this male's soul.
What was it the kids said these days?
Pussy was fire?
Yeah.
That pussy was fire.
I conveniently ignored that Rathal had done most of the hard work, and that he’d also snatched my soul. Hell, he’d jerked that bitch right out of my body, snapped her like a dirty rug, and then wrung her out for good measure before drop kicking her back into me.
But this wasn’t about him.
This was about me seeing the Lord of Arrogance finally drained of his boundless energy.
Ha. Drained.
I think I was delirious.
I smacked my lips, and squinted up at him. “Do we have any water?”
He reached across his body, grabbed something from the side of the pool and handed it to me before falling back against the lip of the pool and closing his eyes again.
It was a frosted glass of ice water, complete with bendy straw.
I drained half of it before the brain freeze kicked in and breathed a sigh of relief. “It was blessed by an eskimo medicine man from Alaska,” I muttered under my breath, holding the glass up for better appreciation.
Rathal huffed a short laugh. “What?”
I handed him back the glass with a shrug. “Nothing. Just being weird.”
“Your recovery time should be studied,” Rathal muttered.
I giggled, resting back against him and pet his chest. “I take it you’re too tired for round two?”
A disbelieving rumble vibrated his chest against my ear. “Callie, I’m too tired for round nine. Take a long look around you. It’s halfway through a rotation of Light.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing at his sassy, irritated tone.
Okay, so I’d been a bit of a demanding freak.
Sue me. After I’d fainted the first time, I’d woken back up in half a second ready for more and Rathal had obliged.
He’d obliged several more times with eager enthusiasm, but I think that very last session had been him hanging onto the edge by his fingertips.
He hadn’t phoned it in though, squeezing out of my exhausted body two more mind altering orgasms before he’d tapped out, declared himself defeated, and rolled off me.
I’d fallen asleep after that and woke up here.
We were inside the temple we’d passed through to get to the big maze, and he was right—the Lighting was in full swing.
“Fair enough,” I said, grinning down at the water.
Rathal’s growl vibrated the water around us just before he shot upright.
“Fair enough she says,” he griped, carrying me over to a wide lounge and tossing me onto the pile of pillows. I struggled to push the pillows out of the way, laughing when he straddled my hips and started tickling me.
“Fair enough! After I just gave the performance of my life! The audacity! The cheek!”
I screeched with laughter, wriggling under him. “Stop! Stop! Okay, Okay! I give! You're a god! Best sex of my life!”
His wicked fingers attacked my neck and I tried to pin my chin to my chest to escape but it was no use.
“You’re godsdamned right I am! You drained me completely dry, Wife! There was nothing left to give! I was firing empty! Round two, indeed!”
I was laughing so hard that only donkey-like noises were coming out of me.
A sharp thud broke up Rathal’s cruel assault and both of us paused to look over in the direction it had come from.
There, silhouetted in the archway, his big ass blue sword stabbed into the stone floor was a wide eyed, gape-mouthed Aga.
I sat up with a shocked gasp, pushing Rathal off of me. He rolled to his side, propping himself up on his elbow with one of his legs bent at the knee which put his impressive erection on full display.
“Oh, a visitor. Hello. However can we help you?” Rathal quipped, his arrogance firmly back into place.
Aga pointed an accusing finger at me, his mouth opening and closing. “You—you!”
I scrunched up my nose and winced, looking over my shoulder at Rathal. “Do you think he’s mad at me?”
Rathal looked at the still stuttering Aga in the archway and then back at me. “I’d say he’s pretty upset. I wasn’t aware that green scales could turn that dark. Did you? You should probably call the medic. It seems his blood pressure has reached the boiling point.”
Just then a klaxon alarm went off, the artificial sunlight dimming to near dark and orange lights flashed over the station.
Security breach. Please stay in your homes. Security breach.
Rathal looked up and clicked his tongue. “A little late, don’t you think?”
He cocked his head, his eyes closing for a moment before the alarm cut off and the lights came back on.
Eyes opening, Rathal grinned. “There. Problem solved. You might want to direct your attention back to your friend, my darling wife. He looks like he’s about to explode. He did come to rescue you, after all. It would be rude to ignore him.”
Aga’s voice bellowed. “Wife?!”
I glared at Rathal. “Thanks a lot for that,” I growled before shifting to look at Aga. “Heeey, Aga. Uh, I can explain. You see—”
Aga helped up his hand while blowing a hard breath out through his nose. “I don’t—would you put some clothes on.”
I looked down at myself. My body was riddled with love bites, bruises and some lingering redness around my wrists where Rathal had tied me up for that first round. “Oh, right.” I looked over my shoulder. “Uh, Rathal? Where are our clothes?”
He shrugged, waving his hand in the general direction of the maze. “At the start of the maze, remember? I chased you down last night for our mating Hunt, fucked you into unconsciousness and then brought you here to recover. We are clothless. Sorry.”
Aga sputtered in outrage and I covered my face with my hand and groaned.
Rathal made a sound of discovery and snapped his fingers. “Ah, but I do believe there might be some robes in that storage shelf over there,” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.
I sighed, shook my head at his antics, and stood. As I was walking past Rathal he slapped my ass, the sound loud in the awkward silence. I gaped at him, unbelieving. He winked at me, licking over his teeth.
“I do so enjoy watching you walk away, wife. Look how red your ass still is. I outdid myself.”
I was going to kill him. Slowly. Methodically.
I risked looking in Aga’s direction and winced. The angry crocodile was apoplectic. The green scales on his face were so dark they might as well have been black and his eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets.
I scurried over to grab a robe and pulled it on before slowly approaching Aga, my hands raised.
“Aga… Let's not do anything we regret, okay? Just let me explain and then we can—”
Aga drew himself up, pointing a finger at me. “I have traveled halfway across the galaxy to rescue you and how do I find you? Not in a cage but—but canoodling with the enemy! Married, Callie?! Mated?! What in the godsdamned hell is going on?”
I shot a look at Rathal, biting the inside of my cheek. He raised his brows and mouthed ‘canoodling?’ at me and I about lost it, a whimper escaping before I could rein it in.
Aga threw his hands up with a wordless shout. “Are you laughing right now?”
I covered my mouth and cut off another giggle halfway through and shook my head. “No. No, of course not. I’m just—I’m just so sorry, Aga.” My voice shook.
Aga narrowed his eyes at both of us before closing them. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers and sighed. “Just tell me what happened before I kill you both.”
Rathal broke first, his full bellied laugh bursting out of him like a gunshot and I crumbled, doubling over to hold my stomach as I wheezed.
Aga made a sound of disgust. “That’s it. I’m leaving.”
We laughed harder.