20. Chapter Twenty #2
His gaze never leaves the wound. “If I could kill that male again, I’d make him suffer for weeks.”
He turns to the medical cabinet, retrieving a compact kit with the ease of someone who’s done this far too many times. I keep my eyes trained on his face while he numbs the fiery wound, and then I feel nothing but pressure as he disinfects and seals it.
My gaze drifts over his torn clothing, clinging to broad shoulders streaked with drying blood. Fresh cuts mark the powerful muscles of his chest and side, and one deeper wound near his ribs has bled through the bandage he’d apparently forgotten to replace.
“You’re hurt too.”
He glances down as though I’d pointed out someone else’s injuries. “I’ll heal faster than you, little human. I have thick Sethrai scales. Not delicate human skin like yours.”
His fingertips drift lightly along my forearm, checking for tenderness near another bruise. The touch is feather-light, but warmth spreads through my skin and I can’t stop the small shiver that follows.
His eyes lift. “Does your delicate human skin like my touch?”
The severity leaves his face, replaced by something softer that I’ve learned belongs only to me. His thumb traces the same path a second time, slower now, and I lean into the touch, forgetting, if only for a moment, every bruise reflected in the mirror behind me.
“It likes it very much,” I manage.
“Good.” His gaze travels over me, slow and deliberate, taking in every smear of blood and grime. “Because this delicate human body needs to be cleaned just as badly as my powerful Sethrai body does.”
A startled laugh escapes me. “Powerful?”
“You disagree.” His voice drops, and the sound of it sends a warm pulse through my belly. “Then allow me to demonstrate how powerful I am.”
His claw hooks through the center of my bra and slices downward in one clean motion. The ruined fabric falls away before I can draw breath. He tears my pants open at the seam, the harsh rip filling the small bathroom. I step free of the scraps, completely bare.
The air hits my skin and I forget to be self-conscious because he’s already reaching behind his neck and drawing his ruined shirt away. His pants follow in the same breath, shoved down and kicked aside.
He reaches past me and turns the dial. Water thunders against the stone floor and steam billows outward immediately, filling the small bathroom in a single warm breath. The air thickens, hazing the mirrors and wrapping around us both, and through it he turns back to me.
His skin burns a deep burnt orange beneath the smears of dried blood that paint his chest and shoulders, darkening to bronze across the stacked ridges of his abdomen and the broad plane of his chest. Scales catch the glow in shifting patterns where they aren’t streaked red, fine as silk at his throat, thicker and darker where they armor his shoulders and trace a path down the center of his stomach.
The wound at his ribs is a dark gash. I follow that bloodied trail past the narrow waist, past the powerful thighs braced wide and steady, to his thick, heavy and fully erect twin cocks.
They rise thick and heavy, the upper curving slightly toward his stomach while the lower hangs heavier beneath. His tail sways low behind him, the spaded tip flicking once as he catches me looking.
My abdomen pulls tight.
His claws flex at his sides, still tipped with the same sharp points that tore through his father’s throat. The sight of them should scare me. It doesn’t. It only makes me want them on my skin.
He is powerful. Inside and out. A male who has a literal world at his feet.
“Can I touch you, female,” he asks, his voice hoarse.
And this powerful male is asking me for permission. I nod, needing to have him in my arms, my skin on his scales. Hands on me. Cocks in me. Owning each other.
Heat of him radiates against my bare skin.
One clawed hand settles at the small of my back, pulling me flush against him, and the feel of all that warm, hard muscle pressed against my stomach and breasts sends a shiver racing up my spine.
Both cocks press against my belly, hot and slick, and his tail curls around my calf with a possessive squeeze.
“I want you, Miro. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
I reach up and touch his face, right where the scales soften near his jaw. “Then have me. I’m right here.”
He tilts my chin and kisses me. Slowly. Deliberately.
As though he’s memorizing the shape of my mouth.
His lips part mine, and his tongue sweeps against mine as he draws us into the shower.
He slides a warm palm down my spine and pulls me tighter against him.
The water rushes behind us and the steam wraps around our bodies and I lose myself in the taste of him until he finally pulls back, breathless.
The water is gloriously hot. It sluices over my shoulders and down my back, washing away the blood and the fear and the long, brutal hours of this night.
I tip my head back and let it soak my hair, and for a long moment I just stand with my eyes closed, feeling the warmth seep into muscles that slowly start to unclench.
When I open my eyes, Zavin is watching me. He towers over me like this, a wall of muscle and scales and warm amber eyes. His expression is unreadable, but his tail curls up my leg, the end grazing the tip of my thighs.
He reaches for the soap. Works the lather between his palms with slow, deliberate movements. Then those clawed hands rise and sink into my hair, and he tilts my head back further with nothing but the gentle pressure of his fingertips against my scalp.
“What are you doing?” I manage.
“Caring for my female.” His voice rumbles above me.
“But I thought we were going to...”
“And we will.” A low chuckle rolls through his chest, deep and warm and so utterly masculine that my nipples tighten to aching points. His gaze drops, and the corner of his mouth curves. “But let me tend to you first.”
He lathers something soft and herb-scented between his palms, and then those claws are in my hair, and I forget how to argue.
He works the soap through the wet strands with a gentleness that shouldn’t be possible from hands that killed a man tonight.
His claws graze my scalp with each slow pass, careful not to catch.
Light scratches that trace across my skull and down to the nape of my neck, and then the pads of his fingers press in circles, massaging, working through every knot of tension.
My head tips back and my eyes flutter shut.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, his voice close to my ear. “Let go for me, little human. Let me worship you the way you deserve.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. I just tip my head back further into his hands and let him take me wherever he wants to go.
He rinses my hair slowly, cupping water in his palms and pouring it through the strands, working the suds free with patient fingers until the water runs clear down my back.
Then his hands skim down my arms. He laces his fingers through mine, cleaning the dried blood from under my nails, before gliding up my ribs, careful around the bruises, to cup my breasts.
His thumbs circle my nipples until I’m gasping, until the ache builds into something I feel in my belly and between my thighs. “You’re beautiful,” he says against my ear. “Your reactions. Responses. Your scent as you grow aroused.”
His hands slide lower, tracing the curve of my hips before he kneels. I brace myself on his shoulders, feeling the hard muscle flex beneath my palms as he works the soap over my legs with the same reverence he gave my hair.
His hands slow as they find the inside of my thigh. He looks up at me through the steam, water dripping from his horns, and his gaze is a question. “Can I touch you here, Miro?”
I can only nod, unable to form any logical words. He watches my face as he gently parts my folds, finding me wet and aching for him as he knew I would be. The sound I make is low and hungry.
“I love the sounds you make.” He eases his finger along my crease. “So wet for me. So ready.”
He circles my clit with his thumb, as he slips inside me. One finger first, a slow stretch that makes me moan. Then a second, filling me, curling upward to find the spot that makes my vision spark.
I grip his shoulders and let my head fall back and let him do exactly what he promised.
“Such a good female. So responsive,” he whispers against my belly.
Then he sinks to his knees before me. His clawed hands spread my thighs wider, hooking one of my legs over his shoulder to open me to him, and I feel utterly exposed, utterly claimed, utterly safe.
His mouth closes on my slit and I cry out.
His lips are surprisingly soft, full and hot as they part my folds and settle against my clit.
He kisses me there the same way he kisses my mouth, slow and deep, learning the shape of me with his tongue tracing delicate patterns that make my hips buck against his face.
He groans at my response, the vibration humming through my center, and one of his hands tightens on my thigh to hold me steady.
His tongue is longer than a human man’s, pointed at the tip.
He laps at me in broad strokes first, tasting me from entrance to clit, and the sound he makes is one of pure male satisfaction.
Then he narrows the point of his tongue and flicks it against my clit in a rhythm that makes my vision blur.
I fist my hands in his wet hair and he growls his approval.
“You taste like mine,” he murmurs against my flesh, and then his tongue spears inside me.
I sob. My back arches as he works me with that clever tongue, thrusting deep and curling, finding places inside me I didn’t know existed.
Then his free hand slides up my inner thigh and two fingers press at my entrance, slick with water and my own arousal, and he eases them inside alongside his tongue.