Chapter Fifty-Eight
Fallyn
Iscrubbed with hot water and lathering soap for at least thirty minutes.
My skin was angry and red, but it was clean.
The soap smelled lovely, like honeysuckle and amber musk, and distracted from the color the water and turned since I’d been in here.
Once more, I lathered the soap through my hair, working scalp to ends.
I was dreading getting out of the hot water, certainly.
But what I was truly, nervously dreading was seeing Ash again.
I was dreading how this night would go. At least when we slept under the stars, the fire that warmed us also separated us.
Tonight, the fire would glow in the backdrop of my awkwardness as we navigated this new territory.
Drying myself with my towel, there was a fresh robe that was soft and comfortable, but also left me feeling so exposed. I eyed my filthy clothes with disgust. There was no way I was putting them back on my body again until they were clean so what other option did I have?
I swiped my dagger off the counter where it waited for me, wrapped the robe around myself tightly so the tie wouldn’t slip, bringing the neckline as high as it would go until I resembled a fluffy white cloud.
Good enough.
I stepped through, wincing as the cooler, drier air of the bed chamber hit my skin. The lighting outside had left with the setting of the sun, giving the illusion that the world beyond this room has ceased to exist. A room with a bed I had to now share with Ash.
Ash had gotten the fire roaring in the hearth as he reclined with a book in the chair next to it, his ankle crossed over his knee. His eyes snapped up to meet me. I felt heat sear me as his eyes traced the outline of my body.
“Nice robe.” There was laughter behind his barb. “I didn’t know looking like a cloud could be so adorable.”
“The bathing room is all yours,” I announced, ignoring his comment.
“Give me your clothes,” he said. I felt my hackles go up.
“Why?”
“Because when we place them outside, housekeeping will come launder them for us and have them waiting outside the door for us come morning. Uncle Bayron told me so while you were bathing.” he said matter-of-factly, before narrowing his eyes on me.
His tone downshifted to something softer, “Your distrust of me is unwarranted, but I see scars that not everyone sees. Someone hurt you, didn’t they, Fallyn? ”
I bristled, falling still at his words, a deer in the wake of a predator.
“Who?”
“They’re dead,” I whispered, putting more space between us. “Thaddeus made sure of it.” Ash nodded, like this information pleased him.
“Shadow.” His voice was a soft prod, an invitation to look at him.
I didn’t. I set to work gathering my clothing.
He crossed the room, his hands taking my clothing gently.
“Fallyn.” I stilled, slowly looking up at him.
“There are many reasons for many people to fear me. You are the exception to that. I will not touch you, you have my promise.” His lip tugged upwards, “Until you come begging for me.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time.” My tone just a hint too breathy to be believable. Even I didn’t believe myself, much less Ash, evidenced by the pressing together of his smirking lips.
“The way your heart pounds? The way your face goes pink? Keep telling yourself that.” The door clicked, stealing any chance I had at rebuttal. I stuck my tongue out at the door, not caring that it was childish. He was a scoundrel. Though perhaps he wasn’t the type of scoundrel I’d seen before.
I settled on the bed. Each side had three pillows, each softer than the light of dawn. I stacked two pillows on the dividing line between us. He had his half, I had mine, and there was no reason to touch.
I settled into a pile of pillows and blankets, marveling at their softness again, and fell asleep in the next breath.
Heat was all I knew. It leached into my bones, searing into me from everywhere. My limbs felt leaden with it. A band around my midsection, my back, had me melting into the bed. Opening my eyes, I realized the source.
The pillows between Ash and I were gone, presumably on the floor.
Ash’s robe was open enough to expose the hard lines of his tattooed chest. And my hand was on it.
Open. Relaxed. His other arm lay beneath my head, his hand wrapped in my hair like he was afraid I’d disappear into the void.
My legs were thrown over and entangled with his.
My skin sweltered and prickled along every line we touched.
Slowly, I pulled away to create some space, my chest feeling like a swarm of angry wasps.
A growl loosed low from his throat, a predator claiming his territory and pulled me closer.
He never woke.
My breaths came unsteady for several long moments.
I tried once more to pull away, and once more his growl of warning rang in his throat, once more he pulled me flush against him.
Once more, his breathing was even and slow, under the spell of sleep.
It allowed me a moment of quiet. A gifted opportunity to study him.
Staring unabashedly at his face, now soft with rest.
The ever-present bowing between his eyebrows was gone, making him less hardened, less resentful. He looked younger, and perhaps lighter too.
“Staring isn’t very polite.”
Four words. That was all it took to make me pray to whatever god was listening to create a chasm below me and swallow me whole.
“Neither is grabbing hold of someone who placed a barrier between you and them,” I retorted.
“Yet you’re still not pulling away,” he pointed out with those canines peeking out behind a grin. I pushed off of him, but as in his sleep, his arm didn’t budge. “I didn’t say I wanted you to.”
I deadpanned, “I think you’re enjoying my mortification a bit too much.”
“It’s not your mortification I’m enjoying, but yes, that is adorable.” His eyes dipped to my lips, staring hungerly, making my entire body flare. I still didn’t move away. Instead, to as much my surprise as his, I melted closer into him.
“I’m enjoying watching you struggle with yourself.
” His lips were tasting mine before my next breath.
They gave me no room to move, even if I wanted to.
But it was the absence of the need to withdraw that was alarming to me.
My mouth moved in time with his, matching his need in a clashing of tongue and lips and the occasional, all too deliberate nip of teeth.
“If you don’t want this, little shadow, tell me to stop.” His anguished whisper reached me through my lust-fueled haze.
“This changes nothing between us,” I answered, pulling him back to me, letting him taste my fervent need, and tasting his impatience in turn.
I clung to the idea that perhaps if we did this once, I could get it—get him—out of my system and wreck this tension between us.
If nothing else, once we did this, I could make better sense of whether this was real or not.
He growled in response, tightening his hold on me. “I mean it. Nothing.”
“Nothing at all. Just a stress release,” he agreed in a rough voice, his hands already undoing the bow keeping my robe together.
It fell open, baring my entire body to him.
Rolling us so he had me pinned with his hips beneath him, he stared down at me with a hunger I hadn’t seen before.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he told me before planting searing kisses down my chin, my neck and trailing lower to my breast, his tongue teasing the taut bud waiting for him. “Fuck, I knew you would be.”
“Fucking gods,” I whispered, bowing into him. His dark chuckle echoed around us.
“The gods can’t help you now. So, if you’re invoking their presence, I hope it’s to show them that the only one who will have your reverence is me.” He continued kissing further down the plain of my stomach, and lower. I tensed. No male had ever kissed me there and he was about to—
Every thought scattered when his tongue touched that sensitive apex between my thighs.
“Fuck, Ash,” a breathy moan disguised as his name left me, as my hands entangled in his hair. Heat and delicious pressure began to build, leaving me panting, wanting, burning.
“That’s it, shadow.” His finger traced the center of me, finding me already dampening the sheets below me.
“Fuck, you’re so ready for this.” A sound I could barely put words to erupted from me when his finger sank inside me, moving in time with the rhythm of his tongue, ripping something from me neither of us expected.
A plea.
“I thought you didn’t beg, Fallyn?” Fuck.
My hips sought the touch of his tongue, but I was left wanting as he pulled away with a smirk.
“I want to hear you say it again.” I squirmed, my cheeks flaming.
Another wordless moan left me, but he wasn't letting me off that easily. “Let me be clear: you don’t come until I hear those words from your pretty pink lips.”
“I fucking hate you,” I cried out as his tongue lashed me in time with his fingers again, just to accent his point.
“You’re still going to beg me to let you come all over my face.” He drove me further towards that edge, wound me up more, just to step back when he was about to push me over it. “I can do this all day, little shadow.”
“Please, Ash,” I begged, throwing my dignity across the room. “Fuck, please.”
“Please what?” he asked, granting me his fingers at a pace that was almost fast enough, almost hard enough. A few small flicks from his tongue had me seeing stars. “Use your words, Fallyn.”
“Please, let me come.” The words came out a whisper, but it was enough. His eyes flared from between my legs.