Chapter 4 #3
He cleaned me with thorough efficiency—clinical, detached, as if this were simply another part of my body that required tending. But his fingers moved with deliberate care, parting me gently, wiping away the evidence of my earlier arousal, the slickness that had built over four days of wanting him.
I shook. Gasped. Pressed my hands against his shoulders for balance, feeling the impossible heat of his skin, the muscles coiled beneath.
"Hold still."
The words were strained now. His control was fraying—I could hear it, could see it in the way his jaw clenched, the way his breath came faster than it should.
His hand moved between my thighs again. Not the cloth this time. Just his fingers, sliding through my folds with devastating precision.
"Breathe," he commanded.
I couldn't. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but feel—his fingers finding every sensitive place, circling, pressing, not quite enough to push me over but more than enough to keep me balanced on that razor's edge.
Then he leaned close. His lips brushed my ear. And he said:
"Good girl."
The praise undid me.
Not the touch—though the touch was everything. Not the water or the magic or the impossible intimacy of being bathed by the First Dragon in a chamber built for our bonding that never happened.
Just those two words. Good girl. In his voice—the most beautiful sound in existence, ancient and tender and rough with something that sounded like love.
I would do anything he asked.
Anything at all.
He washed my hair last.
His hand cupped the back of my skull, tipping my head gently backward until I was floating, my hair spreading through the starlit water like dark seaweed. The vulnerability of the position should have frightened me—throat exposed, eyes closed, completely at his mercy.
It didn't.
His fingers worked through my strands with devastating tenderness. Slow. Methodical. Every touch designed to soothe rather than stimulate. He massaged my scalp with fingers that knew exactly how to make me melt—pressure points I didn't know I had, releasing tension I hadn't known I was carrying.
I was so pliant now. So completely surrendered.
He made a sound.
Low. Rough. Something between a groan and a sob that seemed to tear itself from somewhere deep in his chest. The sound of a man breaking against something he'd thought he could resist.
"You were always meant to be mine."
His voice wasn't possessive this time. It was grieving.
"You were supposed to let me take care of you. Every day. Forever." His hands stilled in my hair.
The words hit me like stones dropped into still water, rippling outward through the bond, through my chest, through ten thousand years of space between what should have been and what was.
I'd given him this grief. Given him millennia of loneliness. Given him a love that curdled into hate because I hadn't been brave enough to stay.
Tears slipped down my cheeks, mixing with the starlit water.
"I was afraid," I whispered. The truth I'd never spoken. The confession that had been waiting inside me since the moment I woke in this palace and felt the weight of what I'd done. "I didn't know how to receive."
All my life—all my lives—I'd been the giver. The healer. The one who poured herself out for others until nothing remained. Receiving felt like weakness. Like debt. Like opening a door that could never be closed again.
"You’re so overwhelming, so . . . massive. I thought if I let you love me..." My voice broke. "I thought I would disappear. I didn't understand."
His hand stilled in my hair.
"And now?"
Two words. A question that held ten thousand years of waiting.
I opened my eyes.
He was above me, backlit by the crystal-light, his features cast in shadow.
But I could see his expression. The hope he was trying to hide.
The fear that I might give the wrong answer.
The devastating vulnerability of a being who had been powerful for so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to need.
I reached up. Touched his face. Felt him shudder beneath my palm.
"Now I'm yours," I said. Simply. Completely. The truest thing I'd ever spoken. "Whatever you're going to do to me—however this ends—I'm yours until then. Completely. I have no choice."
Something cracked in his expression.
The mask shattered. The control dissolved. For one breathless moment, I saw him—really saw him—the being he'd been before the corruption, before the loneliness, before ten thousand years of love turned to ash.
He was beautiful.
Not the terrible perfection of what he'd become, but something softer. Warmer. A Daddy who had waited an eternity for his Little to come home.
He lifted me from the bath like I weighed nothing.
Water streamed from my body as he gathered me against his chest—warm skin against cool air, his arms steady and sure around me.
He carried me to a pile of heated towels that had appeared from nowhere, wrapped me in them with careful attention, rubbing gently until my skin was dry and flushed with warmth.
Then he carried me again.