CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lonely, horny and just this side of being a quivering, moist mess, I summoned the water on as hot as I could stand and let the spray sting my skin from four separate shower heads. For Goddess sake, who needed four shower heads?
I wanted to cry. All this pent-up energy ebbing and throbbing through me and Rowan had found his reasonable streak. Sex wouldn’t have to mean anything. I just wanted to climb him like a jungle gym and release some of this energy. I tipped my head back and washed my hair, concentrating on keeping the water flow from my bandages.
A rush of cool air made my nipples tighten and my eyes jerk open.
The shower door was open and Rowan was stepping into the spray. “Damn, woman, mind if I turn this down?” Rowan passed his hand over the screen and the temperature adjusted, then he closed us in together.
The powerful muscles of his upper body shifted and flexed as he moved, but that wasn’t what had my lips parting. His erection was massively thick and by the way it stood, from his groin to his navel, proud to be in the game. Spectacular.
I tore my gaze from his sex and something in me melted. The fear and hopelessness in his eyes ripped at my heart. “I didn’t walk away because of the reasons I told you . . . though all of them are still true.”
“I’m a big girl, Doc. This doesn’t have to be anything more than it is. What’s—”
“What if I can’t?” He swallowed, his tawny complexion gone pale. “What if I can’t get the feel of her off me? I don’t want to bring her into this.” He bit his lip and dropped his head back. “I swear to the gods I’ve scrubbed my skin ‘till I’ve bled and yet I always feel her touching me. What if I’m with you and ruin things because of her? I’ll lose my mind.”
“Has it happened before?” I read the answer in his silence. “You haven’t been with anyone else the past four years?”
He shook his head. “How could I? I’m polluted.”
“It’s not your fault. Any of it. You know that, don’t you?”
He let the water darken and soak his chestnut hair but never took his eyes off me. “What if I can’t get the feel of her off me?”
We moved in slow, sensuous tandem, shifting our feet, our bodies edging ever closer. “If you need more, take it. If you need rougher, do it. If you need me to twist you inside out, tell me.” I laid my hands on the wide flat planes of his chest and he shuddered. “That woman has no place here. I’m willing to bet that once the two of us get started, we’ll sandblast her from your body and your mind.”
The ridge of tension in Rowan’s brow eased a little. He reached past me to retrieve a cloth and a bar of sweet-smelling soap from an inset shelf. After wetting the cloth under the stream of water, he turned the soap in his palms and created a frothy lather.
“Raise your arms for me and hold on,” he said, eyeing two of the shower heads above me.
I did what I was told and forced myself to remain still as he washed away the blood and sweat of my evening. With slow sensual strokes, he started at my neck, down my shoulder blades, and spent considerable time sliding those silky bubbles across my chest and circling both my breasts.
Lower. Please gods, lower.
He continued down my navel, the heat of his need filling the steamy chamber surrounding us. His attention slid to the outside of my hips, followed the controlled stream of water avoiding my bandaged injury, and spent extra time on the other side, visiting my tattoo. “You have the sexiest ass I’ve ever seen.”
I reached to the back of his neck, my fingers tangling in wet curls. “Then you’ve never seen your own.”
He shook his head and pointed to the nozzle of the shower head. “Arms up. Doctor’s orders.”
Water trickled along his sharp cheekbones, outlining the curve of his jaw. He chuckled when I released my hold on him and pushed out my lip. He reworked the creamy bar into the cloth for a fresh round of sweet-smelling suds. “I told you I would get you cleaned up for a closer examination.”
A moan tore from my chest and a rush of heat flooded what I prayed would be the next stop on his home-care house call. “You did say that,” I whispered, my heart racing.
He knelt in front of me, his touch slow and languorous, his lips caressing my skin, light and maddening. I shifted my footing, practically panting for him to take me, to kiss me, somewhere, anywhere—everywhere.
Right when I thought he’d lean in and go for gold, he dropped his washcloth to my ankles and started working his way up. “Tease.”
“Almost there, Trouble. Be patient.”
“Not my best event.” I growled and shifted my feet to give him access. “I’m more of an instant gratification kinda girl.”
Warm, strong hands caressed my calves and massaged my flesh as he made his way upward. I bit my lip, my breath coming fast and shallow. Magic and heat, pure blue flames and electricity—that was what was licking its way through my body and building in my core.
He pressed my thighs apart and his cloth slipped between my legs. I cried out as his touch skimmed and washed me right where my need raged.
“I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you,” he drawled.
I groaned and tilted my hips into his hand. “Nothing like a girl puking on your shoes to kindle the flames of passion.”
He nipped the flesh of my good hip. “My cock’s been as hard as my anvil since you showed up and eyed me the other night. I almost came in my jeans right there at the forge.”
The cloth dropped to the tile floor with a wet plop.
My flesh prickled with the most amazing pleasure as the water rinsed and swirled over my skin. I sucked in a gasp. The flow of the shower had a life of its own, stroking me, twisting around my nipples, tingling over my every pore. It flickered over the tight bud of nerves at my core and warmed until I cried out. “What are you—Oh, gods, Rowan are you—”
He chuckled appreciatively as his tongue dipped in and out of my navel.
“You’re doing that?” I dropped my head back as he kissed his way up my ribcage and suckled my nipple into the heated depths of his mouth.
“Mhmm,” he hummed against my breast. He finished with that side and shifted to the other, taking care to divide his attention equally between the two.
“Rowan.” Desperate to feel him writhing inside me, I was willing to beg. “Please, it’s so good. Too good.”
He straightened and stood, his broad shoulders looming above me. The swollen crest of his erection pressed against my stomach. “Too good?” Wrapping his muscular arms around my waist, he lifted me off my feet. In two quick steps my back was pressed against the smooth, slick wall of the shower and his hands cupped the rounds of my ass.
“I don’t want your stitches to—”
“I’m good,” I breathed, as the first wave of release started to grip me. “Fine. Go. More. Now.”
His lips swallowed my cry as he pinned me against the tile and slid smooth and deep inside me. Inch by rapturous inch he impaled me and groaned into my mouth. My muscles gripped and pulsed, tightened and rose. The pleasure was incredible. It lashed at my senses and burned through my system.
Another strong thrust and I hit my breaking point.
He moved his kiss to my collarbone and rode out my release. I pulled in deep, humid breaths, my head spinning, either from the orgasm or the steaming air, I didn’t know.
I didn’t care. As my heart fought to free itself from my chest, his pumping gained momentum and my hunger raged on, desperate for— “More.”
Clutching his hair, I wrapped my feet around his hips. I dug into his quads, pulling him closer as he pounded into me. “Give me more. Give me all of it.”
His tongue thrust into my mouth matched the desperate thrusts between my thighs. I met him stroke for stroke, that incendiary chemistry igniting and bursting until we were both aflame. He was exquisite, temple-pounding gorgeous, and rough. Gods, how I loved rough.
“Come for me again,” he rasped, fighting for breath. “Doctor’s orders.”
As he pitched his shoulders forward and found his own release, my body obeyed. The pleasure unraveled my soul. It spanned the jagged fissure in my heart and stopped the desperate ache. As the full weight of his frame crushed me against the shower wall, I realized Rowan had gotten under my skin.
Momentary panic overwhelmed. How had that happened?
Rowan held me, easing back to let the water wash between us. I winced as I lowered my legs and tested my injured hip.
Not bad.
“Dammit Lexi, I used you too hard. I’m so—”
“Amazing,” I said. Staring at him from beneath lowered lids, I stroked my mouth over his. His lips parted for me, his tongue meeting mine in a playful sweep. The contact sent another shock of pleasure through my and I moaned. “You were amazing. My stitches are fine.”
The sharp edges of his worry drained away and he pulled me tighter against him. His hips ground against me in a sultry sway, his interest on the rise again.
I bit his bottom lip and drew back. “A mattress at my back would be nice for round two.”
Rowan’s eyes lit and his smile was brilliant white. He stopped the water, grabbed a wide, fluffy towel off the heated rack and wrapped it around his hips. With the second towel, he dried me before scooping me against his chest and whisking me into the bedroom.
Damp brown hair curled against Rowan’s neck as he laid me down and gave me a sexy half-smile. “Better?”
I reached between us and untucked his towel, tossing to the floor. His ass was a work of art. It was a shame not to take time to appreciate it. I slid my palms down the smooth skin at the base of his spine and over the contours of his body. “Better.”
Heat ignited between the two of us and we were lost again . . . and again.
Sex with Rowan smoothed a balm over every ragged wound I’d been hemorrhaging from. It allowed me to forget—if only for a time.
The deep-seated disappointment of my Haven family was gone. The ache for a father I would never know forgotten. The weight of soul-shattering guilt over Tham’s slaughter lifted.
By the time my stitches throbbed and the sun had risen, I collapsed and sank into the delicious golden glow of satiation. I slept. Slept harder and deeper than I had in weeks. Months. Tucked tight against Rowan’s wide chest, with his forge-sculpted arms encircling me, and the scent of sweat and sex in my head, I felt safe. Truly safe—if only for the moment.
***
Tham came to me in my dream and we walked along the Haven stream with the wolves. Nightrunner, the pack alpha, and Faolan walked with us. Faolan’s belly was heavy with a litter of unborn pups. I told Tham about Rowan and Terran and most of all Coal.
“With your capacity for love, neelan, you shall make a fine naneth for the boy.”
I snorted and bumped him with my shoulder. “I don’t know how to be a mother. I grew up without one and now that I’ve met her, turns out she’s an evil bitch.”
Tham skipped a flint rock across the still surface of my pond hidden in the forest below the Dens. “In that case, you know precisely what not to do, so you are halfway there.”
We talked about people we both missed and things he wished he’d had the chance to do before he was killed. It was wonderful to spend time with him but, when the chill came into the wind and the sky darkened, Tham sent me back.
I woke, still wrapped in Rowan’s embrace, his morning erection prodding the small of my back. By the weight of the arm draped over my side and the long, deep breathing warming the back of my neck, I knew he was still out.
I thought about the days that led the two of us here. We’d both been so angry at each other, the people around us, and our lives. And last night . . . I’d been drunk and riding an adrenaline high from stalking Tham’s killers. Maybe things would look different to him this morning.
Maybe I was stupid to think it was more than a night of sex. Great sex . . . but sex all the same.
“What’s on your mind, Trouble?” Rowan nipped the back of my neck, the pinch of flesh tingling up my nape as his breath warmed my skin.
While I struggled to put my anxiety into words he propped himself up on his elbow and studied my face. Since when was I shy on saying what’s on my mind? I shrugged. “Just morning-after-the-night-before stuff. Absorbing everything before the world crashes in.”
His gaze narrowed. “Morning after the night before? So, what’s the verdict, good or bad?”
I reached up and gave him a soft kiss. “All good on my side. I can’t speak for you—”
A set of knuckles rapped on the door and Terran popped his head in.
“You awake Lexi, Coal wanted to bring you—” Terran’s eyes popped wide as he glanced to the bed and made a quick shift to block the door. “Sorry.”
Is Coal out there? I mouthed, pulling the sheets tight to my chest.
He nodded. Rowan launched off the bed in a glorious streak of tawny skin, scooped his dress shirt off the floor and tossed it to me before heading to the bathroom with his pants in hand. Terran played the part of the privacy screen while I buttoned up and adjusted the covers so all my parts were covered. I laughed as Terran tried to hold his position, his hips and body jerking as he was obviously shoved from behind.
I gave Terran the nod and he stepped out of the way.
Coal threw him a dirty look and grunted at him. His pajama bottoms dragged over the ends of his feet as he shuffled over to the bed. The tray of breakfast he carried was almost as big as him.
“What this, buddy?” I asked, signing the words as well.
He handed the tray up to me then scrambled to climb onto the edge of the bed. The mattress barely registered his weight. He looked at the tray and then at me, a hint of frustration darkening his previous smile.
I pointed to the items on the tray and showed him the signs as we went. “Juice, potatoes, waffles, fruit and coffee.”
He watched my hands and mimicked my movements the best he could. He was so incredibly smart. Did all mothers think that of their kids?
“That’s right.” I nodded, as we repeated them a few more times, his smile returned. “Thank you.” I picked up the little pitcher of syrup and poured it over the whole thing.
Rowan came out of the bathroom bare-footed and bare-chested, wearing only his grey slacks. His hazel eyes were lit with green, his loose brown waves thoroughly rumpled.
Rounding the foot of the bed, he examined my haul. There was plenty for both of us, even considering my usual appetite. Coal looked at Rowan and then at me and I could see him piecing something together. Did he know about sex? Would he feel threatened by me spending private time with Rowan?
When his hands came up, I braced myself.
He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. After pointing to me and then to Rowan, he made the sign for ‘happy’.
I set my fork down and signed as I answered. “Yes. Are you happy?”
He thought about that for a moment, pointed at Rowan, then to me and then hit his fist into the palm of his other hand.
My heart broke. I swallowed past a lump in my throat before I could answer him. “No, sweetie, I’m sure he doesn’t hit . . . and I would never let him.”
After a moment, he nodded and hopped off the bed. Jogging to the window he pointed at himself and then outside.
Right. I’d restricted them both to the house until I learned about the fallout to my little outing last night. “Sorry, today is an indoor day, maybe tomorrow. Is Ydorus or Eury here?” Coal shrugged, looking sad. Man, this kid was going to wrap me around his little finger. “Give me a few minutes to eat and take a shower, then I’ll head downstairs and see what’s doing. Are you getting dressed today?”
He shrugged again and I couldn’t stand it.
“Well, it doesn’t matter to me, but you’ll do better at hide and seek if you’re not tripping on your pant legs. And we can work on your signing some more too if you want.”
Coal brightened and scampered off across the hall.
Rowan kissed my forehead and the two of us descended on the food like vultures on a fresh kill. We’d burned a hell of a lot of calories this morning.
Terran stood at the doorway staring and shaking his head.
“What?” I said, stuffing a forkful of seasoned potatoes into my mouth.
“I thought you were a lesbian.”
Rowan choked, juice spraying into the air as he bent over, sputtering.
I pounded his back. “What? Why?”
Terran handed Rowan a napkin. “The leather pants, the short hair, the fighting, the language . . . and the boots.”
“What’s wrong with my boots?”
Terran shrugged again. “I’ve studied the Modern Realm. Tough women who wear boots and cut their hair short are often—”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Well, that’s a widely sweeping stereotype but I’m not. Not that there is anything wrong with that . . . but I am definitely one-hundred percent hot-blooded hetero.”
Rowan seemed to find the whole topic incredibly funny. I scowled and he raised his hands. “Hey, I like your boot. You being a lesbian never even crossed my mind.”
I shoveled another forkful of fruit-covered waffle into his mouth. “Cinderella is living proof that footwear can change your life. Can you imagine me stalking around last night wearing sling-backs and a skirt? Gimme a break.”
Terran trotted to the hall and grabbed a bag off the floor. “That reminds me, Leda asked me to bring this up.”
“What is it?” I reached up and accepted the large bag.
“A gift,” Rowan said. “I had her visit the third ring to pick up some things from one of the other realms black market boutiques.” Rowan shifted the tray off the bed so I could have a look. “Terran said you offered him your left nut for proper ladies’ workout wear.”
The two of them chuckled as I reached in and pulled out a pair of yoga pants and dug further. “Thank you, baby Jesus, underwear.” I looked down at the thoroughly feminine wisps of silk and satin. “You made Leda pick out underwear like this for me? Gods, what will she think?”
Rowan peered into the bag and bit his bottom lip. “I don’t care what she thinks and no, I called that order in myself, Leda just picked it up.”
“You did this yesterday? Awfully cock-sure, aren’t you?”
He bit his bottom lip, his hazel eyes glowing with a look my body recognized in an instant.
I swallowed.
“Well look at that, Terran,” Rowan said. “I do believe our Princess is blushing.”
I snatched a pair of panties and stretch pants and carefully slid out of bed. Tugging Rowan’s shirt down my thighs, I preceded to the bathroom.
“Not so fast, Trouble,” he said as I turned to shut the door. “I want to check your stitches before you go conquer the world. Hop in the shower, but leave those pants off until I have a look.”
“Stitches,” Terran repeated, his face going rigid. “Are you all right, Lexi? You said you were fine last night. I remember that much—”
“I am fine,” I assured him, my focus trained on Rowan stalking toward me. “He just gets off playing doctor.”
“Goodbye, Terran,” Rowan called over his shoulder. “Lock the door behind you.”
Terran cleared his throat. “Ah . . . okay, so, I’ll be down with Coal when the two of you finish up here.”
I swallowed at the wicked grin Rowan flashed me. “Yep. See you in a bit.”
When the latch clicked shut, Rowan had me up in his arms and then sitting on the cold, smooth vanity. When he spread my knees and stepped closer, I bit his chin. “How are you feeling this morning, Doc?”
He freed the top button on my shirt from its mooring and moved down to the next. “Thoroughly sandblasted . . . and ready for another house call.”