We step in together.
He washes me first. Texon starts with my hair, his huge claws surprisingly gentle as he works out the mud and whatever else I picked up in the jungle. The water runs brown down the drain. He massages my scalp for what feels like an hour. Then my shoulders and back, down the curve of my spine. Around the bruises on my hips, which he kisses before he cleans them. My breasts. My stomach. Between my legs, where he is reverent and careful and not even remotely sexual about it. My thighs, calves and each foot.
By the time he’s done I am boneless. I have never been so thoroughly cleaned by another person in my entire life.
“My turn,” I say.
He stands still in the steam and lets me wash him the way he washed me.
I start with his braids. The water runs red at first from the blood that got caught in them last night. I work my fingers through until the water runs clear. Then his massive shoulders and the bite mark I left there, I lean in and press my lips to it gently. He rumbles low in his chest.
Then my hands are on his chest, where I scratched him. I trace each red line with my fingertip before I wash it.
“I could heal these fast with a med lab patch,” I tell him.
“No.”
“No?”
“Leave them. I want them to stay as long as possible.”
“You’ll have to hide them at the mine.”
“I will not.”
I look up at him.
“I will not hide anything,” he says. “Every Xylan on this planet is going to know what my Bride did to me.”
I wash the rest of him. His stomach. His hips. The length of his thick cock, which twitches under my touch but he controls himself with a low rumbling breath. Down each muscular thigh. His calves and each foot.
When I’m done he pulls me against him under the warm water and wraps both arms around me and tucks my head under his chin. His claw slides down my stomach and rests there, flat and warm against my skin, just below my navel.
“I planted my offspring in you last night, my Bride.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“I know.”
I don’t argue with him. Because I don’t know how to explain it but I know too. Something in me has shifted. Something feelsdifferent.
I place both of my hands over his, lacing my fingers with his claws, pressing his palm flat against my belly.
Bare skin on bare skin.
Both our hands together where our offspring is already growing.
“I love you,” I remind him.
“I love you too my bride, until days run into time.”
