‘You told me,’ she added slowly, ‘that when I needed you, you wouldn’t keep me wanting.’
‘Are you teasing me, Nicole?’ He was closer now, had moved so stealthily she hadn’t heard him, his tone as intimate as if he’d purred into the crook of her neck.
She bit the inside of her mouth to not make a sound, even as her breasts tingled and more heat slicked between her thighs. She turned the water’s temperature down slightly. ‘Is it working?’
She sensed him: those light footsteps, the agility, the hunting skill as he opened the bathroom door wider.
She felt him enter, felt heat rush to her face at how exposed she was. To distract herself, she picked up a fresh bar of soap with a woodsy scent and began to lather it as his gaze raked all over her.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked. She could hear how gone he was. How intense the need was.
‘I’ve never been more certain about anything,’ she said, tilting her face to see him in her periphery. Meeting his tortured, dark eyes for a searing moment.
Saw the strong swallow of his throat.
His clothes hit the floor. Quietly. Slowly, as she trembled.
And then he was behind her and she nearly couldn’t breathe.
His fingers skated down her soapy arm, then he held out a wide palm to her right and she handed him the bar.
Every iota of her focus was on his hulking body. The way his solid, flexed thigh, brushed with hair, met her backside. How he slowly pressed his hips there. She breathed in a jagged inhale to feel him.Allof him, hard against her.
Then his soapy hands pulled back her hair, dragging the soaked length of it over her left shoulder so he could nuzzle her right cheek.
‘My Nicole,’ he murmured, his voice so rough it felt like another touch.
He hadn’t shaved in a day or two, so the delicious scrape of his stubble had her sucking in a breath as ripples of sensation scattered through her, her thoughts dissipating like ink in water.
How did he have this incredible ability to make her mind go soquiet?
No intense focus on anything but him.
No burning eyes from staring at paintings and using her Empyrean sight to see through the supernatural varnishes.
No physical alertness to make sure her loved ones weren’t in danger.
No tense neck muscles from being hunched over scribbled theories, or mind full of a thousand tabs so she didn’t forget anything. So she didn’t once drop the threads of all the clues and ways this conspiracy could go. If she dropped them, people could get hurt, and her mother’s final message could be lost. She needed to be focused and physically in control of herself, her strength, her senses, her Empyreal. Always.
But not now.
Not with Kyan.
It went beyond bliss into some other kind of paradise.
She turned her head and he lingered at her lips, drops of water speckling his, keeping them wet and a breath away, as if they both knew: so many times they’d been stopped, interrupted.
Not tonight.
They were alone. There were no constraints.
She made a small sound, barely realised she’d let it out, and his eyes went so dark she shuddered slightly. Then his large, soapy hands were stroking up her stomach.
Her back met his body as he stroked around her breasts. Up; over. Teasing, gliding strokes where water had made her slick.
Nicole breathed against his mouth, tortured, desperate. He squeezed softly, and the liquid ache between her legs became so intense she couldn’t help her broken moan. Couldn’t stop her body twisting in his arms and the pleasure of her breasts plastering against his chest.
She went up on her toes and stubble met her, then the softness of his lips on hers.
