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The utter arrogance in his confident assumption irked me—and emboldened me. “There is very little about those aspects I find all that interesting.”
“You don’t?” The towel-covered hand continued moving slowly, tauntingly.
“No.” My hips jerked and then started to move, following his lead. His lead. Gods, it should concern me how quickly I’d lost control of this seduction. It would. But later.
“I think you lie again,” he murmured, a hint of a smile in his tone. “You’re as interested as you were when you begged me to kiss you at the lake.”
“Your memory is faulty. I gave you permission to kiss me.”
His fingers grazed the side of my breast as he moved his hand up and down my arm while moving the towel between my legs. “Or demanded that I kiss you.”
“Either way, that is not begging.”
“Semantics,” he murmured.
“It’s not.” I widened my stance, giving him better access.
“Really?”
“Really.” My eyes drifted open, and I looked down, past the puckered peaks of my breasts to where he had the towel snagged around the wrist of his hand.
“Lying so prettily, yet again.”
“I’m not lying. You’re just overconfident—” I gasped as he dropped the towel, and the cool length of his fingers replaced the soft material, pressing against my bundle of nerves. “Gods,” I breathed, immediately swamped by a riot of sensations as the tension curled so tightly, I felt breathless.
“No,” he murmured, his thumb swirling against that sensitive nub. “You are not interested at all in those certain aspects.” He sank a finger inside, parting the flesh.
I cried out, grasping his arm. I hadn’t forgotten the shocking contradiction of his coldness against my heat, but no memory did it justice. I shook.
“I remember how you showed me the way you like it. I play that over and over in my head. I could write a fucking tome on it by now.” His thumb continued moving. “When I’m fisting my cock, I remember how you held my hand against you at the lake.”
“Oh, gods,” I gasped. “Do you…do you really?”
“More times than I should admit.” His finger pumped in and out of me, bringing me closer and closer to the edge.
Suddenly, all that curling tension unfurled as fast and unexpectedly as a streak of lightning. It came on hard and fast and shockingly. If he hadn’t folded his other arm around my waist, there was a good chance the pounding waves of release would’ve taken my legs out from under me.
Ash’s fingers slowed, and only when my hips stopped twitching did he ease his hand from me. Several long moments passed as he simply held me there, our bodies only touching from the waist down. Neither of us spoke, and I had no idea what he was thinking, but as my body cooled, I realized that my attempt to seduce him had failed spectacularly. I had been the one seduced.
I sat on the bed, facing the closed balcony doors as the top of the robe I held closed pooled at my elbows.
Ash walked forward, unscrewing the lid on the jar he’d brought with him. “This will probably feel cold against your skin at first,” he said, sitting behind me. “And then it will have a numbing effect.”
I nodded, feeling off-kilter from what had transpired in the bathing chamber. He’d walked away before I even had a chance to regain control of the situation, the sign of his arousal a thick, hard ridge pressing against his breeches as he unhooked the robe and handed it to me. His restraint when it came to his pleasure was quite impressive.
The touch of his fingers brushing some of the curls that had fallen free from their twist aside steered my mind to the present. A spicy and astringent scent reached me. “What is this ointment made of?”
“Yarrow, arnica, and a few things native to Iliseeum,” he told me. I sucked in a sharp breath as the salve touched one of the wounds. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I lowered my chin. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s just cold.”
His hand moved, spreading the balm over my skin. He didn’t have to do this. He hadn’t needed to wash my hair. Both acts were kind but didn’t match what he’d done to those gods on the Rise.
Which hadn’t stopped me from enjoying his touch. Gods. I should feel ashamed, but I didn’t. Maybe because my conscious mind recognized that I was destined to do far worse things.
For some reason, as I sat there rather obediently, I remembered what I’d wanted to ask while in the bathing chamber. “How old are you? Really?”
“I thought we already established that my actual age doesn’t matter,” he said, parroting my words back.
“It didn’t when I didn’t know who you were.”
“I’m still the same person who sat beside you at the lake.” His balm-covered fingers slid up my shoulders. “You know that, right?”
