AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When he didn’t get an answer, he added, “We’ll just say that I won then.”
I shook my head at the disgruntled bear before me. He rose to his full height, stretching as he did. His wings vibrating. It was impossible not to marvel at the raw, unadulterated beauty of him.
He gave Alaric a look I couldn’t discern before he strode from the room. “Have fun,” he called back to us and my stomach tightened, remembering how he couldsmelldesire. I was ripe with it. Still aching from mine and Alaric’s lesson.
Alaric pulled a piece of hay from my hair, and brushed the stray strands back behind my ear, eliciting a shiver from my body.
“I like you like this,” he said in a low whisper once everyone else had gone.
“Like what?” I asked him, distracted by the way he still caressed my face, forcing me to meet his haughty stare.
He watched my lips, and I realized I was biting them again—a habit I needed to break. His adam’s apple bobbed, “Wild. Free. Your hair a mess and a blush in your cheeks.”
“In trousers and a dirty blouse,” I added, looking down to see the bottoms of my trousers three inches deep in mud.
He nodded, “That too.”
What now? Did we go to bed? Or would he leave me wanting—again?
No, I wouldn’t let him. Not this time. He was mine, and I wanted him in every possible way. My relentless guardian. My champion.
“I want you.” The words erupted from me, needing to be said despite my inhibitions.
He traced the line of my body with hungry eyes. “I’ll draw you a bath,” he said through near gritted teeth. The pain of waiting even a moment longer clear on his face. And the way he said it… with a quivering intensity, had me clinging to him as though he was the only thing in the entire world.
Chapter Seventeen
The bath was drawn. Plumes of steam curled and twisted from the enormous tub. The bathing chamber smelled of jasmine and something spicy, igniting my senses.
“You can come in now,” Alaric said.
He closed the door behind me, and I took a moment to admire him. He had removed his armor and wore nothing save for his trousers. His bare chest glistened from the steam, the skin tight and tan and shining. He watched me watching him, and moved closer, his jaw tense, and his eyes burning.
Alaric’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm with mine. Deep. Hurried.
His hand came up, taking hold of the sash at my waist, the only thing holding my robe to my naked body.
Slowly, never taking his eyes from mine, he untied the knot, and pulled the sash away. The tepid air of the bathing chamber met my skin, setting every nerve ending ablaze. With only his index finger, he trailed a snaking line from my navel to my neck, slipping it under the edge of the silken fabric still hanging from my shoulders and then that was on the floor too.
My breasts were bare to him. Nipples hard and peaked. Aching to be touched.
Alaric led me to the bath by the hand, waiting as I stepped down the three stone steps and into the deep water. The oils he’d put in made it feel like hot silk and I moaned at the instant relief in my muscles.
I looked at him in question, wondering if he’d join me, but he made no move to come in.
“Come here,” he said, kneeling next to the tubs edge. “Now turn around.”
I did as I was told, putting my back to him. His hand submerged in the water next to me, coming up with a wet sponge.
His fingers brushed my hair away from my back and over my shoulder. I shivered at the small contact, trying and failing not to imagine his fingers elsewhere.
In long languorous circles he stroked the soft skin of my back, reaching low, beneath the surface of the water to get the lower parts. My hands clenched and unclenched of their own accord, their patience wearing thin. I wanted to touch him. To taste him.
“I thought you were upset with me,” I whispered, and the sponge tensed on my back, though only for an instant before it resumed its gentle scrubbing.
He sighed, “I could never stay upset with you.” He spun me around to face him, dunking the sponge into the water again. His eyes flickered with specks of purest silver in the moonlight streaming in from the tall window. I could get lost in their pull and never come out again. “How can I fault you your stubbornness when anyone in this palace could attest to my own,” his gaze fell, resting on the dark water hiding most of my body from him, “You’re my match, Liana. In every way. I—”
I reached up and tugged him down, the rest of whatever he was about to say lost against my lips. The sponge fell from his hands and came up to caress my cheeks. It started soft. Slow. Heartbreakingly tender. The kiss comforting me more than anything he could ever dream to say.
