Start as you mean to go on, he told himself as he leaned in and moved the handle up . . . up . . . up.
The change in temperature came slowly, the hot water routed up from some kind of heater somewhere. But soon, the spray was kicking out warmth.
He braced himself as he stepped under.
The rush as it hit his head made him shudder, but not because it was unpleasant. It was because his body was unused to anything other than discomfort, like his nerves had been re-programmed and if shit didn’t hurt, it didn’t feel right.
He told himself he was going to get used to the new way. The normal way. The . . . better way.
When he wasn’t sure he believed that, he went for the soap and cleaned himself, suds sluicing down his chest, his sex, his thighs. He was tired. His back hurt. One knee felt like it wanted to bend backward.
Shouldn’t this be a time for rejoicing? he thought.
“Mind if I join you?”
He whipped the curtain back. Ahmare was naked, her clothes pooled where he’d left his own, her hair freed from her ponytail. She, too, had bruises, on the side of her face. Her arm. Her hip. And then there was that shoulder wound.
“Please, God, yes, please,” he breathed.
She smiled a little and then turned to the mirror. After wiping the glass off with her hand, she picked the adhesive off the bandage around her shoulder. As she peeled the gauze free, he winced. The ragged, two-sided wound was healing, but it was angry red, with jagged edges and a very deep core.
He thought of the mark in the linoleum on that floor, when he had been searching with her for the pearl.
“My father . . .” He couldn’t finish as rage rekindled.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
With the urge to kill surging in him, he tried to put the aggression aside. “Are you sure you want to get that wet?”
“It’s closed.”
She turned to him and his eyes went to her breasts. Her waist. Her hips.
“Come under the warm water,” he beckoned.
Ahmare took his hand, and as he drew her up against him, his body responded, thickening, lengthening. Where it counted.
Tasting her mouth under the falling spray, he was hungry, but he was careful as he held her close and ran his hands up and down her body. Tongues, languid and hot, penetrated and slid as she fit herself against him, her breasts pushing into the wall of his chest.
He washed her as a way to honor her, shampooing her long hair, soaping her body, taking his time as he kissed and licked . . . everywhere. Especially between her legs. She ended up sitting on the ledge in the corner, her thighs split to his hungry, unknowledgeable tongue. He’d never done anything like this before, some inner drive guiding him. He must be doing something right, though.
She orgasmed against his lips, and he drank of her.
Rising up on his knees, he angled himself in the way she had done when they’d first been together.
He looked into her eyes as he entered her.
But even as he gasped at the hold, he stopped himself. Cradling the back of her head, he bared his throat to her.
“Take from me,” he said in a guttural voice. “Let me make you strong.”
Ahmare’s fangs descended in a rush, and yet she was too stunned to move. Duran, after all he had been through, was giving himself to her in the most complete of ways, and she was so struck by the gift, she could only blink away tears.
As she stared at him, she couldn’t stop picturing him as he had emerged from the water falling in that dungeon, the rush split by his huge shoulders, his magnificent body so proud and strong even in his captivity. And now here they were, in a warm shower together, in a safe house.
With a different kind of water falling.
Slipping her hand around the back of his neck, she drew him toward her. She pressed her lips to the thick vein that roped up the side of his throat, and then she ran one fang up his flesh. As he shuddered beneath the contact, she tilted her pelvis and reached down, clamping a hand on his ass and pulling him into her.
She struck as he gasped again at their joining.
His blood was a roar in her mouth, his arousal a hot brand in her sex, his body a blanket of strength against her own. She’d had no idea she was starving until she tasted him, and then suddenly she was ravenous.
As she took from him, he took her, penetrating and retreating, finding a rhythm.
The release that wracked her was so intense, she worried she was chewing him raw, but he didn’t seem to care. He was wild, too, his head back, his throat exposed, his hips pumping.