This touch felt natural.
It had been the withholding of touch all these weeks that was unnatural.
How had he survived all this time without this?
Without the feel of her beneath his hand.
Certainly, there were more truths between them that needed addressing.
But not this one.
This truth was clear.
Them.
It was the fundamental truth from which all else sprang.
What other truths mattered?
None in this moment.
“Touch me, Artemis.”
He had no right to the demand.
Her right was refusal.
But the flare of her pupils told him she was considering exercising the right he’d extended—permission.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
With deliberate intention, Artemis lifted her hand from his thigh and shifted the towel away in the same movement. She sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, Bran.”
A pulse of misgiving fired through him, and he was suddenly conscious of the scars on his leg and hip. While they no longer glowed red and angry from where the surgeon had pieced and sewn the skin back together, they weren’t pretty.
Artemis’s gasp, however, wasn’t for his leg, as her gaze was affixed to an altogether different part of him—his manhood, turgid and weeping for her touch.
“Were you always …” She interrupted herself by swallowing. “I mean, have you gotten …” Her gaze pulled itself away from his cock and met his in all seriousness. “Bigger?”
A laugh startled from him.
Then her hand dipped into the water and light fingertips feathered up his length and he was dragging in a sharp inhalation. He’d experienced desire in many forms—in lust, in love, and in the middling space between. All with this woman. But he’d never experienced it with such basic, cripplingneed. As if all he needed or could ever need was her touch upon him.
And perhaps he knew why.
Because he’d lost her.
He understood more clearly now than he could have ten years ago how precious was her touch.
One by one, her fingers wrapped around him, her hold firm as she stroked up his length, a moan escaping his parted mouth as her movement found a rhythm. Pleasure crashed through him as her slender fingers slid on him, his body tensing …building. A man’s pleasure was ever building and building to the inevitable point of release.
He reached out and tucked his thumb beneath the edge of her robe. One tug and the garment was slipping from her shoulder, and he was tracing the delicate line of her clavicle. Her robe slipped entirely off her other shoulder, revealing she wore no night chemise. Her skin glowed golden in the candlelight. In this state of dishabille, Artemis was more beautiful than he’d ever seen her—the subtle indent of her waist … large, rounded breasts … dusky pink nipples … dark eyes half lidded with desire…
“Artemis, you’re a goddess.”
His hand slipped beneath to cup a breast, soft and weighty. Her eyes drifted shut, and she exhaled a breathy, “Oh.” He squeezed a nipple between forefinger and thumb. Her breath came more quickly. The hand she’d wrapped around him lost its rhythm.
Bran wasn’t concerned about that, as pleasurable as her hand was.
