“What are you doing?” I got a mouthful of water as I whirled away to face the shower head and shut my eyes, hard, but the image of him was seared into my visual cortex. His chest, defined and thick and decorated with numerous faint lines, a puckered wound near his shoulder, and his tattoo. Narrow waist framing a perfect vee and an arrow of russet hair leading to his penis, thick and long even at rest. I gulped. Too much. He was too much.
“Saving water.” I heard him pick up a bottle of soap and squeeze some into his hands. “Don’t mind me. Just keep on doing what you’re doing.”
“Get out, Brodie.” I scrubbed a hand down my torso, aware that my nipples were pointing like a fucking hunting hound. He was too close to me, the confines of the shower too small. With every shift, his penis brushed up against me somewhere, a divining rod searching for hidden treasure. “I don’t like this. You can’t—” The thin, reedy sound of my voice pissed me off.
His hands settled, slick with soap, on my shoulders, sliding down in long, lazy strokes until he reached my ass. He cupped the globes, his fingers lightly caressing and exploring until an unwilling groan escaped me. “How about that?”
I shook my head and placed a hand on the tiled wall to hold myself steady. “Nope. Don’t like that, either.”What the hell was I doing?
His low laugh was dark and satisfied, and his hands moved back up and around to my front. He trailed soapy loops and lines up my torso and settled just beneath my breasts, circling and stroking around each with lazy, fluid motions. He wasn’t touching me like I needed to be touched, though. My breathing grew shallow, but it wasn’t fear, I realized. It was desire. Involuntarily, I arched the tiniest bit.
“Do you want me to touch you?” There was the briefest flick of his finger, and a moan escaped. I couldn’t speak. “Need you to tell me…” His voice was in my ear suddenly. “Just nod.”
I nodded.
His hands covered my breasts wholly, taking one in each hand, weighing and mapping the territory of each with circular motions. In a sudden movement, he turned me to face him, pressing me back into the wall. He stood before me, big and nude and mouthwatering in his intensity as he took me in. “Lovely,” he muttered thickly, and then covered my breasts with his hands once again. He continued to toy with me, and while I squirmed, I waited for the panic to hit, the fear to set in.
Nothing.
Not even when he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse in Gaelic. There was only desire, and a strange elation as he looked down at me with eyes that glittered.
“Have to taste you,macushla,” he murmured, and then bent his head to capture a nipple between his lips.
My eyes drifted closed at the sight of his head bent to my breast, his hair unbound and dark with water. His scruff scratched gently at my skin as he nipped and then pulled strongly, eliciting a correspondent tug between my legs. “Oh, God...”
I felt his lips smile against my skin, and then he was sinking to his knees on the shower floor, moving that mouth with little biting kisses along my stomach. His fingers, gripping my hips, flexed, and his thumbs moved inexorably to that heartbeat throbbing between my legs. He touched my sex with the lightest of grazes, looking up at me with hooded eyes as if seeking permission.
“Wait…”
I didn’t know why I said the word. Just to see, maybe, if he would wait…or if he would take. He waited, looking patiently up at me, giving me the power, the control I needed. He moved his hands, capturing my own and placing them on his head, where my fingers immediately curled in the strands of his hair, thick and softer than I had expected. Then he moved his hands back to my hips and nuzzled his face into my stomach, making me catch my breath at the flutters that erupted.
The message was plain. It was my decision. My choice. I could direct him at my will, pull him up and kiss him stupid, push him away and run, or…I could take something back. Here. Now.
Slowly, giving myself time to change my mind, I pushed his head down to the vee of my legs. He breathed on me, a hot waft of air, and moved his fingers to grab my thighs and spread me wide before sinking his mouth fully into me with one long, slow lash of his tongue. My head dropped back against the wall with a thunk and a single gusty release of my breath, feelings I hadn’t felt in far too long exploding with each lick and lave and suck.
With an unerring sense of direction he found my clit, circling it once, twice, three times with his tongue before latching on to it and sucking hard. I uttered a guttural sound and rose high on my toes, my hands fisting in his hair to press his face deeper against me.Oh god oh yes yes…don’t stop don’t you dare—
The words singing through my body spilled over my lips. He chuckled against me, the sound sending vibrations through every part of my body, then put his hands to the backs of my thighs and lifted me easily until my legs curled over his shoulders and I was utterly, completely, at his mercy.
And merciful he was not. I shook and shuddered under his ministrations until spots danced on the backs of my eyelids and a delicious tension drew tight and taut low in my stomach. It strangled and spiraled and trembled me fiercely in its grip, and I fought against the build, simultaneously chasing and fearing its resolution. It would leave me a wreckage, I knew, splinter me into pieces and change things between my assassin and me, and yet I chased it with a single-minded focus. Chased the validation that I wasn’t broken.
And then it was there. An inexorable, inevitable fracturing wrought by a final flick of his tongue. I was done, a million brilliant fragments. A study in spasms, vicious and sweet.
I made some noise, inarticulate and low, as my hands released his hair and I slumped against the cool tiles. Brodie lowered my legs carefully and drew back, rising and pulling me into him before my legs could ponder the possibility of collapse. He kissed my mouth and stroked the shivers from me until I rested against him, cheek to chest, the water raining cool down upon us.
And then I laughed.
