‘Thank you, Aster.’
That wasn’t a yes. I didn’t know if I’d interpreted everything wrong and Callum was perfectly happy repressing every memory he had of his family, the good and the bad. But the dark space on the island wasn’t tugging at me so much any more. It had been acknowledged, even in a small way.
I sat and lifted the first steaming forkful of potato to my mouth. Flavours exploded on my tongue, which had beenappreciative of Callum’s cooking but nothing could compare to this.
‘Oh my fucking god,’ I moaned.
The only thing that could add to my delight was the similar—if slightly less emphatic—moan that escaped Callum’s lips as he began to eat.
CHAPTER TEN
CALLUM
Iglared at my erection.
Dealing with this every time I showered wasn’t part of my normal routine.
In the first weeks after the storm, the part of my brain reserved for sexual exploration shut down. Only after I came to live in the mountains did my libido return to full strength.
It had been annoying, but manageable. Every other day, I finished my shower with a perfunctory orgasm that staved off unscheduled erections or wet dreams.
But I’d masturbated yesterday. And the day before. And the one before that.
I resisted pushing down on it, knowing what the friction would do.
In addition to perking up every time I washed, my penis had acquired a thousand new nerve endings. Before, orgasms had been pleasant but easily shucked off. Now, they reduced me to a boneless mess.
I knew exactly what had caused this change. My forehead strained as I glared even more.
Erections were a ridiculous reaction to Aster offering to talk about the storm.
He wanted to know me.
Apparently that triggered a series of unwanted erections and explosive orgasms.
People had expressed appreciation for my body before. It was clear in the way Aster’s gaze lingered when I pounded dough or bent to tie my shoelaces that he liked how I looked. I had relegated his interest into the category of purely aesthetic. That hadn’t affected me like this.
But he’d also watched TV with me for hours because he wanted to share something he took such pure pleasure in. He asked countless questions about stew making and bread proving and goat herding. He noticed the dark, unspoken things inside of me that no one else had and asked if I wanted to bring them out into the light.
It was impossible to predict, before Aster crashed into my life, that a desire for genuine closeness would knock my carefully curated masturbation schedule out of sync.
It didn’t help that Aster had been pleasuring himself in here too.
In a small shared space like the cabin, masturbating in the shower made sense. He could wash away the evidence and avoid awkward questions about more tissues finding their way into the bedroom bin since he’d arrived.
Aster had been meticulous about clearing away any trace of his release. He would have been a considerate person to share a shower with if my sense of smell wasn’t a thousand times more advanced than a normal human’s.
Like every other day this week when my penis hardened beyond hope of being ignored, I turned to the tiled wall. Noamount of scrubbing could remove the potent scent of Aster lingering there.
In here, where he moaned out his pleasure, there was a deeper edge to it. Spices I couldn’t quite name, faint aromas I wanted to paint over my skin, a bright spark of shouted joy. If Aster’s usual scent was impossible to define, it was doubly so in here.
Especially as blood flow had diverted from my brain to much less useful sections of my anatomy.
I took myself in hand, then quickly raised my other arm to muffle a moan in the crook of my elbow. Leaning against the wall, I trailed my fingers across my overheated skin.
I couldn’t deny how badly I wanted to be known by Aster. My instincts, my mind and heart, my body—they all wanted it. But I didn’t know how to talk about the storm. Every time I’d tried with Bonnie, she shut me down. She had good reason to. I never got the sense she hated me, which she would do if she had any inkling of what had really happened, but maybe some additional Alpha sense warned her to shy away from the truth. I didn’t know why the prospect of telling Aster was so appealing when his reaction would be to draw away from the closeness we shared in horrified disgust.
My doubts didn’t cause my erection to flag. The warm water pounding across my shoulders smoothing the way, I tightened my hold. Although determined to make my additional orgasms as functional as possible, I couldn’t do anything about the difference in how my calloused palm felt on my oversensitive skin.
