“Elemental play.” Her breasts bobbed in the water. “Temperature, pressure, motion. Water is a toy that can be warm, cold, flowing, still or heavy. It changes how skin understands touch. It slows you. It exposes you.”
My whole body stilled. Muscles frozen. Cock stiff. Brain, heart, and eyes open.
“In water, a submissive feels more available, sound carries differently. Movement is softened. Muscles listen. Warmth melts what the day left behind.”
Something in my ribs creaked open.
“You’ve been the Dragon for hours today. . .Orders. Bombs. Maps. Blood.” She licked her lips and slipped her gaze along mytattooed muscular arms. “Let me wash that off. Let me. . .baptize you in pleasure.”
“Oh, Tora.” I laughed low and deep with this dangerous hunger edging the sound. “Are you sure about this?”
“Of course I am sure.”
I seared her with my gaze and it took everything in me to remain where I was. “If you baptizemein pleasure, then I will anointyouin something far darker. Obsession. Possession. A devotion that claws and burns. No salvation. No escape.”
She parted her lips.
“That’s the trade, Tora.”
“I’m not sure if that is a promise or a threat, but I’m willing to drown in that.” She bit her lip.
A low groan rumbled in my chest. “Then. . .by all means, Tora. Go ahead.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “There will be rules.”
“We don’t need them.”
“We do.”
“Then, name them.”
“The safeword. You already know it.”
“Ume.”
“Good. Today, you also get a signal you can make for when you cannot speak.” She held her hand out and kept her palm up. “If you need to breathe, I want you to give two taps on the edge of the tub for me to stop. Or if my hand is next to yours, squeeze my wrist.”
I nodded once. “Okay.”
“You have to say the words, so I know youtrulyunderstand.”
And for the first time. . .I saw fear fill her eyes. While she must have been excited to try water BDSM, she was worried too.
I let a daring grin pull at my lips. “Tora. . .it will take a lot more than water to kill me.”
“Still. . .say the words.”
I winked. “I will tap the tub for you to stop, or I will squeeze your wrist.”
“Good.” Her praise put a calm invisible hand between my shoulders. “Come here.”
Getting into the tub, I set one foot on the inner ledge, then the other. Heated water licked up my calves, rising higher as I sank deeper. The liquid climbed my thighs, swallowed my hips, and claimed more of me with every inch I gave.
Steam curled around my chest as the water pressed against me, easing into the hinges of my shoulders, seeping into the meat of my biceps, unfastening knots I hadn’t even realized I’d locked since the bombs had detonated at dawn.
I flexed my hands beneath the surface. Ripples spread out in trembling circles, brushing back against my fingers as though the tub itself wanted to touch me. Heat clung to each digit, slipped into my palms, and bled through my veins until my pulse slowed.
I never thought I’d be doing something like this today. I hadn’t even planned on stopping my meeting with my men. If my Tiger had not come into my war room, I would have strategized until my skull rang and the sky went black.
