“When I caught you jacking off in the shower, you big…you big…” she fumbled in her tirade. “You big, endlessly horny jerkass!” She jutted her chin petulantly toward my hard-on straining at my boxer briefs as if this proved her point.
I flung my arms wide, immediately defensive. “I’m a fucking guy. This is what we wake up to almost every morning!”
Nelle pulled a disgusted face while pumping a hollowed fist back and forth fast in a beating-off motion. “Go on, you may as well jerk off all you want, the bathroom’s free.”
Nelle released her fist to furiously scratch a shoulder.
I gulped, and guilt twisted up my insides when my gaze zoomed in on the raw flesh. She was so worked up that she hadn’t noticed the ugly patches of pink rash erupting all over her body.
Fuck, I’d better get this shit under control, and fast.
I side-stepped around Nelle and quickly strode to the bathroom, pushing the door open to enter the dark, inviting space.
“Are you godsdamned serious?!” Nelle shrieked.
I cringed at the ear-piercing shriek, my shoulders inching near my ears. Her high-pitched voice had the ragged edge of fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.
I spun around to face utter indignation tightening her delicate features as she stomped into the bathroom. For a moment I was completely clueless to what she was so affronted about.
And then it clicked.
“For fuck’s sake, not everything is about me beating off to you!” I gestured between us, at our tousled hair and the perspiration coating our bodies. “Both of us are sweaty and sticky from sex.”
That had her mouth snapping shut. “Oh,” she said weakly. But it only slightly dampened her sour mood.
The bathroom was much cooler than the bedroom drenched in blistering sunshine, and my overly-heated body sighed with relief. I leaned down to twist the water faucets on full force. A spray of water unleashed from all the jets set around the sunken bath, and the sound of wild, cascading water broke the quiet. Water splashed off my fingers as I held a hand beneath thesteady stream, testing the heat and adjusting the faucets so it wouldn’t be too hot.
Nelle was still put out. She paced back and forth, and the untamed spirals of sweat-coiled hair bounced with her infuriated movement. She dug her fingernails into the back of her neck, itching away, too busy huffing and shooting dark scowls at me to realize the poison oak had struck.
Picking up my speed, I found the special soap, treatments, and lotions Penn had supplied to help ease the irritation. Ripping into a box, I tossed the oatmeal bomb into the bath, watching it flake apart and turn the churning water a milky color. “How did you fall into theswaythe first time around?” I asked, curious how it had happened.
Nelle tapped a vexed rhythm against the floor with a dainty foot while raking a disparaging look down my figure before doing one of those aggressive hair flips. “All that sex-scent you put out drove me under, as well as all that godsdamned growling you did while…” she made that beating-off motion again, “…you know…doingthat.”
Growling?
My mind arrowed back to the elaborate fantasy I’d spun of Nelle a few nights back when she’d caught me in the shower jerking off, moaning her name as I’d climaxed.
The air left my lungs in a startled exhale.
She hadn’t barged into the bathroom to harass me while brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed. Theswayhad brought her there. And now we both knew for certain that she’d never do anything under theswayif she didn’t want to.
Nelle’s mouth pinched into an infuriated pucker like she’d sucked on a lemon. She glared back at me, daring me to speak the truth, and if I did, and she had the power, the clear blue sky would erupt into a violent storm and she’d smite me down with a wicked strike of lightning.
She ground out slowly and clearly, “So from now on, could you not—”
“Fuck my fist?”
Her nose scrunched, and she stared at me as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was dealing with. “Gods, you can’t help that filthy mouth of yours, can you?”
“Nope,” I grinned.
“Growl is what I was going to say!” she bellowed back while scratching away at her elbow.
I raised my palms in surrender and tried for a softer, calmer voice to douse her fury. “Listen, it wasn’t intentional that you fell into thesway. I’ve only just figured out what was going on with you. And now, I guess,how.” It made a weird kind of sense with what we were as wyrm and tamer. It had always been animalistic between us. Often war. And it wasn’t only me doing it to her, she did it to me too, releasing those desirous pheromones and setting me alight with lust, the deepest recesses of my soul craving her taste and touch.
Dragging my gaze slowly over her delectable naked figure, I had to stifle a flinch when more lesions and blisters flared up to mar her flesh.
I fled the bathroom on my next mission, and Nelle stormed behind me, hissing and spitting like a nagging wife. “Don’t you ever use theswayon me ever again!” she roared, her rage exploding against the walls. “Asking me to kick Sage? Gods, you’re a fucking asshole!”
