“I’m right here, my Seraphina.”
I close my eyes, letting his soothing voice wash away my panic. He glides a hand over my body, lathering me with something that smells like lavender, and my headache ebbs.
For a long time we remain like that, his warm arms surrounding me, his hands tracing shapes on my skin. I feel myself relaxing entirely, and the coldness that has invaded my every pore melts into the thick soapy water.
Then he puts his mouth to my ear and whispers, in a voice thick with darkness, “Did you really think I’d forgotten about your little act of defiance?”
I don’t answer, a tear pricking its way out of my eye.
“What Ihadforgotten was that you were scared of the dark,” he adds under his breath.
I’m way too relieved that he’s alright to resent him as I should. He only forgets my pain. Not my defiance. But he’s here, Lucy didn’t get to him, and that’s all that matters right now.
As if reading me, he clasps me to him and finds my lips with his. “I shouldn’t have left you out so long,” he says after a long pause.
I know that admission must have been hard for him to get out.
I shudder in his arms and he holds me closer to him, squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe, but I don’t mind it. I need to feel his weight around me, crushing me, reminding me forcefully that he’s safe. That he’s mine.
“Hold still, my darling,” he says, at last tearing himself away from our violent embrace.
He props me up between his legs as my body shivers, desperate to find once more the warmth of his touch.
Soon his hands are in my hair, lathering shampoo into every curl. I close my eyes, basking in his touch, fully at peace now. I still have no clue how he has this effect on me.
His fingers rub the last of my headache away, and he takes the shower head and rinses the suds.
Then he flips me toward him and plants a deep kiss on my lips.
Once again, I’m nestling in his arms, desperate to stay there forever. And as his fingers continue to stroke me, another kind of desperation bubbles up inside me.
I can tell by the small smirk on his lips that he knows, but instead of acting on it, he folds me tighter in his arms, his fingers tracing the welts still visible on my hands and breasts.
“Have you reconsidered, my pet?” he breathes into my hair.
I hesitate. “Yes.”
He smiles. “Good girl.”
He flits his hand toward the place between my thighs, and I moan as he curls two fingers and buries them deep within me.
“Tell me.”
“Lucy…” I breathe, interrupting myself as he begins to move his fingers in and out.
“Go on,” he prompts.
I swallow, trying to stay focused as he continues to finger me faster, each of his thrusts touching the spot that makes my breath hitch and my toes curl.
“Lucy… she gave me the key…”
He doesn’t even pause or show any other sign that the information surprises him. But his other hand reaches for one of my nipples. He crushes it in punishment when I stop speaking again, unable to help myself from giving in to his fingers inside me.
“I… I don’t know if she meant to… it was in the cake.”
He settles into a very uncomfortable rhythm, the fingers on one hand fucking me, the others torturing my nipple. And in the midst of these contrasting sensations driving me crazy is his harsh determination to hear the truth. Even though I can barely think straight.
“She brought the cake to you,” he encourages, continuing to torment me. “Did she say anything?”
