He was playing with his food.
I knew it, but I took his hand anyway, allowing him to lead me into the shower.
A groan of pure bliss slipped between my lips before I could stop it. My every muscle going lax when a spray of warm water washed over me.
“Hands on the wall,” he murmured, placing my palms himself so I could brace beneath the shower head.
Anchored to slippery tiles, I focused on drawing one long breath in. Letting it leak through clenched teeth as it went out.
I heard the click of a bottle being uncapped seconds before I felt strong hands worm their way into my scalp. Massaging my hair at the root.
Imelted.
Whimpering as he paid special attention to the base of my skull, my temples, and the back corner of my jaw, a helpless groan spilled over my lips. And without meaning to my spine twisted and bowed, arching until my shoulder blades jutted back, until the tips of my breasts kissed the tiles and I hissed with the shock of cold.
“Here,” he murmured, guiding my head back. Clear of the water, back until I bumped against the dense muscle of his shoulder, and…
… everything else.
Yards of slippery, prickly naked male flesh lined up against my back.Achingly hard male flesh.
“A-Asher—”
A deep hum rumbled through my ribs as long fingers wound through my sodden tresses, working at my scalp in such a way that my eyes all but rolled back. Serenaded by the crinkling pop of suds bursting against my ears. “Relax,” he whispered, and slipped one strong hand around my ribs. Pulling me back, until I notched into place against him and could feel each steady beat of his heart against my spine.
Throbbing where he was stiff and lodged between the cheeks of my ass.
I swallowed, staring at the tiled ceiling. Blinking beneath a crown of suds, I focused on drawing another breath between my lips, andnotthe way his fingers were inching… down. Massaging my neck. Trailing over my shoulders as he worked little circles into the muscle.
Forearm flexing, his hips strained in a shallow thrust. Cock slipping through slick bubbles that invited him to play.
Instead, he turned me with a gentle twist. Setting my back against the tiles so he might watch me from that hooded glare. One palm braced beside my cheek, he towered above me and sent his other hand to trace the slender column of my throat. Fingers soapy, he painted my collarbones in bubbles—then cupped my breast. Catching the nipple between forefinger and thumb. “Touch yourself,” he murmured.
My lips parted on a soundless denial.
“Show me,” he whispered, and added a maddening pressure to his grip on my nipple. Twisting until I squeaked and spread my feet before I collapsed on rubbery knees.
“I”—a trembling gasp caught in my throat, making me swallow and cough, even as I strained toward that delicious pain—“I can’t.”
In the glow of the chains, lit by his ever-present vigilance, wickedness gleamed at me in the dark. “You already know I don’t have to ask,” he said, and the chains hummed to life in a brief flicker of warning before fading back once more. “But I want to see. I want to watch you come apart for me,” he rasped, forehead dipping to bump against mine as he released my nipple, and his soapy fingers darted lower.
“Asher—”
He cupped my mound. Heel of his palm grinding against my clit, he spread my lips with a single deft stroke, front to back, and found me entirely too wet to blame on even the deepest ocean. Slippery in a way water justwasn’t. “I can feel how hungry this little cunt is,” he said, tracing my opening with a languid lack of hurry. “But go ahead and tell me how this”—he pressed inside me with a slow push of his index—“is all my fault. That I made this pussy gush. The lies are so much richer when you’re coming with them on your lips.”
Hands balling into fists, a long, low whine was pulled up from the bottom of my chest as even the girth of a single finger stretched all that was swollen and far,fartoo ripe.
He pulled back with a wet squelch, took my wrist, and guided my own fingers to trace my clit in a slow circle. “Show me,” he said again, almost pleading as he let go. Gaze fixed between us, his breath hot on my cheeks. “Please.”
I sobbed, just the once. Hardly half a breath, but it was enough that I wobbled with the force of my shaking head. “Ican’t,” I hissed, inexplicable tears gathered on my lashes. “I’ve never—without Carina—I don’t know how!”
For a moment, all he did was frown. Eyes flicking back and forth between mine as he weighed my words and found them lacking, then turned to drink the truth straight from my veins. And I knew he was remembering the last time he’d asked and I’d readily given him a show. Donning the skin of a cheap seductress as if it were my usual cloak.
And then, a gentle, pulse throbbed beneath my skin, where I was helplessly ensnared. “Explain.”
I couldn’t stop the words from spilling over my lips. “Before you, I’d never—no one has ever—I stole her energy,” I said in a fragmented rush. “Carina, I mean. Because she knew and I don’t”—another sob, and I shivered in place, frozen beneath the weight of that bottomless stare—“But now I’m empty—nothing—and, and I—I don’t know what you want me to do!”
“You were a virgin,” he whispered. Eyes wide, voice a ragged, choked thing I could scarcely hear above the pounding rush of the shower. A realization of the truth that came far,fartoo late. “All those years living alone, fighting the empire, evading capture. You’d never been touched—until me.”
