Erin would’ve laughed at herself, but Jaxor’s expression was serious. He looked at the hot springs, then back at her. “There are no ‘sharks’ in there,rixella. No creatures of any kind. It is too hot. And we are underneath the mountain, so you have no reason to fear heights here.”
“Okay,” she whispered, feeling foolish despite Jaxor’s attempt to assuage her fear. She dropped the blanket from her shoulders, then paused.
She hadn’t really given thought that she would bathe in front of him. Or that they would bathe together. After all, she’d knowingly washed herself in the waterfall the afternoon after they’d kissed. After he’d told her that it had been a mistake…after he’d made her feel surprisingly rejected. A reckless part of her had wanted him to eat his words, had wanted to test his restraint.
Yet, he hadn’t made any advances towards her since. Neither had she. So it didn’t really matter if they bathed together, right? He’d already seen her naked. Twice. The first time had been in the Golden City. He had kidnapped her and Crystal while they’d been bathing, after all.
Erin had never been so liberal with her nudity before Jaxor. She’d rarely shown much skin. Back on Earth, she taught second graders for a living. Her wardrobe consisted mostly of midi-length dresses, cardigans, and blouses that revealed only her collarbones. After work, her choice of clothing mostly consisted of pajamas. On the rare occasions when she went out at night, her most scandalous outfit was a black sheath dress that hit just above her knees with a sweetheart neckline. Her friends had all lovingly teased her about her grandmother-esque wardrobe, but Erin liked her clothes.
So Erin thought she’d be more shy about her nakedness around Jaxor, but she found the opposite was the case. Parading around in nothing but tunics, sans underwear, had certainly helped.
“Will you go in first?” she asked.
The corner of his lips quirked. “Still do not believe me about sharks,rixella?”
Was heteasingher?
Erin suppressed an amused smile before he could see it. “Well, if there are none, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Erin’s mouth went dry when Jaxor loosened the tie around his waist and stripped out of his pants. Her eyes swept over his firm ass, solid thighs, and narrowed, sculpted waist, before dropping lower to his seemingly perpetually hard cock.
Her fingers curled, as if imagining grabbing for it.
Jaxor walked forward and dropped into the hot springs. A groan of pleasure escaped his throat and Erin’s breath hitched, her body throbbing with that sound, remembering a similar one he’d made as he climaxed all over her thighs.
“No sharks, female,” he rasped after a moment, those blue eyes piercing into her. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her again or not.
The lantern’s light wasn’t bright. It flickered off the cave walls like a candle might, casting most of the space behind the pool into darkness. When Jaxor dunked his head beneath the water and then resurfaced, he raked a hand through his short hair, pushing it back, that golden light reflecting off the water on his arms. The tattoos seemed to glow from it.
Erin’s heart was beating fast. A sound escaped her—it sounded embarrassingly like a whimper. But why, ohwhydid he have to look the way he did? It made everything so much harder.
Before she lost her nerve, Erin got close to the edge, sitting, dangling her legs in the pool. Jaxor hovered close, looking up at her. She realized he wouldn’t give her the luxury of looking away as she undressed. He wanted to see her. He wasgoingto see her.
A stray thought came to her. She wondered what he would do to her, right then, if there was nothing lingering over them. No promises, no memory of past actions, no expectations, no threats. If they were just two beings, impossibly and insanely attracted to each other, promised to one another through magic and something that felt a lot like destiny.
She wondered whatshewould do tohim. Her blood was roaring and pulsing hot with all the possibilities.
This felt like one of those moments in life…the point where something would irrevocably change. For better or worse, but definitely permanently. Something unchangeable.
Erin reached for the hem of the tunic she’d stolen from Jaxor, one of a thicker material than the one she’d been wearing. She pulled it over her head and let it drop.
Then she pushed off the edge, hot, steaming water greeting her, blanketing her limbs, relaxing her muscles. Despite the heat, her nipples were pebbled underneath the water.
The water was deep. She searched for the bottom, but found none.
“Come,” he murmured, that voice weaving through her body. “There is a ledge so you can sit.”
He surprised her—again—by taking her hand away from where it was clutched to the edge of the hot springs. He guided her over to a place at the back of the pool, nearest the darkness that the lantern’s light couldn’t reach. She thought of thekekevir, but Jaxor seemed to read her thoughts.
“They do not live in this mountain,” he soothed, bringing her to sit on a little nook in the pool underneath the surface of the water. It was perfect for sitting, for soaking. The water lapped at her collarbones. “My female fears many things,” he noted softly, looking at her.
My female.
Her stomach clenched in longing and she sunk into the water until it came up to her chin. Her face felt flushed, but at least she could pretend to blame it on the heated water.
“Maybe with good reason,” she finally said. She determined hewastall enough to stand at the bottom and it made her feel slightly better—that there wasn’t this endless abyss beneath them. The water came up to the tops of his shoulders. Erin found herself relaxing.
“I do not like the dark,” he confessed, reaching forward to rub a strand of her hair between his fingertips, the action strangely intimate, but not out of place. As if he’d done it a million times before.
