Celeste is already in the water when I arrive.
The chamber is carved from raw stone, unfinished, the walls rough and glittering with unrefined gold. The pool fills most of the floor, shallow at the edges, deep at the center. The water is clear but carries a faint discoloration that catches the light wrong. I don’t know what it means. I don’t care.
Because Celeste is sitting at the shallow end with the water at her shoulders, her hair wet and pushed back from her face, and the mark on her chest glows crimson above the waterline. She looks up when I enter.
“You’re late,” she says. She smiles.
I undress.
Her eyes track me the entire time. She watches me take off my clothes. Taking me in.
I step into the water.
Heat rises through the water from below. The deep magic in the springs presses against my skin, and the shadows in myblood respond with the same quiet recognition they’ve carried since we crossed the Veil.
I move to her. The water shifts around us. The gold brightens as I close the distance. She meets me halfway. The water runs off her shoulders, her chest, the mark glowing against her skin. She closes the distance and presses her hands to my chest, fingers spread.
Her warmth catches me off guard. No vampire should carry this much heat, and she has been carrying more of it every week.
I take her face in my hands. Tilt it up. The gold-light catches the water on her skin and the crimson of the mark and the brown of her eyes, and I let myself look at her without restraint after four days of Fae politics and court dynamics.
I kiss her. Hard. Her mouth opens under mine, her hands slide up my chest to my shoulders, her fingers dig in, and everything opens between us so completely that I feel what she feels when my tongue finds hers. The sharp intake of breath. The heat building low in her body. The ache underneath it.
I walk her backward through the water until her spine meets the pool’s stone edge. She arches against it, pulling me toward her, and the contact is immediate and devastating. I can feel every inch of her body against mine through the warm water.
I reach down. My hand slides down her stomach, over the curve of her hip, between her thighs. She’s ready, the heat of her cutting through the spring water, and when my fingers find her, she gasps into my mouth and her grip on my shoulders goes sharp.
I take my time.
I know her body. I’ve learned it in a compound bedroom, against a desk, in the dark hours after dusk when the world outside doesn’t exist. I know the pitch of her when my thumb finds her clit. I know she bites her lip when she’s close and releases it when she stops caring who hears.
Tonight I want every sound.
I press two fingers inside her and curl them forward, and the cry she makes is rough and broken and goes straight down my spine. Her hips rock against my hand, chasing the angle. I give it to her. I press in, and her head drops back against the stone edge. Her throat is bare, and the mark on her chest pulses brighter with every stroke.
The sensation runs both directions. My fingers stretching her open. Her body’s response is hot and tight and wanting more. It doubles back into me until the line between what I’m giving and what she’s feeling dissolves.
“Maximus.”
My name in her mouth, needy.
I withdraw my hand. Her protest hits me in the chest. I grip her hips and lift her, and her legs lock around my waist, and she reaches between us and guides me to her entrance.
The world narrows.
She sinks onto me slowly. Taking me in by degrees, her breath stuttering against my lips. I feel what she feels. The stretch of her body opening around me. The pulse of pleasure that follows the initial discomfort, riding the edge between too much and not enough until her hips finally settle flush against mine and we both stop breathing.
Her muscles clench around me. I stay very still because if I move right now, it will be over before it starts.
“Don’t hold back,” she says. Her lips against my ear. “Not tonight.”
I move. Slow at first. Full strokes. Each thrust pressing her back against the stone, the water sloshing around us in ripples that catch the gold light. Her fingers dig into my shoulders. Her legs tighten around my waist on every stroke. Demanding more.
She shifts. Rolls her hips and takes the rhythm from me, slowing me down, setting a pace slower than I want. The lookshe gives me while she does it, brown eyes and wet mouth and pure challenge, is the reason I will never win a negotiation with this woman.
“You were saying something about not holding back,” she says. Wrecked. Still managing to sound like herself.
“I was under the impression you wanted control.”
