Eventually Declan raises his head and the iron grip he has around me slowly loosens. I bite my lip to keep from whimpering, from begging him to hold me just a little longer. I expect him to move away, to complain about my carelessness or the fact that his jeans are soaked up to the knee.
He does none of the above. Instead, he reaches for the bath gel I keep on the shelf that runs beside the tub. It’s homemade—a relaxing blend of lavender, rosemary and ylang-ylang made especially for me by my sister Rachael. She’s the healer in the family, and the one who makes herbal shampoos and lotions and a million other things.
Declan squeezes some of the bath gel onto his hands, rubs them together. Then he leans forward and glides those hands all over me. He starts at my neck, skims down my back and then up my arms to my collarbone before going lower to tickle my ribs and belly button.
My pulse quickens—I can’t help it, can’t control it. I never can when Declan is touching me—even now, when I know what he’s doing is meant to soothe and relax me. My whole body goes on alert, my sex softening as my nipples harden.
I know he sees my response, feels the restless way I start to move in the water. But he doesn’t pause what he’s doing. He soaps his way over my stomach and up my rib cage before gliding his hands up and over my breasts with the utmost care.
I gasp, arch into his touch. I can’t help it. Even upset, I long to feel his hands on my breasts, long for him to cup the weight of them while he pinches my nipples just the way I like.
He doesn’t do that, though. Instead, he skims over them like they’re just another part of my body. Then he moves lower to soap up my thighs and knees and calves. He’s gentle with me, tender, careful not to press against any of the fading bruises left over from my encounter with the madman. I know it drives him nuts to see them, but tonight he doesn’t show his angst by so much as an uneven breath or muffled curse.
When he’s washed every part of me—even my toes—Declan turns the water back on and rinses me thoroughly. Then reaches for the plastic cup I keep on the same shelf and fills it up.
“Scoot down,” he tells me in a voice filled with gravel, the first indication I have that he isn’t quite as unaffected as he’s trying to make me believe. I do what he says, and he tips my head back before slowly, carefully pouring the water over my hair.
He squirts some shampoo into his hand, then begins gently combing it through my hair. The last of the panic and confusion ebbs away under his tender ministrations, utter relaxation taking the place of those feelings. My eyes start to close, but I force them open, keeping them fastened on his.
Lying here in this bathtub as he cares for me, I feel more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. And also more protected. Declan’s face is only a few inches above mine, his eyes locked onto mine as he washes my hair with a gentleness I didn’t know he had in him. In their depths I see him, really see him in a way I’m not sure I ever have before.
There’s torment there, a dark fire he doesn’t even try to hide.
Strength, more of it than I think even he realizes.
Rage, a slow burn that blankets everything going on inside him.
And deep inside, locked behind the few emotions he doesn’t mind showing, is love. Kindness. Tenderness. For me. I know it’s all there for me.
I know he feels it, too. This nebulous connection between us, different from the soulbound thing but no less powerful for all of its delicate fragility.
He starts to rinse my hair out and I reach a hand up because I can’t stand the pain of not touching him for one more second. I brush my thumb over those insanely perfect lips of his, cupping his cheek with my hand. His breathing hitches, stops. Then he turns into my touch and presses a warm, lingering kiss in the center of my palm.
“Declan. I . . .” I don’t know what to say, don’t even know what I want to say.
“Sssh.” He places a wet finger against my lips. “I’ve got you, Xandra. I swear I’ve got you.”
The emotion in his eyes grows more raw and powerful with each second that passes and still I don’t look away. I can’t. I’m trapped like a moth around a flame, desperate for whatever part of him he’ll let me have.
I know it’s in my eyes, know he must see my own vulnerability and desperate need as clearly as I see his. And in this one tremulous but perfect moment, it feels right. In a world spinning so rapidly beyond my control, it feels . . . good.
He conditions my hair with the same care that he washed it and by the time he’s done, I’m shaking all over again, this time for very different reasons. He pops the drain, helps me stand, then dries me off before sweeping me back into his arms and carrying me to my bed.
Then he moves to my dresser, one of the few things that didn’t burn in the fire I set last week with my less-than-stellar magic. He pulls out a nightshirt. But when he comes back to me and tries to slip it over my head, I rip it from his hands. Throw it across the room. And reach for him. Just him.
He meets me halfway, slams his mouth down on mine in a kiss so intense, so powerful, so possessive that it feels like a brand. Which should offend my feminist sensibilities but doesn’t because the kiss I’m giving him is exactly the same.
Lust—raw, carnal, overwhelming—rises up in me. I reach for the hem of his T-shirt and fumble the thing over his head before going for the button on his jeans. They prove to be more difficult, not just because my hands are shaking so badly, but because the bottom half of each leg is wet and heavy and clinging to his calves.
He curses as he wrestles with them, his voice a low, guttural growl. Seconds later he gives up the fight, mutters a spell that has the jeans disappearing into thin air. Any other time I’d probably be awed—transubstantiation is a rare gift in the Hekan world, and a difficult task no matter how talented the practitioner. But right now all I care about is that Declan is naked and aroused and pressed intimately against me.
I wrap my arms and legs around him, desperate—starved—for the feel of him inside me. He has other ideas, though, and as he presses slow, sweet kisses to my throat and shoulders, I know he plans another long, drawn-out seduction.
I can’t take that, though, not now when my entire body is threatening to spontaneously combust. Bracing a foot on the bed for leverage, I roll us over until I’m the one on top, looking down at him.
His eyes are dark and bottomless, filled with the same urgency that’s tearing at me with razor-sharp claws. I push myself into a sitting position, then sink down on him in a move so smooth and quick, it has me moaning and him jerking beneath me.
Desperate—delirious—with desire, I start to move, settling into a rhythm that has Declan’s body arching beneath mine and his eyes rolling back in his head. One of his hands goes to my breast, pinching and plucking at my nipple, while the other fastens itself to my hip in a gesture so possessive it takes away what little breath I’ve managed to hold on to. And then he’s lifting his hips, driving himself deeper inside me.
The tension is building inside me, hotter and sweeter and more desperate than ever until nothing matters but Declan and the way he feels inside me, the pleasure that slams through me with every stroke, every touch, every breath.
Declan is close, too. I can feel it in the rock-hard thighs that have gone rigid beneath me and the strong fingers that clutch my hips so tightly that I may very well have new bruises when this is over. I don’t mind—it’s exhilarating, not to mention sexy as hell, to know that I’ve driven him to this—that I’ve brought a man of Declan’s strength to the brink of mindlessness.
Sensation swamps me at the thought and my eyes drift closed. I’m right there at the edge, my body poised to explode with just one more—