He hadn’t prepared her enough for a rear entry and he wasn’t brutal enough to try. So he kept his hand where it was between her buttocks, his finger pressed inside her, and angled her hips to line his cock up against her hot, wet folds.
“We’ll do it this way later,” he promised, flexing his finger inside her, and a moan was his reply.
Bael pushed inside Kett’s hot, tight pussy, loving the way her slick flesh fit around him so well. He stayed motionless for a long moment, until she writhed against him, then reluctantly he withdrew his hand from her ass. He couldn’t move properly that way, and he wanted to thrust into her.
The water, by now running cold, pounded down on them both. Bael slid his hands around to cup her breasts, knead her firm flesh and pinch her nipples as he rocked inside her, but that wasn’t enough. He needed to thrust, hard, and he grabbed her hips to plunge into her relentlessly, driven by a fierce need to possess her.
She moaned as he pounded into her, biting the back of her neck and quickly going mindless. How did she do this to him? How did she affect him this way? No one else ever had. Only Kett could turn him into a total animal, desperate to brand her as his, to hold her and keep her and pleasure her until they were both senseless with it.
The pleasure inside him built to a crescendo, spurred on by Kett’s moans and cries, and as he succumbed to his massive orgasm, he heard himself gasp her name.
“I love you,” he murmured, as the water cascaded onto them and her body trembled in his arms.
Driven to distraction by his mouth and hands and fierce, pounding cock, Kett felt herself tip over into orgasm at the same time Bael gasped her name and emptied himself into her. He gripped her tight, his body tense and hard against her back, his arms gradually sliding around her body to hold her close.
His breath was harsh in her ear. She thought she heard him murmur something but the sound of the water drowned it out.
They stayed still and close for a while, until the chill of the water negated the heat from Bael’s body and Kett shifted away. Silently, she soaped and rinsed herself, and was about to step out of the bathtub when Bael slid his arm around her waist and kissed her with infinite sweetness.
“Kett,” he said, his face earnest and his eyes serious, as if he wanted to tell her something, but then he closed his eyes, fingers tensing at her waist, and shook his head. “You’re cold,” he said lamely.
She nodded, disconcerted, and wrapped herself in a towel. “I have to talk to Nuala,” she said, “and make some calls. You should get some rest. Nu said you were exhausted.”
He gave her a cocky grin, much more like the Bael she knew. “You should know.”
She rolled her eyes but she was smiling as she went to get dressed.
Leaving Bael to take a post-coital nap, she took herself downstairs in search of some coffee and solitude. Despite the immense size of Nuala’s house, it proved difficult. Family members prowled in every room. Rain hammered on the windows, which always made her father moody like a little boy.
“Does it on purpose,” her father accused.
“But you weren’t going to go anywhere anyway,” Kett said.
“I might,” he said mulishly.
“So get wet. You ain’t made of sugar.”
He scowled at that, and Kett shook her head and took her leave of him. She found Beyla with some of her extremely giggly, extremely young and extremely annoying friends, occupying one of the sitting rooms.
She backed out fast.
“Kett!” Beyla called.
Not fast enough.
“What?” Kett asked sharply, in no mood to put up with anything girlie.
“Dierdra’s having problems with her crochet. Can you help?”
Kett blinked, trapped. Dammit, of all the secrets to confess to her sisters.
“I-ain’t got a needle,” she fudged, unwilling to show anything that looked like a softer side to these girls. All of them were wearing frills and hairstyles that must have taken a pointless age to finesse.
One of the girls, presumably Dierdra, since she was the one holding a ball of wool, giggled. “You can borrow mine,” she said, a slight smirk on her face. “I’m afraid the wool is very soft though. No wire in it.”
She wanted to humiliate Kett.
Beyla caught her eye. Her eyelid flickered in what might have been a wink.
Beyla wanted to humiliate Dierdra.
Kett fantasized briefly about just stabbing the irritating bubblehead with her own crochet needle, shook her head and strode forward. Her leather jeans creaked as she moved. Her damp hair brushed wet circles on her shirt. Her boots thudded.
She held out her hands, took the needle and wool-which was pink, what else-and briskly made the stitch. “Move the needle, not the wool, and keep it tight, don’t let it go slack. Got it?”
They stared at her. Dierdra said, “But-but how-you can crochet?”
“That’s what I just did.” Kett made another few stitches without looking.
“But-” Dierdra stared at Kett’s ancient leathers, her nearly transparent shirt, the scar on her face, her heavy boots.
“Where did you learn to do that?” asked one of the other girls, awe in her voice.
“Prison,” Kett said, and thrust the wool back at Dierdra. She strode from the room, hearing as she did Beyla informing her friends with a touch of pride that Kett had beaten up the man who cheated on her. “I think it should be a mandatory punishment, actually,” she said, as Kett shut the door.
She found herself smiling.
The next room she tried in search of solitude contained Nuala and many bolts of fabric in almost identical shades of mauve. “Kett! Come and help me choose new curtains,” she cried, but Kett had already escaped before the words died out.
She found Chance and Dark canoodling on a sofa. In the next room, someone was murdering a sonata on the pianoforte while a male voice murmured encouragement. She shuddered. Giselle, no doubt. Thank the gods she was pretty.
Moving on, she spied Eithne and Verrick snogging in what she had to dub the Cream with Hints of Dark Gold Drawing Room, and was hurrying to leave when her sister leapt up, crying her name.
Kett sighed. “What?”
Eithne came rushing over, her eyes gleaming. “I don’t know what you said to Papa, but I absolutely love you for it!”
She threw her arms around Kett, who attempted to extract herself with little success.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The wedding!”
“What wedding? Your wedding?” Hadn’t Tyrnan forbidden Eithne to marry her garda?
“Yes! Earlier, Giselle was playing a piece on the pianoforte-she’s absolutely terrible at it, by the way, but Tane still thinks she’s an angel, must be love-and I was trying to be polite, and said what a pretty piece and that my friend Aliana had it played at her wedding. And Papa said, ‘Just so long as you don’t play it at yours’.”
Her eyes were bright as she stared eagerly at Kett, waiting for her to make the connection.
“Uh,” Kett said.
“Well, then I said I thought the Queen’s Wedding March was a much nicer piece to walk down the aisle to, and he said that was much more appropriate for a princess.”
She was beaming now, her whole face alight. Kett waited.
“Don’t you see? That’s the first time I’ve brought up a wedding and he hasn’t gone off into a tirade about how I’m not getting married to any garda and I’m far too young and all the rest of it. He actually seemed interested in my actual wedding!”
“Um,” said Kett, who hadn’t read the same thing into it. “Did he?”
“Yes! And it’s all thanks to you!”
“But-what do you mean, me?” Kett asked, trying to work out exactly what Eithne’s thought processes might have been.
“You’re the only one whose opinion he ever listens to.”
Kett stared at her. She started to laugh. “Okay, is this some sort of outrageous flattery designed to lead in to you asking me to wear pink as a bridesmaid?”