I licked my lip and tasted blood.
Oh.
“Have you been tested?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’m clean.”
“It’s been a while since I have,” I said honestly. “I think I’m good. But things have been weird.” The bloody needle Lon Trager had stabbed in my thigh. Pike’s blood pouring into my open wounds as he lay dying in my arms. I’d had a lot of dangerous fluid transfer lately, and hadn’t asked if the doctors ran all the tests.
“God.” I threw my arm over my eyes. Blood in the bedroom wasn’t anything to rush into. I didn’t care how many medical advances there were. I didn’t care how many spells could extend a life-for a price. The kinds of diseases blood could transfer were deadly.
Zayvion pulled a tissue out of the box. “Here,” he said quietly.
I pulled my arm off my face. Zayvion stood there, holding a tissue for me. But I wasn’t looking at the tissue. He had taken off his shirt and held it in the other hand.
Sweet holy hells, that man was built. Thick chest, wide at the shoulder and narrower at the waist, muscles that moved beneath his mahogany skin as he offered the tissue to me again.
I took it, though I could not keep my hungry gaze off his body. “If you’re trying to torture me. .” I began.
Zay didn’t even smile. “Yes?”
“Just don’t,” I said miserably. “Put your shirt back on.” I dabbed at my lips, my blood catching in the paper. It wasn’t a lot of blood. But it was enough. Too much.
“Think you can keep your mouth off me?” Zayvion asked.
“What?”
“Nola patched you up. You’re not bleeding anywhere else. The punctures in your shoulder are bandaged. So are your knuckles. And that headache is from a lump on your head, but not a cut.”
“So just my lips?”
“Just your lips.”
That list of wounds brought something else to mind. “Have I had a shower?”
“Do you want one?”
“Yes.”
“Going to let me help you with that?”
I met his gaze. There was a challenge there. Maybe a little bit of anger. I couldn’t tell what he was angry about. “Yes.”
Zayvion tossed his shirt at the foot of the bed. A casual, natural gesture, as if his clothes always belonged at the bottom of my bed. I pushed the blankets away, took his hand, and stood. The room spun a little. He put his arm around me and we walked down the hall to the bathroom.
My bathroom is small, and I don’t like tight places to begin with. But here, right now, in the darkness of predawn, I liked having Zayvion with me in this tiny space, in this tiny room.
He shut the door and locked it, which I thought was sort of strange, but that was okay. I liked a careful man.
I pulled back the shower curtain and turned on the water, adjusting it until it was hot, but not hot enough to burn.
Okay, now I needed some graceful way to get out of my sweater, undershirt, bra, jeans, and panties. With a bum shoulder, swollen knuckles, and bad equilibrium.
Joy.
Zayvion stepped behind me and spread his hands flat against my stomach.
“Can you do this?” he murmured against my neck.
My mind spun with a thousand ideas of what he might be asking me to do.
“Can you get undressed on your own?” he clarified.
“Maybe,” I said. Then, honestly, “No.”
I expected him to be quick to get me naked. But no. He took his time, drawing his fingers beneath my sweater and undershirt, across the soft skin of my lower stomach, just above the waistband of my jeans. I licked my lip, tasted the copper heat of my blood there, and bit the inside of my cheek instead to keep from making any sound. He traced a sideways figure eight, the symbol of infinity, across my stomach.
I wondered if it meant something, but then his hands were gone, catching the hem of my sweater. He moved to one side, gently pulled the sweater and sleeve over my good shoulder, the right, and then he was on the other side of me. I tried to help get my arm out, but he shushed me and pulled the sleeve and sweater off over my head, then down my arm without me having to move my shoulder at all.
He glanced at me, and I smiled.
“Smooth. You get a lot of practice undressing wounded girls?”
“It’s come up.”
I would have said something about that, but one look at his smile, and electric heat caught fire in my belly. The weight and need for him pressed at my chest, and dragged delicious warmth down my stomach to pool between my legs.
Next went the undershirt. Painless. After that, he moved behind me again and unhooked my bra.
I gasped at the warm, moist air that licked my skin as he pulled the strap off first my good arm, then down my bad arm. Once the bra was gone, he stood behind me again and brushed his fingertips slowly up my stomach, then my ribs, which I could feel on the right, but lost track of over the numbness of the scars on my left.
Hadn’t I worried about my scars? About if Zayvion would find them ugly, me ugly, because of them?
But he did not pause over the scars, did not pull away. His fingertips traced the curve beneath my breasts, lifting the weight of me. I leaned into the warm hardness of his bare chest and stomach and closed my eyes. I could feel his heartbeat, pounding, hard, strong. Still, he barely touched me as he traced gentle circles around my nipples. An aching sweetness bloomed beneath my skin. I arched my back and rolled my hip against his, wanting more. Wanting him. All of him.
He made a soft, deep sound, his body responding to my invitation, and plunged his fingertips down my stomach to the warmth beneath the waistband of my jeans.
He kissed the side of my neck, licking along the mark of magic at the curve, then sucking until fire and magic rose through me, answering his touch.
I got my good hand on the button of my jeans, but Zay’s hands were already busy, unbuttoning, unzipping, his fingers slipping down my panties.
Oh. Yes.
But my jeans weren’t loose enough for much more than that. Zayvion pulled his hands away and caught at my belt loops. He knelt behind. As he lowered my jeans off my hips and down to my thighs, he followed with his lips, kissing the small of my back, the side of my hip, back of my thigh, behind my bare knees. Each wet, soft press of his mouth against my skin rolled a shock of heat through me, and left me aching for more.
He paused.
“Zay?” I breathed.
“Lift your foot.”
What? Oh, right. I lifted one foot, stepping out of my jeans, lifted the other. Zayvion pushed my pants across the floor, out of our way.
From his kneeling position, he caught the edge of my panties and tugged them down off my hips, away from the wet warmth of me.
He didn’t have to remind me to lift my feet this time.
I turned around and faced him.
Zayvion crouched, face level with my stomach, burning gold eyes, deep brown skin. The man radiated power, hunger, need. I caught my breath at the sight of him.
“I need you,” I said. “Please.” I dragged my good fingers though his hair, thick, soft black curls, wet with the steam of the shower. I wanted to pull him up to his feet so I could kiss him.
Wait. No kissing.
Well, none for me. Zayvion’s lips were just fine. He proved it by licking across my stomach. I moaned as he worked his way up.
I arched my head back, closed my eyes again as need thrummed through me.
He rested his hands on both sides of my hips. “Shower,” he said.
What? Oh, no way. Forget the shower.
“Allie.”
I opened my eyes. He was standing.
“I’ll be right here,” he said, low and sexy. “Waiting for you.” He let go of my hips, gave me a little push toward the shower. He leaned his butt against the sink and crossed his very nice arms over his very nice chest.