My breathing grows ragged, my body rousing despite itself as his pulsing cock hits something deep inside. Looking up into Cullen’s face, I watch the water frame his powerful square jaw, his tense forehead as he meets my gaze head-on. The desire and need flashing in his eyes send a wave of sensation through me that’s as powerful as the one rushing from down below.
My mouth opens, his descending on it savagely. Deeply. I taste myself on his tongue, feel his groan reverberating through every fiber in my body. His cock gives a final throb inside me as if my body is milking him dry. When he reaches between my legs to brush his thumb over my singing clit, I sink my teeth into his shoulder just to keep from keening as the pleasure takes me.
We stand like that for a few moments, his muscles trembling while mine melt against him, his cock still in my channel as we recover.
“Cullen?” Liam’s voice cuts through both the bathroom and my haze.
I freeze, my hands tightening on Cullen’s shoulders.
Cullen tips his head back. “Yeah?” he calls without a care in the world.
“Need to show you something,” Liam yells back.
“In a minute.”
Running his thumb along my cheekbone, Cullen opens his mouth as if to say something, but then steps away without speaking. Still mute, he pulls me back under the spray, soaping me up and rinsing off the soap bubbles with typical Cullen-like intensity. Settling me back on the bench, he disposes of the condom and begins to take care of his own shower.
I know I should leave. Should hurry to towel off and get decent, but I don’t. Instead, I sit and watch mesmerized as streams of soap run along the grooves of Cullen’s chiseled form, the tattoos shifting as the muscles flex beneath glistening wet skin.
I think I should say something. But I don’t do that either. And neither does he.
28
Cullen
Cullen knifed up in his bed, the movement violent enough to send both his king-size pillows careening to the floor. Sweat dripped from his forehead, his chest feeling as if a vise was cinching tighter around it with every rapid breath. Flinging his legs over the side of his mattress, he gulped down air and attempted to swallow. He had to struggle to do it, and the motion alerted him to the rawness of his throat.
Despite knowing exactly what he’d find, Cullen pressed his fingers against the radial pulse and glanced at the clock to count the beats. Yeah. Pounding away at one eighty. He had to calm down. Forcing himself to slow his inhales, he focused on the here and now. An empty room. A blank wall. A tick-tock tick-tock of the wall clock. The clean smell of soap wafting from the sheets. A few minutes later, his breathing began to even out, but the feelings of panic and uneasiness remained. He rubbed his breastbone and closed his eyes, only to peel his eyelids right back open again.
Shutting his eyes only made the nightmare images flash in exaggerated technicolor, and even though they’d been mere flickers, they still left him feeling nauseated.
Good fucking morning.
Cullen glanced up for long enough to register that the sun had started to rise, sliding into his room through the slight parting in his curtains. His alarm clock showed that he had at least two hours before he’d need to be in the office, though. Thank God. He stood, feeling vaguely headachy, and headed into his attached bathroom.
Grabbing the plastic cup he used to wash out his mouth after brushing his teeth, he filled it to the brim with cold water and guzzled it down. Then, he did it again, feeling parched. Fuck. He almost felt like he was coming down with something, but he doubted he was so lucky. No, this was just a side effect of waking from a bad dream, something he’d done many, many times.
Too many times to count, really.
Yet, recently, he’d had more than his fair share—as if his mind was making up for the interlude it had taken during the two nights Skylar had shared his bed. His cock twitched as he recalled the different side of Sky he’d taken in the shower three days ago, the way the streams of water slipped around her luscious breasts while her sex clenched with pleasure.
Damn it, apparently it was possible to have a panic attack and an erection at the same bloody time.
Doing his best to clear the mud and other things from his brain, Cullen thought back to last night. Did he forget to take his prazosin? It’d become such an automatic habit of his that he had to think hard to recall whether he’d stopped to knock back the pill or not. But he’d gotten a fresh cup from his kitchen last night—the small clear cup he held right now—so he knew he had. He always took his meds.
It was disconcerting to think he might be backsliding. Maybe he needed to get with the doc and look at the dosage again, even if it meant enduring another lecture about shoulder surgery. Prazosin never got rid of his nightmares completely, but the past week was the worst he’d had since getting back stateside. And tonight’s… Jesus. There’d been the usual bright explosion followed by acrid choking smoke. Shrieks of pain and fear. Lots of blood. A child no longer breathing. Bar had been there, as he often was. Yet this time, Sky had been there too, yanking a little girl from his arms. Yelling that it was all his fault. That he’d killed them. And then she was the one dying.
Which was impossible. That hadn’t been how things had gone down at all, but in his unconscious state…
Goddammit.
His heart rate, which had been starting to slow, was pounding too fast again. Dropping his head into his hands, Cullen forced himself to take more deep breaths. Why wasn’t he calming down? Concluding that a cold shower might help, he hopped under the punishing ice-cold spray, his gaze catching a golden bottle of shampoo that certainly wasn’t his. He must have grabbed it from the shower at Liam’s place by accident.
Without thinking through what he was doing, Cullen seized the bottle and flipped open the cap, taking a whiff. Passionflower filled his senses. He knew it was passionflower specifically because it said it there on the side of the bottle. It was funny. He didn’t even know what a passionflower was, yet the fragrance suited Sky so well. As did its name. He’d never known any woman as passionate as Skylar Reynolds. And those times she’d shared his bed, he’d awoken peacefully.
Maybe she’d be a better cure for his PTSD than his prescription drugs. He’d certainly never told anyone else about the content of his nightmares. But when Sky asked, it seemed…right. Safe. And it could never happen again. Afghanistan was Cullen’s burden to carry, not hers. His father had been right—Cullen dragged violence and destruction with him wherever he stepped. The least he owed Sky was to not expose her to it.
So long as they both enjoyed it, occasional sex was the most he could allow himself. Fortunately, Sky seemed to be of the same mind. At least her body certainly was.
Turning off the shower nozzle, Cullen wrapped a towel around himself and stepped out of the shower just as his phone rang. Snatching the thing from where he’d left it between the two sinks of his vanity, Cullen hit Answer without bothering to look at the caller. “Hunt.”
“Cullen?” Catherine. Shit. “Is something wrong?”
He should ask the same question of her—if she was calling before he even arrived, that didn’t bode well—but he didn’t know if he could do it just then without biting his assistant’s head off. “What is it, Catherine?” Still too snappish. Dammit.