“Verek?” I ask. “You think you’re almost done?”
“I-I don’t think I’ve started yet.”
What?
“You’ve been in here an hour, and the water temperature seems a little high.”
“I think it’s burning me,” he says calmly.
“Then turn it off!” I exclaim at him, but he doesn’t move.
Taking a deep breath, I march over and reach into the side of the curtain closest to the faucet and turn it back toward the middle. I wasn’t going to look at him, I swear I wasn’t, but there’s so much of him that it’s impossible not to. My eyes land immediately on the V carved into his hip bones before dropping to his thick cock hanging between his legs. Embarrassed by my gawking, I quickly lift my gaze to his chiseled abs that are even etched in his side, under his ribs. I take in his defined pecs a second as I make my eyes lift to his face. His sad eyes look more gray than blue in the fog of the shower and are looking right at me.
Finally, he moves. Removing his hands from the wall, he shoves them through his short, soaking wet hair and then turns his back to me, tilting his head back into the stream as he says, “Before…you couldn’t stand for me to touch you no matter how much I wanted to, but I knew it wasn’t my fault. Now, after what I did, I doubt if you’ll ever want to touch me. I hate that this is my fault.”
“After what you did?” I repeat, my voice hoarse either from his words or all the steam. “Verek, you’ve helped me, more than anyone! I owe you…everything,” I tell him, but he doesn’t acknowledge my words which is so infuriating.
That’s apparently why I’m standing in the dry bathroom one second, and the next, I’m climbing over into the shower, standing under the warm water that’s pouring down on me as I reach forward and place my palms on Verek’s tattooed upper back and lean forward to press my lips between them right on his spine, right along the bottom of the inked crown of his huge Savage Kings tattoo.
I feel his body stiffen under my hands and lips before he says, “Tessa…sweetheart…what are you doing?”
“Thanking you. Touching you, because I want to, if that’s okay?” I kiss another spot on his spine as my palms slide down to his lower back where the skull king ends.
“Don’t stop” is his gasped response as he reaches for the shower bar over the soap box with one hand and presses the other to the wall in front of him.
Grabbing the soap, I start rubbing it slowly over his tense back and shoulder muscles and work my way down until I’m low enough to watch the suds run down the slopes of his amazing ass. Then, I head back up to rub the soap down the length of one of his strong boulder-sized biceps, then the other before reaching around to scrub his chest. To get at the front of his body, I have to press mine closer to his back so that my pelvis is pressed to his round bottom. My hand with the soap moves lower, over each and every one of the indentions of his six-pack of abs while my other hand rests on his hips, my fingers dipping into the sloping V. I place another kiss to his back, this time higher, right near his neck, making Verek shiver, causing the soap in my hand to jump and touch another part of his lower body.
I hesitate for a second, waiting for his reaction. When he doesn’t even flinch at the accidental contact, I rub his cock with the soap and go down to his balls before heading back up again to his shaft. He’s long and thick and obviously getting hard. For the first time in a very long time, I’m actually aroused too. Not enough to do anything about it, but I do want to lend a helping hand to Verek. It’s the least I can do for him after what he’s done for me, but also because I want to make him feel good, even if I can’t let him touch me.
I put the bar of soap back on the box and then reach around, taking his shaft into my hand and tightening my fingers around it, making Verek grunt as his hips punch forward. He’s grown even thicker if that’s humanly possible.
“Please,” he groans as his head tips forward to watch my hand moving up and down on his still-lengthening cock.
A trail of water runs down the center of his back, and without thinking, I stick my tongue out and lick it off of his body. I hear another grunt from him as his breathing picks up, his back moving with the more urgent pace of his lungs.
“Ah, yes, sweetheart,” he whispers when I lick another drop of water from his shoulder while riding the bucking motion of his body from behind.
The liquid warmth that feels so foreign but is so familiar fills up my belly, causing the throbbing a little lower to demand my attention. It’s a part of my body that I’ve ignored for months, unsure if I would ever feel even a hint of desire again. Now that I have, I can’t resist giving in. With my free hand, I undo my wet jeans and then slip my hand down into the front of my panties, gasping aloud and losing my rhythm on Verek’s cock as I stroke my fingertips over the aching bundle of nerves that have missed being touched.
“Are you touching yourself?” Verek asks me through gritted teeth. He could just as easily look over his shoulder to find out, but he doesn’t.
“Yes,” I answer breathlessly.
“Oh fuck. Fuck…I’m coming!” he warns just as I feel his shaft thicken even more and then pulse in my fist. I keep stroking him as his body trembles through his release, and I chase my own.
The pleasurable waves that eventually crash over me are foreign but welcome. I had forgotten how good it could feel to sate the desire that I wasn’t sure I would find again. I bask in the warmth coursing through my veins and the instant mellow happy endorphins that follow, making my limbs heavy and limp.
Chapter Nine
Verek
* * *
What the hell just happened?
I’m not complaining, I’m just shocked and a little overwhelmed.
One thing is for sure, all that guilt that was slowly but surely weighing me down is suddenly lifted off my shoulders now that I have something else to think about.
More than the deaths by my hands, I think I was worried that despite Tessa’s assertions that she was okay with all of this, that afterward she would change her mind and see me differently. That she would be even more revolted by me than before.
At least I could tell myself that it wasn’t me personally making her feel that way but the result of her surviving one hell of an ordeal.
Now, to know that after everything, she laid her hands and her lips on me in such a fiercely intimate way, in what was possibly the sexiest experience I’ve ever had with a woman, I’m ecstatic.
I know I can’t turn around and touch her the way I want, but she’s given me something even better.
“Thank you,” I say into the silence that was filled by the shower raining down on us. Well, mostly on her.
“For what?” she asks quietly. “That was…it wasn’t much…”
“It was everything,” I tell her, unable to look at her right now because my self-control may snap with the need to wrap my arms around her. “Was that the first time you’ve…”
“Yes,” Tessa answers my unspoken question about her first orgasm since the kidnapping. “I’ll, um, I’ll dry off and get out of your way,” she says. I hear the slide of the shower curtain going back before it’s replaced, then her retreating footsteps.