Page 14 of Flawed Fate
I step into the shower. The hot water hits my skin, and I gasp, bracing one hand against the tile. The heat loosens muscles I didn’t realize were clenched, runs over the ache in my bones. I tip my head back and let the water stream over my face, and I try to think clearly. Remember who I am and why I’m here in the first place.
But all I can think about is him. Three feet away. Hard. Watching.
I turn off the water.
I don’t reach for a towel. I step out of the shower, dripping, and he’s still there. He hasn’t moved. His chest is rising and falling faster than before, and his eyes track a droplet of water as it slides down my collarbone, between my breasts, over my stomach. He follows it like he can’t help himself.
“You should…” His voice is rough. He stops, swallows, and tries again. “You should get dressed.”
He’s right, but instead I take a step toward him. The question falls out of my mouth before I hear it in my head, like there’s no filter anymore. “What if I don’t want to?”
Something flashes in his eyes. He takes a breath that shudders on the way in. “I can’t,” he rasps. “I’m waiting. For my mate.”
Mate. The word lands somewhere in my chest and does something I don’t understand. I should back off. I should grab atowel and cover myself, pretend this didn’t happen. That’s what a smart person would do.
I’m apparently not a smart person. “I only want you to touch me. Please.”
I can see it happen. The exact moment his resistance cracks, the way his whole body tenses like a wire pulled to its breaking point.
His jaw clenches even tighter than before. His growl sends goosebumps racing over my bare skin. “Turn around.”
I turn. The sink is in front of me, the mirror above it, and when I look up, I can see both of us: me, wet and flushed all over, and him behind me, so much bigger, closing the distance between us until his chest is against my back and his breath is hot on my neck.
One of his hands grips the edge of the sink beside mine. The other settles on my hip.
“Look at me,” he murmurs. “In the mirror. Keep your eyes on me.”
I lift my gaze. Our eyes meet in the glass, and his hand slides from my hip down over my stomach, slow, deliberate, giving me time to stop him.
I don’t stop him.
His fingers slip between my thighs, and I make a sound I’ve never heard myself make before. Desperate, broken. My hips jerk forward into his hand, and he catches me, his other arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me back against him. I can feel him, hard, pressed against my lower back, and the knowledge he’s that turned on—by me, because of me—makes everything sharper and more intense.
“Eyes on me,” he says again when my eyes slide shut so I can absorb the sensations. I force them open. In the mirror, I watch his arm flexing, watch his face over my shoulder—his gazelatched onto mine intensely, as if I’m the only thing in the world, and he’s memorizing every part of this.
He finds a rhythm. Slow at first, almost teasing, his fingers sliding and circling, learning what makes me gasp, what makes my knees buckle. When he hits the right spot, I cry out and my hands slam against the sink, my head dropping forward.
“Look at me.” Rougher now. A command. I drag my head up and meet his eyes in the mirror, and his fingers press harder, move faster. The pleasure builds like a wave, and it’s nothing I’ve ever felt by myself or imagined feeling with someone else. My whole body is shaking. I’m making sounds I can’t control, these breathless, broken moans that fill the small bathroom.
“That’s it,” he whispers against my ear, low and rough, and the vibration of his voice goes straight through me like an arrow made of lightning. “Let go. I’ve got you.”
I shatter.
It hits me like a freight train. My body locks up, spine arching, a cry ripping out of me that I couldn’t hold back if I tried. His arm tightens around my waist, holding me upright when my legs give out completely. Through it all, his fingers keep moving, slower now, drawing it out, pulling every last aftershock from me until I’m gasping and trembling and can’t see straight.
When it’s over, I slump against him. His arm is still around me. His hand slides away from between my thighs and settles on my hip, and his forehead drops against the back of my head. For a moment, we just breathe.
In the mirror, I watch us. This girl I barely recognize, flushed and wrecked and glassy-eyed, leaning against this man who’s still fully clothed, still hard, still holding her like she’s something he’s afraid to drop.
I should feel satisfied. Or embarrassed. At least that would make sense.
Instead, all I feel ismore. More want. More need. This hunger that didn’t exist before last night wants to rip me to pieces, and I almost wish it would because if anything, what just happened made it worse.
I want him. Not just his hands. All of him. And I can’t understand it. He’s my captor. He’s a shifter. He’s the enemy of everything my father has built. And I want him so badly my teeth ache.
The thing is, when our gazes lock, a message passes between us. For some reason I can’t even begin to understand, we’re connected. Two halves of the same mind. He doesn’t say the words out loud, but he doesn’t need to. I hear them loud and clear in my head, as clearly as I feel his hardness pressing against my back.
Not enough. Not even close.
