When he’s washed every part of me—even my toes—Declan turns the water back on and rinses me thoroughly. Then reaches for the plastic cup I keep on the same shelf and fills it up.
“Scoot down,” he tells me in a voice filled with gravel, the first indication I have that he isn’t quite as unaffected as he’s trying to make me believe. I do what he says, and he tips my head back before slowly, carefully pouring the water over my hair.
He squirts some shampoo into his hand, then begins gently combing it through my hair. The last of the panic and confusion ebbs away under his tender ministrations, utter relaxation taking the place of those feelings. My eyes start to close, but I force them open, keeping them fastened on his.
Lying here in this bathtub as he cares for me, I feel more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. And also more protected. Declan’s face is only a few inches above mine, his eyes locked onto mine as he washes my hair with a gentleness I didn’t know he had in him. In their depths I see him, really see him in a way I’m not sure I ever have before.
There’s torment there, a dark fire he doesn’t even try to hide.
Strength, more of it than I think even he realizes.
Rage, a slow burn that blankets everything going on inside him.
And deep inside, locked behind the few emotions he doesn’t mind showing, is love. Kindness. Tenderness. For me. I know it’s all there for me.
I know he feels it, too. This nebulous connection between us, different from the soulbound thing but no less powerful for all of its delicate fragility.
He starts to rinse my hair out and I reach a hand up because I can’t stand the pain of not touching him for one more second. I brush my thumb over those insanely perfect lips of his, cupping his cheek with my hand. His breathing hitches, stops. Then he turns into my touch and presses a warm, lingering kiss in the center of my palm.
“Declan. I . . .” I don’t know what to say, don’t even know what I want to say.
“Sssh.” He places a wet finger against my lips. “I’ve got you, Xandra. I swear I’ve got you.”
The emotion in his eyes grows more raw and powerful with each second that passes and still I don’t look away. I can’t. I’m trapped like a moth around a flame, desperate for whatever part of him he’ll let me have.
I know it’s in my eyes, know he must see my own vulnerability and desperate need as clearly as I see his. And in this one tremulous but perfect moment, it feels right. In a world spinning so rapidly beyond my control, it feels . . . good.
He conditions my hair with the same care that he washed it and by the time he’s done, I’m shaking all over again, this time for very different reasons. He pops the drain, helps me stand, then dries me off before sweeping me back into his arms and carrying me to my bed.
Then he moves to my dresser, one of the few things that didn’t burn in the fire I set last week with my less-than-stellar magic. He pulls out a nightshirt. But when he comes back to me and tries to slip it over my head, I rip it from his hands. Throw it across the room. And reach for him. Just him.
He meets me halfway, slams his mouth down on mine in a kiss so intense, so powerful, so possessive that it feels like a brand. Which should offend my feminist sensibilities but doesn’t because the kiss I’m giving him is exactly the same.
Lust—raw, carnal, overwhelming—rises up in me. I reach for the hem of his T-shirt and fumble the thing over his head before going for the button on his jeans. They prove to be more difficult, not just because my hands are shaking so badly, but because the bottom half of each leg is wet and heavy and clinging to his calves.
He curses as he wrestles with them, his voice a low, guttural growl. Seconds later he gives up the fight, mutters a spell that has the jeans disappearing into thin air. Any other time I’d probably be awed—transubstantiation is a rare gift in the Hekan world, and a difficult task no matter how talented the practitioner. But right now all I care about is that Declan is naked and aroused and pressed intimately against me.
I wrap my arms and legs around him, desperate—starved—for the feel of him inside me. He has other ideas, though, and as he presses slow, sweet kisses to my throat and shoulders, I know he plans another long, drawn-out seduction.
I can’t take that, though, not now when my entire body is threatening to spontaneously combust. Bracing a foot on the bed for leverage, I roll us over until I’m the one on top, looking down at him.
His eyes are dark and bottomless, filled with the same urgency that’s tearing at me with razor-sharp claws. I push myself into a sitting position, then sink down on him in a move so smooth and quick, it has me moaning and him jerking beneath me.