The Barbarian's Owned(24)
Garr plucked a round, blue bulb and returned, kneeling onto the bed. He stripped her socks off and Rae refused to look at the state of her mangled feet.
Garr softly cupped her heel, cracking that bulb open like an egg. Its yolk carried a medicinal aroma and he rubbed it into her frayed heel, the balm soothing the searing pain from her abrasions.
He coaxed the oil over the whole of her foot and pressed this thumbs into her arch, rubbing until the tense muscles and stiff ligaments all went slack.
It was strange how once that happened, her shoulders and spine relaxed at the same time, so that she pooled into the silky otoya sheets.
Rae shut her eyes. His hands worked her pant leg up and his kneading at her taut hamstrings elicited a contented groan. He rotated her ankle to loosen it, and it gave a faint pop—she whimpered at the release of tension.
By the time he started on her other foot, she was only faintly aware of the room, or the way the crystal lights dimmed. Her feet no longer hurt, and all her soreness was comforted by either sheets, cool medicine, or Garr’s relentless hands. Before he’d finished on her other hamstring, she fell into a pleasant black sleep.
Chapter Nine
The hiss of running water woke Rae and, for a moment, she forgot where she was.
It came back to her when she opened her eyes and streams of sunlight brought her to full alertness. Her room was a vista to the yawning green meadow with its golden flowers, the chattering river, and towering waterfall less than a mile away.
Alien world. Big, weirdo kidnapper. Right. She groaned, rolling onto her stomach and glancing around…
…Garr was in the shower. Fog from the hot water—they had hot water!—obscured the glass stall so that, through misty panes, she made out the rugged outline of his body.
She could see the hard pane of his flat abdomen, the crest made by his ribs when his arms extended over his head to wash his short, dark hair. It revealed both the breadth in his shoulders and, because of the tilt to his back, the gorgeous ranginess of his graceful body.
He shifted, and though she couldn’t make out every detail, she could see the glistening power of his back taper into a faintly obscured, firm backside.
He’s certainly not shy. Rae sat up and thought to look away, but—well—she’d been dragged to an alien world, and the biologist in her ought to at least observe the native wildlife. And Garr happened to be right there, so why not?
He turned to face her, noticing her observation of him, and made eye contact while soaping his shoulders. He shamelessly rolled his palm down his sculpted chest, across the lean eight-pack, and lower, lower still.
The brazen act forced Rae to snap her gaze down, cheeks firing, because the fog gave her just enough a glimpse to see the size of him, and watching him touch himself was just the right amount of kinky to let her inner, Midwestern “good girl” come out in full.
She glanced instead at the sunshine, hoping to distract herself from the most picturesque, gorgeous male she’d seen outside of magazine covers. Even the sunshine couldn’t distract her entirely from arousal blazing through her veins, or the curl of warmth in her center.
The water turned off and Garr padded out. Rae turned to make a smart remark, but he’d already left the bedroom. Through the glass wall of the chamber, she saw him disappear downstairs with his otoya already affixed.
After a half hour wait, wondering how to begin her day, Rae decided Garr had found another way to busy himself. She was alone for the first time in a while and took the opportunity to avail herself of their bathroom.
The fixtures were, thankfully, similar enough to Earth’s that she could figure them out. Afterwards, she hit up the shower.
It wasn’t entirely like a shower on Earth. The whole chamber was seemingly made from glass, with two sides of the stall wrapped in green foliage and branches from the other side, so that even though it was sterile, she was surrounded in wild nature.
It gave the shower a nearly primal feel, to turn and see through the misty glass those bright leaves and twisty branches. In point of fact, it was a quality present throughout the tree house, which seemed to put her in the heart of nature without sacrificing any comforts.
The water sprayed from three fixtures: one stationed overhead, another in front, and a third from below that jettisoned upward. In the midst of washing herself, she noticed her feet looked nearly healed. The ointment had all but eliminated her blisters.
Rae danced around the placement of the jets at first, but eventually gave in to what the shower seemed to be designed for, and the sensation of jets hitting her body from all those angles put her in a good mood. Better than good: the one below was hitting her a little too well between her thighs.