Page 86 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
When she pulled back, her fingers slid to my jaw. She tilted my chin a little, the way a woman tilts the chin of a man she has decided to keep, and studied my face with a small private amusement.
"Go shower," she said. "Your face is still a mess."
I caught her meaning. There was a faint blue smear along my temple where Rhea had painted me a star earlier and I had not bothered to scrub it off. There was probably frosting somewhere along my jaw too.
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
Her laugh followed me into the bathroom.
I closed the door behind me. I stripped without ceremony, left the clothes in a quiet heap by the basket, and stepped under the spray.
The water came down hot. I let it. It hit my shoulders first and then ran in steady sheets down my back, and the steam started to climb the glass within seconds. The room filled with the smell of whatever soap the household kept in here, something clean and faintly woodsy. I closed my eyes. I let my head tip forward under the spray and let it run over the back of my neck, and I rinsed the day off me one breath at a time. The small white scar across my left index knuckle was going pink under the heat. I watched it for a moment without really watching anything at all.
I did not hear the door.
The first I knew of her was her arms going around me from behind. Bare arms. Her chest pressed against my back, and through the heat of the spray I felt the two hard points of her nipples drag against my skin as she settled in. Her cheek came to rest in the dip between my shoulder blades, her breath warm and slow there, and her skin was already wet from the water bouncing off mine. Skin to skin, no fabric anywhere, only the warm press of her against the length of my back. My hand had been flat on the tile in front of me. It stopped moving. A long line of heat went down my spine, slow, taking its time, settling somewhere low in me where I could not pretend it was nothing.
She did not say anything at first. She only stood there with her arms around me, her mouth against my back, breathing mein. I felt her thumb trace one slow arc across my stomach under the water. Just one. Then it went still again, as if she were giving me a moment to know she was there.
I closed my eyes. The water hit the top of my head and ran down between us. I did not turn yet. I let her have the back of me for one more breath, because the part of me that was still a soldier knew enough to take the soft moment when it was offered.
"Can I help?" she whispered, into my spine.
My breath went out of me in one slow controlled stream. It was not as controlled as I wanted it to be. She heard it. I felt the small smile against my back where her mouth was.
I turned. Slow. I kept one of her arms locked around my waist as I did it, so she had to follow me through the turn, around into the spray with me. When I had her in front of me I had to stop for a moment and just take her in. Her hair was already darkening with water, plastered along her temples in dark wet lines. Water ran in clean tracks between her breasts and down the soft plane of her stomach. Her lashes were dark and clumped where the spray had hit them. Her mouth was open just a little. Her smile had a wickedness in it that did not usually live there in daylight, the kind a woman wears when she knows she has the man in front of her exactly where she wants him.
I had to take a breath. I took it. It went in less smoothly than the last one.
She reached past me without breaking my eyes. Her fingers closed around the bar of soap on the ledge and she lifted it up between us like a small announcement.
"Stand still," she said, light, teasing.
I stood still.
She started at my collarbones. She worked the soap between her palms first to raise the lather, and then her hands came to my chest and began to move. Slow. So slow it was almosta punishment. Across the plane of my chest, down the center along my sternum where the water was running in a thin line, out to my shoulders, and back in again. She drew a long curve under one pectoral, then the other, the slick of the soap making her palm glide where it should have caught. She traced the line where my ribs ended, paid attention to the small dip just below them, then ran the heel of her hand down across my stomach. My abdominals tightened under her palm without my asking them to. Her hand went lower. She followed the cut of muscle into the V of my hip on one side, and then, deliberately, instead of going where I wanted her, she crossed and traced the other side. My jaw worked. I did not move. I had told her she could play. I was going to let her play.
She watched my face the whole time. That was the worst part. She knew exactly what she was doing and she wanted me to know that she knew.
Her thumb dragged across the soft place under my navel and stopped. Did not go lower. Did not lift away either. Just stayed there, warm and slick, and she tilted her head a little as if she were measuring the breath I was about to lose. I lost it. One quiet exhale, more sound than I had meant to give her. Her smile widened a fraction. She knew she had pulled it out of me.
She skimmed the soap up the line between my hip bones and back to my chest as if she were starting over. As if she had all night. Water and lather ran down everywhere her hand had been. The steam was so thick now I could taste it in the back of my throat. My pulse was working in three places I could name and at least one I could not. I made my hands stay at my sides. I made them.
"You are getting yourself into trouble," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant. I was watching her face. I was not blinking enough.
Her hand slid lower. Soap traveled with it. The pad of her thumb passed over the cut of my hip, paused, did not commit, moved on.
"That's the plan, isn't it?"
I let her have one more pass. I let her think she was driving. Then I closed my fingers around her wrist, firm, and eased the soap out of her hand. I set it back on the ledge with a small clean clack of stone on stone. Her smile faltered, just for a beat, the way a smile falters when a woman realizes the game has changed hands.
My hand went into her hair. Wet, heavy, slick under my palm, the strands sliding through my fingers as I gathered them at the back of her skull. I tilted her face up where I wanted it. Not asking. Showing her where I wanted it, and waiting for her to give it to me. She gave it to me.
The kiss I gave her was hard. I had been holding myself on a short leash since she had walked into this bathroom, and now I was not. My mouth took hers and stayed there. I felt her small sound go straight into my chest. My free hand moved to the small of her back, then to her hip, then up the wet slope of her spine, pulling her in against me until there was nothing left between us at all. Her breasts dragged against my chest. Her stomach pressed against the hard line of me. I felt her shiver and I knew it was not from cold.
"I am not done with you," I said against her mouth. Low. Just for her.
"Good," she breathed back, half laugh, half something else.
