Many more showers and he might shed a skin.
Roche stood under a hard stream of lukewarm water. He was pretty damn sure he’d have a heart attack if he hit his skin with anything ice cold.
He’d had no choice but to walk away, stagger away, and come in here. Bleu Laveau was wounded, far more so than even he had guessed. But her courage humbled him. She was scared stiff, but forced herself to try—because she wanted to please him.
He turned up his face and the spray felt like needles jabbing his skin.
No. Not to please him, or not only. There had been two of them who wanted to test her capacity for sex.
And she’d almost made it there—past the inhibitions, or the shame or whatever it was that tore a scream from her. That scream had knocked him away from her as her feet and elbows never could have.
Roche faced a wall and braced his weight on his arms.
He heard the shower door open behind him and waited, his gut contracted hard.
At first she didn’t touch him, but when she did it was tentatively, as if she expected him to reject her. A slow caress from shoulder to shoulder. The fingers of both hands pushed into his hair, kneading his scalp.
She reached past him for the soap and began to wash him.
He shuddered, ecstasy hadn’t taken a holiday after all. His back, his chest, she rubbed circles over him, while he remained facing the wall. His butt, his hips and around to his belly. Circles on circles. She used her knuckles sometimes, pressing harder. She scrubbed the hair on his chest with her fingertips and kept on scrubbing, following the diminishing line of hair until it flared again over his pelvis. Then her hands closed around his scrotum. Little movements, weighting beneath his penis, feeling and shifting him around, the warm soapy massage destroying any chance of his holding back, or of denial. Not that he could have seriously considered denial.
She stroked him, firmly, smoothly, and brought him to the brink of letting go.
“Stop,” he told her and when she didn’t, took her hands from him and turned around.
For the first time he saw her naked in the light.
Had he known from the moment he saw her that she was perfection? Yes.
They kissed beneath the water, drank from each other’s mouths, swallowed the spray. And he passed his palms over all of her.
“Roche?” she said, and he scrubbed at his eyes to look at her. Her eyes were dark, but she smiled and reached her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him.
He kissed her again, taking as much time as he was able, and lifted her. “Put your legs around my waist,” he told her.
With her back on the tile, they made love.
She would be sore later, but he didn’t think she’d care.
For moments she slumped against him, then she looked up. “We don’t have a chandelier,” she said. She wasn’t smiling.
“Maybe next time,” he told her.
“I’m not through. Think of something else.”
The thrill he felt could be dangerous. It mounted and the blood pumped to a beat in his veins. He was stiff again.
Giving her no time to get the breath for a scream, Roche pushed Bleu’s head to her knees, gripped her by the waist and shot her upside down. He lifted her until a very interesting part of her was on a level with his face.
“Roche!” She shrieked now, and grabbed for him with slippery hands.
“Yes, love. I’m here.” He licked her thighs.
“The blood’s going to my head.”
“That’s good for you occasionally. Hook your knees over the top of the shower.”
“What? You’re mad.”
“Me? You wanted more excitement. Do it, and be quiet.”
Fumbling, banging the door with her feet, she accomplished the task and he made sure she was safe in his arms.
Ignoring her protests, he buried his face between her legs and started a leisurely tongue massage where she was least likely to forget the event.
“Roche! Stop the slow motion. I’m dying here.”
“No, you’re not.” But he tongued her harder, faster, nipped her clitoris and sweated over the unbearable clamoring in his own body.
Sounds he couldn’t control jolted from his throat. Her arms were around his hips.
A great shudder racked her and her hips met his face in a greedy demand. Then Bleu’s muscles softened. He rested the side of his face against her thighs and loved it.
Her mouth, sucking him in, came without any warning. For an instant, he tried to stop her, but her teeth let him know that would be at a cost to him.
“I’ll drop you,” he yelled.
She didn’t take the bait. Didn’t answer.
He didn’t want her to.
The climax bowed him. With his eyes shut, panting, he turned Bleu in a sideways cartwheel motion until her knees rested on the shower floor. Still she held his penis in her mouth. She drank him in.
“Don’t ever leave me,” he said, when she was done, sinking down slowly to kneel with her gathered into his embrace.
Bleu looked drunk, like a happy drunk. “We’re not finished,” she said.
He laughed and managed to turn off the shower. “We are, until I get you into bed.”