Shadowed Heart (13 page)

A hand stroked gently down his back, through the water, and he started. The hand stroked all the way down his spine as he arched for it, and then curved around one buttock, which clenched. “God, that’s hot,” Summer murmured.

He licked water off his lips, fallen on them when his head arched back, and didn’t let himself turn around, didn’t let himself lower his hands from their grip on the showerhead above him. If something about this pose was hot, he didn’t want to ruin it.

A shift of air currents. A warm, slight body pressed up against his wet back, and his breath hissed in. His whole body tightened, groin, butt, hands on the showerhead, everything.

“Really hot,” Summer said against his back, the words a movement of her lips against his skin. She licked a drop of water off him, and he tightened his grip on the showerhead, burying his face in one arm.

“I love your back.” She nuzzled and licked the words across it, just below his shoulder blades, making his muscles flinch with delight. “It’s so strong and so smooth.” Her hands slid around his body as she spoke, her breasts pressing against his middle back. Her palms stroked—upward.
Damn
, complained his dick. Sometimes his dick was so greedy it got the hell on his nerves. The rest of his body wanted its share, too.

But you could slide one hand down
, his dick begged plaintively, straining.
Just one. One for me.
It was all he could do not to grab one of her hands and put it where he wanted it. But he liked so much, at the same time, drawing out the tantalizing physical curiosity about what path her hands would take on their own.

Her fingers knit their way through his chest hair, massaging into him, and he licked his lips as she reached his nipples. Oh-so-lightly, her fingers glanced over his nipples, passed on, came back, and circled round. She knew exactly how to drive him crazy.

“Summer, don’t—” He forced a breath in as her hands froze at the word
don’t
. “Don’t fake it.”
Shut the hell up
, his dick said.
What do we care if she fakes it?
But Luc had always cared. His penis had always argued with him, and his mind had always imposed that whiplash order on its straining animal hunger:
She will not fake it with
me. “If you don’t want to, if you don’t feel all right, I—”

All her kissing and stroking had stilled. “Fake it?” she said stiffly.

Oh, fuck, he had ruined it. His body ran riot, a flood of hormones that tried to kill his brain once and for all.
Just leave us the fuck alone and let us enjoy this,
his hormones beat the revolt at his dictatorial brain. “Never mind.”

She bit his back, very gently, just this tiny challenge of teeth. “What do you think I’m faking, Luc?” Her hand slid downward in a curious, twisting path over his chest.

Hell. He took deep breaths, trying to focus. He had a relentless focus. Right now, it was honing in on nothing but her hand, sliding against wet skin, only a few centimeters above his dick. “Nothing,” he whispered. Oh, God, he hoped.

One finger—just one—finished that trail down to his penis and slid lightly, tantalizingly to its tip. “And why would I fake?” she asked.

Yeah, he’d pissed her off with that one.

“I don’t know,” he said roughly. “To—please me.”

“Oh, to
please
you.” She brought her thumb into play, this maddeningly gentle, squeezing exploration of the blunt tip of his penis. “Well, we wouldn’t want
that,
would we? I mean, God forbid I should please you.”

“Summer, please…”

“No, no, no.” She gave his damn dick a little scolding finger tap and lifted her hand away. “We wouldn’t want to start pleasing.”

Shit. He pressed his face into his arm, gripping that showerhead for all he was worth. “I take it back. Do whatever you want.”

Wait. How had his hormones just
won
?

Her hand hovered, as if uncertain of its right to touch. “
Whatever
I want? Are you sure?”

“I just—oh, God, Summer don’t stop.”

“No?” A thread of fresh intrigue in her voice.

It licked at him, that intrigue. Licked right over his dick, which leapt for it. He wanted to turn around and grab her, and even more than that, he wanted to find out what she was going to do to him if he held still. “I don’t even care,” he said helplessly, pressing his forehead into the bend of his elbow as he gripped the showerhead, his muscles straining. “I don’t even care if you’re doing it to please me.”

“You don’t?” she murmured, her hand circled around him fully. “How interesting, Luc.” There was a hint of a wicked smile in her voice as teeth caught at the skin of his back and nipped again.

Oh, yeah. Do that again.
His hips surged against her hand. “Please me,” he said roughly into his elbow. “
Merde.
Yes. I want you to.”

“Do you,” she murmured, drawn out, lingering, just the way her hand lingered in its stroking path up him and back down. “And you don’t even care if I’m pretending?” Her hand slipped down and cupped under his penis, a full but gentle hold of his balls. He jerked in pleasure.

“I care,” he ground out, into his arm. But—

“Are you sure? What if I tell you I’m faking it right now, Luc? And that I don’t want to do this?” Her hand rubbed, gentle and lazy.

He frowned fiercely into the bend of his arm. He did care. He would
not
let her fake it with him. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, he—

“Would you want me to stop?” She withdrew her hand.

“No.” The word expelled harshly against his arm. “Summer. Please.”

“Ah.” She licked his back again, like a reward. And her hand came back to his erection, curling around it, her thumb riding the length of it in one kind, cruel stroke. “So you would want me to keep doing this, even if I’m hating every second of it?”

“Summer.” Her hand fisted him and drew slowly the length and back. “Damn you.”

Her other hand slid back around to his back, and then down, to clutch hard into one buttock as she drew her fist back up his erection. “Would you or wouldn’t you, Luc?”

“
Yes
. Yes, damn it.” The water beat down onto his head and back, too hot. Was it beating on her head, running in rivulets around her face pressed against him? “Oh, God, I think part of me would
like
it. Like you doing this to me as some kind of game.”

“Well, there’s where we run into a problem, Luc.” She squeezed his butt hard, then ran her hand under and between his legs to cup his testicles as she stroked up and down his penis again. “Because I’m not really hating any second of it. But it’s true that now it’s become a little bit of a game.”

“I’m going to make you come so hard after this, Summer,” he swore into the corded muscles of his arm. “I don’t care if you like it right now or not. You
will
before I’m done with you.”

“Oh, now,
that’s
my Luc,” she murmured, playing with pure malice with just the tip of his penis and nothing more, rubbing and rubbing over the tip.

So much helpless pleasure surged through him, all mixed up between arousal and that way she had said “my Luc”.
Yes, I’m yours. That much hasn’t changed at least?

And you’re mine. I’ll show you in just a minute, Summer. I’ll make
you
beg.

“You know what I want you to imagine, Luc?” She turned her palm from him long enough to let water fill it, then wrapped all that wetness back around his penis and let the water spill from her fingers as she drew them tight up the length of him and back. “That all this hot, tight wetness”—she went up on tiptoe and grazed her teeth across his nape—“is my mouth,” she whispered, hot, just behind his ear.

“Don’t you
dare
.” He would come too fast, he would like it too much. He’d never let her do that to him. He couldn’t treat Summer that way.
Oh, shit, yeah, he could. If she dropped to her knees right now...

A laugh against his back. That drove him
crazy
. She was still enough in control to
laugh
? To be
having fun
? “I can’t even suck on a Popsicle reliably right now, Luc, so maybe we should wait until the morning sickness dies down. But I’ll keep in mind that you told me not to dare.”

“God.” He was going to break this damn showerhead. “Summer, please. God. Just—tighter, all right? Faster. Just let me—finish off.”
Because as soon as you do, I have plans for you.

She laughed again, a little sound that whipped all through him. He was the one who was in control. Sure, they had played a little at other things since they got married, but never for long. He always flipped it. He’d never let her drive him to the breaking point before he took back that control and made sure she at least broke at the same time as he did, if not before. “I like this,” she murmured, her voice far too light, far too pleased with herself for how crazy she was driving him. “This is fun.”

Fun
. “Summer,” he said between gritted teeth.

“Oh, you poor baby,” she cooed, starting to slide her hand back and forth in a steady rhythm. “Is that better?”

“
Yes.
”

“A lot better?” she murmured into his back. She shifted, dragging her breasts against his skin, which shot something fierce all through him. Oh, so she wanted texture, too.
Just you wait, soleil. I’ll give you some texture on your breasts. Two more minutes.

Yeah, right. If he lasted two full minutes, it would be a miracle even of his control.

“Or would it be even better like this?” Her hand tightened, moving faster.

He groaned, wild. He hated that wildness in him. Yet he wasn’t going to stop her. He wasn’t going to turn around. “
Yes
,” he whispered into the muscles of his arm.

“But what if I wanted to take my time, Luc?” Her hand slowed down. “You know how I like lots of petting. What if I wanted to just pet you all over your back for the longest time? You have such a gorgeous back.” She rubbed her face against it.

“Summer.
Some other time.
”

She laughed and bit him again, sharp and fierce. He thrust into her hand, and thrust again, and nearly wrenched that showerhead off the wall.

“Just tell me fast or slow,” she whispered, as her hand moved. “You don’t have to use words. I’ll accept grunts and groans.”

He wasn’t a
savage
. “Tighter,” he managed between his teeth. That sounded like a grunt, didn’t it?

And then a hiss of a groan into his arm as she obeyed.

“God, this makes me happy,” she said out loud, wonderingly, just before she cupped his balls again with her other hand, pressed her hips into his buttocks and her breasts into his back as hard as she could, and made him come.

Luc hung exhausted from the showerhead, the water dripping down his body like sweat. But it was water, washing him clean again. That wild, wild creature he carried inside him eased now, at peace and a little smug, while his brain tried to recoup its power over his body. Over his heart. Oh, she was so going to pay.

That wild, satisfied part of him wanted nothing so much as to go to sleep, with her trapped under his arm, but his brain had long experience of driving him past any level of fatigue.

He turned, pain lancing through his hands as he finally loosed his grip on the showerhead. “Happy?” he challenged, intentions twining through his voice, so wicked he could taste them.

Her face startled him. Because she did look happy. Not even smug herself, just luminous with delight and relief, hair dampened to dark gold that smeared across her face, blue eyes sparkling and soft all at once. “Yes,” she whispered, lifting her arms to curl her hands over his shoulders, snuggling her wet body into his.

He lifted her up in his arms, grabbing a fistful of towels off the rack as he carried her out of the bathroom. “How do you feel?”

She shrugged, moving one hand as if it searched for words. “Delicious,” she finally decided, her eyes brimming with a hint of mischief but mostly just that happiness. It was an extraordinary thing to try to digest, that she could look so happy because she had made him come.

Was it at all possible he should—loosen up a bit? Relax his need for control? Trust her with him?

Shit, didn’t he already do that? Was that, too, still a work in progress?

He
liked making her come, too, but he wasn’t sure he would quite define what he felt in those moments as happiness. It was fiercer and harder and more possessive. More animal, more hungry.

Well, we’ll just have to work on your hunger levels, won’t we, soleil?
He didn’t like being the only animal in the room.

He tossed towels onto the bed and set her onto them, pulling and tugging ostensibly to get them smoothed out under her—and then wrapping them suddenly around her body, a snug double-wrap that trapped her arms, the ends tucked under her body. She could wriggle free, but it would take her a while.

“Luc.” She protested, but she was laughing.

Laughing. As much as he liked her laughter, there were moments when a man would far rather make a woman scream.

“Let me know if you need anything,” he murmured, pushing her legs apart. Like, if she got suddenly sick again, it would be good if he didn’t
miss that signal
this time around.

“Luc.” It was a pretend protest. He knew those, very well. Her eyes had widened, and her sex—oh, yes, he could see how hot and wet she was for him. So she really had enjoyed that game. In more ways than one.

He slid his hand against her, enjoying how easily and deeply he could rub, how the lips of her sex were already parted and lush for him. She drew a breath and tried to wriggle her arms free. He grinned at her, feeling astonishingly light now that his own arousal no longer drove him so ruthlessly. It wasn’t, actually, an experience he had ever had. He
always
made sure she came first, and often several times. It was a very strange thing to realize that they were married, and she was going to have his baby, and until a few minutes ago in the shower he had never physically yielded himself to her before. Never just let her have control.

And that yielding of control had cost him so much he meant to recoup triple payback right now.