Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,122

minerals of the springs from which it was fed.

He looked down at the filth of himself and grimaced. “I need to wash off first.” Not a man in any way uncomfortable with his body, he went to strip off his pants so he could step under the large showerhead to the right when a sudden heat burned his cheeks. “Do you . . . ?”

Husky laughter. “Did I not tell you archangels have the same parts as any man?”

He was about to scowl at her when she put her hands to the bottom of her tunic and pulled it off over her head. He almost swallowed his tongue. Sharine wasn’t wearing a singlet today.

Holding his gaze, she pushed down her pants and the little scrap of lace and silk she’d been wearing beneath.

Titus was finding it difficult to breathe, and when she said, “Hurry,” he thought his rib cage would crack in two.

Almost tripping over himself in his haste to strip off his pants, he looked up just in time to see her undo the tie on her hair. A river of gold-tipped black tumbled down her back, almost reaching the curve of her ass.

He hitched on the last word. It seemed a highly inappropriate way to think of the Hummingbird.

But this wasn’t the Hummingbird. This was Sharine, who stepped under the falling water and gave him a look sultry and impatient. He joined her, his hand already on her very fine ass. Turning, she picked up the simple washcloth he preferred over the fripperies his staff occasionally attempted to foist on him, and soaped it up.

Then, as he threw back his head under the cleansing cascade of water, she ran the washcloth over every inch of him she could reach, wiping away the blood and gore and the stain of death. He’d been hard since the moment she entered his suite but his erection was a rigid length of iron by the time she was done.

Closing soapy fingers around it, she stroked.

He gripped her wrist. “Enough torture for now, Shari.”

Laughter full of primal delight and a kiss so reckless that he gripped her hips and hitched her up. She immediately wrapped her legs around his waist. Pressing her back against the simple black tile of his bathing chamber, her wings a dazzle of color, he reached down between her legs to pleasure her . . . only to find her slick in a way that had nothing to do with water.

A groan tore out of him as he broke the kiss to look down, watch his fingers move on her, in her. She clenched around his finger, her hands tight on his head when he bent to suck one dark pink nipple into his mouth.

He could feast on her for days, months, years . . . forever.

Shoving aside the need in his heart and all that it implied, he worked another finger into her. She wrenched up his head. “Enough.” Chest heaving, she kissed him again, all tongue and demand. “I would have you now, Titus.”

He could no more deny her than he could suddenly become a quiet man. Moving backward and out of the water, he sat down on the wide ledge of his bath, with her seated on him, and then he let Sharine take him. He, a warrior archangel who’d never allowed anyone to have him, allowed her whatever it was she wished. She was incredibly tight and at one point, he gripped her at the waist to slow her descent.

“No pain, Shari.” It came out ragged, the pulsing heat of her clenching on the top half of his cock scrambling his mind. “I’ll never cause you pain.”

“I’m just”—a breath—“a little”—another breath—“out of practice.” Pushing away his hands, she put her own on his shoulders and sank home with a soft cry that almost made him lose his seed then and there.

Muscles quivering—he, Titus, quivering—he held motionless as a hunting lion as she adjusted to his length and girth. Her core spasmed around him. It tore a primal and aggressive sound out of him, but Sharine didn’t scare. She slid her hands up his chest as she leaned in to kiss the center of his Cascade tattoo.

He swore the gold of it pulsed.

“You’re perfection in how you’re built,” she said to him. “But more, you have a courage and a heart that beguile me.”

He wanted to preen at the caress of words, but he had his teeth clenched in an effort to find a small measure