thighs, and narrowed, sculpted waist, before dropping lower to his seemingly perpetually hard cock.
Her fingers curled, as if imagining grabbing for it.
Jaxor walked forward and dropped into the hot springs. A groan of pleasure escaped his throat and Erin’s breath hitched, her body throbbing with that sound, remembering a similar one he’d made as he climaxed all over her thighs.
“No sharks, female,” he rasped after a moment, those blue eyes piercing into her. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her again or not.
The lantern’s light wasn’t bright. It flickered off the cave walls like a candle might, casting most of the space behind the pool into darkness. When Jaxor dunked his head beneath the water and then resurfaced, he raked a hand through his short hair, pushing it back, that golden light reflecting off the water on his arms. The tattoos seemed to glow from it.
Erin’s heart was beating fast. A sound escaped her—it sounded embarrassingly like a whimper. But why, oh why did he have to look the way he did? It made everything so much harder.
Before she lost her nerve, Erin got close to the edge, sitting, dangling her legs in the pool. Jaxor hovered close, looking up at her. She realized he wouldn’t give her the luxury of looking away as she undressed. He wanted to see her. He was going to see her.
A stray thought came to her. She wondered what he would do to her, right then, if there was nothing lingering over them. No promises, no memory of past actions, no expectations, no threats. If they were just two beings, impossibly and insanely attracted to each other, promised to one another through magic and something that felt a lot like destiny.
She wondered what she would do to him. Her blood was roaring and pulsing hot with all the possibilities.
This felt like one of those moments in life…the point where something would irrevocably change. For better or worse, but definitely permanently. Something unchangeable.
Erin reached for the hem of the tunic she’d stolen from Jaxor, one of a thicker material than the one she’d been wearing. She pulled it over her head and let it drop.
Then she pushed off the edge, hot, steaming water greeting her, blanketing her limbs, relaxing her muscles. Despite the heat, her nipples were pebbled underneath the water.
The water was deep. She searched for the bottom, but found none.
“Come,” he murmured, that voice weaving through her body. “There is a ledge so you can sit.”
He surprised her—again—by taking her hand away from where it was clutched to the edge of the hot springs. He guided her over to a place at the back of the pool, nearest the darkness that the lantern’s light couldn’t reach. She thought of the kekevir, but Jaxor seemed to read her thoughts.
“They do not live in this mountain,” he soothed, bringing her to sit on a little nook in the pool underneath the surface of the water. It was perfect for sitting, for soaking. The water lapped at her collarbones. “My female fears many things,” he noted softly, looking at her.
My female.
Her stomach clenched in longing and she sunk into the water until it came up to her chin. Her face felt flushed, but at least she could pretend to blame it on the heated water.
“Maybe with good reason,” she finally said. She determined he was tall enough to stand at the bottom and it made her feel slightly better—that there wasn’t this endless abyss beneath them. The water came up to the tops of his shoulders. Erin found herself relaxing.
“I do not like the dark,” he confessed, reaching forward to rub a strand of her hair between his fingertips, the action strangely intimate, but not out of place. As if he’d done it a million times before.
What is happening? she wondered, blinking. He was willingly telling her a fear, a vulnerability?
“It’s dark back here,” she whispered, feeling a little breathless. He’d come closer. She was acutely aware of how naked they both were. How easy it would be for him to reach out and widen her legs. How much she wanted to feel him there, how she could almost imagine how his hips would feel digging into her inner thighs.
“I do not mind it so much right now,” was his reply. “Because you are here.”
The water was a blessing because it hid the scent of her arousal, which was becoming harder and harder to control around him. In her mind, she struggled with processing it