that she needed to watch her tongue unless she was looking to get punished, but instead I just pushed my soaking sweatpants off of my hips and let them fall to the tiles with a splat. I kept my boxers on, though it wasn’t like the tight material left much to the imagination.
I moved beneath the hot water, keeping my eyes off of her so that I wouldn't be tempted again as I turned to face the white tiles on the wall.
I flinched minutely as the soft touch of a sponge brushed against my spine but made no other reaction as Tatum slowly rubbed circles over my skin with it, cleaning my body and taking some of the weight off of my soul at the same time.
We said nothing but once she finished washing me, she dropped the sponge and her hands slid up my spine instead.
I opened my mouth to protest, but before any words made it past my lips, her fingers curled around my shoulders and she began to gently massage the tension from my muscles.
A low, deep groan rolled from the back of my throat as she slowly worked her way lower, finding kinks and knots along my spine and easing them with a firm and purposeful touch which had the knots in my soul unfurling just a little too.
When she made it to the base of my spine and her fingers were skimming the waistband of my boxers, I turned to look at her and she pulled her hands back.
I took her jaw in my grip and turned her face up to mine as I shut off the water.
"Do as I say tonight, okay?" I asked and she nodded silently, her eyes filled with questions I had no intention of answering. Certainly not today.
I made a sound of appreciation and released her, stepping out of the shower and pushing my wet boxers off as I went. My cock sprung free, hard and proud and fucking hopeful as ever even though I absolutely wouldn't be giving in to its demands. But at this point it seemed ridiculous to try and hide it from her. I wasn't a slave to my body any more than I was a slave to anything else though, so if she thought my desire for her was some kind of victory over me then she was sorely mistaken. It only made me more dangerous to her.
I dried myself off and then wrapped a towel around my waist, keeping my back to Tatum as she stripped out of her wet underwear and dried off too.
"Get dressed in that," I commanded, pointing at Kyan's shirt without even bothering to hide my distasteful sneer.
"But this is Ky-"
"I thought you were going to do as I say?" I asked in a hard tone.
Tatum bit her lip and pulled the baggy band tee over her head and I nodded once in approval.
"Follow me," I commanded and I led her back out through Kyan's room to the main part of The Temple where the other Night Keepers were well underway scrubbing the walls. The graffiti was thankfully coming off fairly easily and they’d flipped the dining table upright again too. One of them had even managed to fix the chair I’d broken and I spied a drill and some screws sitting on the kitchen counter, fighting off the desire to shudder at the thought of manual labour.
"I gave the whole place a sweep to make sure there's no chance that anyone was still in here. The door down to the gym and the crypt were locked anyway and the rest of the building is clear," Kyan said as we passed through and I nodded my approval.
I didn't miss Tatum's sharp inhale which said she hadn't considered that, but I ignored it as I led her up to my room.
"Get into bed," I commanded, refusing to look towards my bathroom which I knew was still in a state of disrepair since I'd lost the plot earlier. There were still tiny splinters of glass from the mirror lodged in my knuckles but I didn’t have the patience to sit with the tweezers and extract them at the moment.
Tatum slipped away from me and moved beneath the covers, eyeing me in a way that said she expected me to punish her and wasn't totally against the idea. But I wouldn't be doing any such thing tonight. I couldn't. I was on the ledge and about to free fall off of it. I