I screech, throwing the pajamas I picked out up in the air when I find Damianos waiting for me in the bathroom.
He’s dressed in drawstring pants and a Henley shirt that looks like it was handwoven from the softest cashmere. Whatever the material, it clings to his muscles like it was specially designed to make me drool.
Panting emoji, but still, I have to ask, “Where did you come from? Is scaring the shit out of me, like, your new thing?”
“Did I scare you?” he asks, his tone as ancient and bored as ever.
“Yeah, you scared me. What clued you in? The heart attack I nearly had or the way I screamed?”
His amusement ripples over our mate bond. Free as it wants to be, no squelch. I guess he doesn’t have any problems letting me know he’s laughing when it’s at my expense.
“If your heart were really so weak, you would have died in childbirth.”
He’s laughing, but his point brings up another question. “Do you regret that? That I didn’t die like I was supposed to? That I’m standing between you and your revenge.”
The little bit of amusement he allowed me to feel cuts off abruptly. And cue nothing but numb coming down his side of our mate bond.
“Come now,” he says before I can ask him again. “It’s time for your bath.”
Chapter Twenty
Damianos steps aside to reveal four classical columns surrounding a whirlpool bath encased in a block of marble with stairs carved into it.
Now that the shock of finding him here is receding, I can hear the water bubbling and smell the same fragrance he used in the baths Other Him gave me at the gatehouse.
“You did this for me?” I ask, my heart constricting with all those memories.
Instead of answering, Damianos steps up to me and bends his head far enough to close the foot of space between our two heights. His golden gaze locks onto my brown one as his fingers find the deep V of my dinner dress. And his lips hover. Right above mine.
I feel his fingers compress at just the right spot on the plunging V of my dress. Then there’s a small click before it loosens enough to fall into a puddle around my feet.
I stand there frozen as the nanite shaper I’m wearing underneath meets the same fate. And then suddenly I’m naked as the day I was born.
I let out a shuddering breath.
Other Damianos never undressed me. He was more the watch in awe as I stripped type.
But Damianos…had I thought him disinterested? Because now…
Now, I can see the raw hunger in his eyes as his lips hover over mine. And I’m standing here in front of him without a stitch of clothes. The loving father he showed me over the past week is gone. He’s a hunter. And I’m the prey completely exposed.
Will he try to kiss me? Consume me? My heart speeds up with both possibilities.
But then he takes a full step back.
“I shall help you into the bath.” The unspoken Reverence hangs thick in the air between us as he offers me his hand, without breaking our gaze.
And I find myself unable to look away, even as I climb the steps to the tub and lower myself down into the warm, bubbling water.
There’s a sponge waiting on the lip of the bath. But before I can touch it, Damianos snatches it up and pushes up the sleeves of his shirt. Is he going to…?
My heart thrills with remembered glee when the answer to that question turns out to be yes.
He begins to sud me up, just like his other version. But somehow not like him at all. Other Damianos was careful…reverent. Whenever he’d bathed me, I could feel his awe, uncloaked and pure, radiating over our mate bond
There’s nothing pure about the dragon bathing me right now. His gaze hits my body along with the sponge, hot and hungry. He soaps my neck, then my shoulders, then my breasts. He’s not quite back to his old size, but all those muscles are definitely on the comeback. I watch the tendons flex underneath his arm as he moves the soap over my body.
“Do you remember how you touched me when I was tied up to that bed? How your hand pumped my male works until they spilled seed all over me? I imagine it made you feel very powerful to see me so weak.”
I’m guessing contrite is the way he wants me to be feeling right now. But not going to lie, he nailed how it felt for me to make him come like that. Powerful is the exact right word. In fact, a new heat rises inside of me at the memory, even as I playfully inform him, “It was the only way to shut you up.”
“I wonder how it would feel to have me exert such power over you.”