"Yes," Mira said softly, still hiding herself from him, not quite ready to drop her guard, not that he could blame her.
"You didn't tell her my name," he remarked. "You didn't tell her about my past with the Order." Head lowered, eyes rooted on her, he took a step forward. Then another. "You kept my secrets. All of them."
"Of course," she replied.
"You protected me," he acknowledged. Now he was standing directly in front of her, right at the edge of the open shower. "You did that for me, even though I gave you no reason to."
She gave him a faint nod, arms still crossed over herself like a shield. "Yes."
Her inhaled breath turned into a little squeak as he walked into the water with her, clothing, boots, and all. He stood before her, getting drenched head to toe and not giving a damn about it. "You could've made a clean break today. Goddamn, I wish you had."
"I - " she began, but he cut her off with a hissed curse.
"You could've been gone from all of this. Instead you helped clean up a mess that belonged to me, then you had the tenderness of heart to look in on one of my injured crew." He shook his head and gently took her hands in his, pulled them away from her naked body. He dropped a kiss to each of her clenched fists. "After everything I told you out there today, you stayed."
She stared at him, her lips parted slightly, breasts rising and falling with each rapid breath she drew into her lungs. Kellan was still holding her hands. Slowly he lowered them to her sides, away from the beauty of her nude body. "After everything I've done," he whispered harshly, "not only today, or eight years ago, when I left, letting you believe I was dead, but since the first day we met, Mouse. Ever since then, since the very beginning, you've stayed with me. You've always had my back."
"I always will," she replied. Her voice was quiet, but her eyes were resolute. "When you love someone, that's what you do."
Kellan went still. He could hardly move, could hardly command his lungs to pull in breath. "Don't say that, Mira. That's the worst thing you can say to me right now."
"Why?" She gazed up at him under the spray of the shower, her skin bathed in warm light from the heat of his eyes as their hazel color flashed with sparks of amber. "Why shouldn't I tell you how I feel about you?"
He searched for his voice but found only an otherworldly growl. "Because when you say that, it makes me want to hold on tighter to you when I should be letting you go. And I need to let you go . . . before things get any worse."
"Then let go, Kellan."
Her words took him aback. It was a command, spoken without edge, without the slightest waver. He stared at her beautiful face, at the courageous, unflinching eyes and impish nose with its smattering of light freckles. At the stubborn mouth that had never given him an ounce of pity, not even when it came to pleasure. A mouth that was pressed into a flat line now, waiting for his response.
"If you don't love me," she said, "if you truly want me gone . . . then let go."
He didn't. His fingers stayed clamped around her hands, going tighter, despite every sane and logical cell in his body telling him - no, demanding him - to release her now and walk away.
"Fucking hell, Mouse," he hissed, low and lethal. Then, without a second's warning, he brought his head down to hers and took her mouth.
The kiss was hard and deep and possessive. He couldn't give it to her any other way, not in that moment.
And she took him for all he was worth. He sent his tongue past her lips, groaning with animal need when she sucked at him, her mouth opening to him on a broken sigh.
His veins were on fire, shooting lava through his limbs, into his head and heart, into his groin. He laced his fingers through hers and guided her around with his body, until he was crowding her back against the wet wall of the shower. Her nipples were beads he could feel through the soaked fabric of his T-shirt. Her curves were soft and lush, melting perfectly against his hard planes and ridges.
Kellan lifted his arms, taking hers with them on an upward slide along the wall, until he held her hands high above her head. He pinned her there, caught in his grasp and bound by the weight of his body leaning into her. Still kissing her, devouring her mouth, he ground his stiff erection against her abdomen. She felt so good, his pelvis jerked on its own, his cock giving a hard leap behind the tight confinement of his jeans.
He dropped his head to her neck and kissed her there, making her moan and shudder beneath his lips. "Fuck, Mira," he growled against her delicate, water-sluiced throat. "Fuck."
He rocked into her, his clothing soaked, head delirious with the warm, wet scent of her naked skin and the sweet, honeyed fragrance of her arousal. His fangs throbbed, filling his mouth.
A taste of her sweetness.
He needed it now.
Her blood called to him, but it was another nectar that drew him away from her neck on a ragged snarl. Only then did he let loose her hands, sinking down in front of her, kissing his way past her breasts and ribs, then lower, along the muscular softness of her belly.
She made an impatient noise in the back of her throat as he took his time getting where he was heading, mouth and tongue and lips sampling every inch of tender skin they ran across. With one hand on her breast, he smoothed the other along her side, raising gooseflesh in his wake and making her tremble with tiny, sigh-laced spasms.
As he kissed her body, his roaming hand slid down the length of her thigh, then came around to the inside and began a lazy upward path along her tender flesh. A nudge of his fingers opened her thighs to him. He smiled against her stomach at her eager response, then delved the tip of his tongue into her navel while he trailed his knuckles over the silky petals at her core.
He parted her with his fingertips and slid them into her hot cleft. She quivered in his hand, breath catching and shaky as he stroked his thumb over the tight little pearl nestled at the top of her slit. Kellan's fangs surged even longer in his mouth, desire knifing through him.