“Come here,” I beckoned, curling my fingers, and he raised his brows, already closing the distance.
“Are you all right?”
Impatience crept through me. “I’m fine, but I want you to shower with me.”
Blunt? Perhaps. Still, I wanted him in the shower with me. I wanted to touch him. With the sole exception of the night before I’d entered the stasis tube here, he’d kept his hands off of me for anything more than to help me.
Andreas stripped and then stepped into the shower, his dark eyes searching my face. When I looped my arms around his neck, he stepped into the spray with me. The brush of my nipples to his chest had me sighing, even as he tucked his finger under my chin, and then his mouth closed over mine.
A huff of laughter interrupted our kiss, and I jerked my head back to glare at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Querida, you look at me like you want to devour me, and you’re kissing me like you could pull my soul into yours.”
“I do want you,” I informed him, irritation adding an archness to my tone. I skated a hand down his arm, then to his side, and finally to his hip. The weight of his erection already pressed against my belly. “The only question I have is are you going to keep holding back from me?”
With calloused hands, he cupped my face and then pressed his lips to mine. The warmth of the water raining against our cheeks added to the kiss. At the first press of his tongue, I opened to suck against his mouth, and then I wrapped my fingers around the stiff length of his cock.
I teased my fingers along the length of him as he all but pulsed in my hand. His groan against my mouth made me smile, and then I bit his lower lip gently until he lifted his head. Running my tongue over my lower lip, I savored the taste of him.
“I want you,” I continued. “Will you let me have what I want?”
His eyes heated, and his hands drifted to rest against my hips. The tension in his fingers seemed to vibrate against me, but he didn’t dig them in. No, he still treated me like spun glass. We would get past this, too.
“Anything,” he promised, but when he would have pulled me forward, I shook my head and squeezed his cock.
“Then lean against the tile,” I whispered, stroking my free hand down his chest as I lowered to my knees. His eyes widened, but I didn’t release my grip on him.
“Querida…”
“Shh,” I ordered, the ferocious need inside of me a damn demand. He was so careful with me. I adored him for it. But I wanted something far more than just careful caresses. I wanted to break through his reserve and show him just how much I loved him.
How much I needed him.
“This is what I want,” I whispered against the crown of his cock as I stroked it along my lips. Lifting my gaze, I locked eyes with him as he sucked in a deep breath. The crack in his expression let the lust out though, and I smiled.
Yes, that was a good start.
It had been too long since Andreas let me touch him. Even in the memoriam, he’d held himself aloof. “I missed you,” I said before swallowing around his cock and taking him as deep as I dared. My jaw ached almost immediately, but I ignored it as I braced one hand on his hip and kept the other wrapped around his base.
The taste of him on my tongue was achingly familiar and yet new. The fact that he loved me was not in question, nor was my love for him. But the need to be more than just the person he had to save, to be his partner again, to feel him unravel under my touch, even as I longed to have his hands on me?
The desire invaded every part of me. Too many lost moments. We were still not whole.
We wouldn’t be until we had them back, but we could have this.
His resistance crumbled before my eyes, and it was a beautiful thing as he fisted my hair and then began to help guide me as I sucked against his dick like it was my favorite treat. To be honest, right now, it absolutely was.
I took the discomfort and even the faint gagging as I swallowed around him while his muscles began to tremble. Tightening my thighs together, I stroked my tongue along the underside of his cock and fisted him just a bit tighter as we moved together. He gave my hair a tug as he groaned, and I savored the sound.
His release hit him so swiftly, it left him shaking as he came down my throat. My neck hurt and my jaw was sore, and even my scalp protested the fact that he’d pulled so tightly, but I craved the pain.
Craved it like I craved him.
Andreas dragged me up, and then his mouth closed over mine and I clung to him. I needed his help to keep my own wobbling legs beneath me. When he stroked his hands all over and pressed me to sit against the lip and began to kiss his way down my chest, I let out a little laugh.
“What?” he teased as he settled between my thighs, nudging them wider. “You thought only you got to play?”
“Never,” I whispered, and trailed my fingers down his cheek. “I missed you.”
“No more,” Andreas told me, his tone brooking no arguments. “No more missing each other. No more being apart. We survived. We will find them. We will reclaim our lives.”
I hoped he was right.
“Believe, querida,” Andreas informed me. “Until you do, I can believe for both of us.” He said something else, but I lost the words as he licked me from entrance to clit. My hips bucked, eager for more contact, and it was my turn to grip his hair because he was merciless in driving me to orgasm.
He had believed in me and for me for so long.
It was about damn time I found it in me to believe too.
Chapter 3
“In all the wild world, there is no more desperate a creature, than a human being on the verge of losing love.” - Atticus
DIRK
The fist slammed into his side. He let out the barest of grunts as the air pushed from his lungs. Every day, the same routine. They really needed to work on their style and delivery. His arms were strung up with his wrists in shackles and suspended from an eyelet in the ceiling. They kept him elevated just enough that his toes touched the hard, concrete floor, so he had nothing to brace against as today’s host delivered several sharp jabs to his sides and back.
They never came at him from the front anymore.
A slow smirk curled his lips.
But this guy was getting sloppy.
They usually attached weights to his legs.
This asshole hadn’t bothered, because Dirk hadn’t even struggled when the squad of men dragged him inside. Hatch was still recovering from whatever the fuck they’d been doing to him, and they’d started using him as leverage to get Dirk out of the cell.
He could almost tune out the beating. Sure it hurt, the bruises were probably reaching his internal organs by now. But they weren’t killing him. For some reason, they wanted to inflict pain but not lasting damage.
Torture-Boy rained his fists in rapid succession against Dirk’s back, three kidney shots before another grunt escaped, and it was more from the harsh exhale than anything else. Pain could be compartmentalized. He’d learned harsh lessons early in life. Army training only honed those skills. A life with Valda perfected them.
Valda.
Just the thought of her was enough to flood his system with oxytocin. Fuck, he almost sounded like the woman who owned him mind, body, and soul. The keenness of her intellect always reflected in her dark eyes when she sought to understand something, whether it was part of her work or one of the men in her life. Then her teeth would scrape across her lower lip if it was especially puzzling, and he always wanted to go and kiss her.