“I’ll take you to our home,” he said simply.
I jerked and stared at him, because I hadn’t thought about that. Now that we were in N’Akkar, that we were mated, we would be living together. It was something that made sense once I had a chance to think about it, but for some reason, my mind wasn’t processing it. Then I grinned. “I hope you have a bath,” I purred in his ear as he led me outside.
He gave me a bemused look. “What is that?”
I stared at him, hoping he was joking, but the steady patience of his gaze told me he wasn’t. Well, fuck. “You don’t know what a bath is?”
“If I knew, would I ask?” The way he tilted his head to the side told me he assumed it was some silly human custom he didn’t know about, like maybe toothbrushes or hairbrushes or something crazy.
“You sit in it and get wet to wash your skin,” I explained.
His puzzled expression turned almost amused, and the shake of his head was fond. “I had forgotten how fond you humans were of wetting your skin.”
Instead of rolling my eyes, I gave him the quick rundown on why, how we needed to get rid of dead skin and how skin oil was a thing and although I could tell he had checked out by the end, the moment I finished he was back on focus. “So that’s why I want one,” I finished.
“Or,” N’Ashtar hissed softly, stepping closer, “you could strip here and I could have my way with you.” The heat in his eyes matched mine, and I could feel his hardness against my belly. I was tempted, I really was. But I also hadn’t bathed, really, in the better part of a week and it was starting to get to me.
“After I get a bath.” I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him close, giving the side of his neck a quick kiss. “Do you have any towels?”
When his bemused look produced yet another no, it was the first time I was tempted to grumble about the annoyance that was the difference in our races. I would have to work with the other girls to come up with something that was a substitute. “I do know where a hot springs is,” N’Ashtar added suddenly. “It is small and it smells, but it has warm water like you wish.”
The smell was probably sulfur, and part of me was apprehensive because I wondered if that meant we were living close to something volcanic, but I shoved it aside with the desperate urge to be clean. “Let’s go then.”
N’Ashtar studied me for a long moment, although the expression on his face was unmistakably fond. “Yes, we shall then.”
“These are amazing!” I sighed happily as I sank into the depths of the pseudo-spa. Yes, it stank like sulfur, but there were almost built-in benches underneath that kept me from sinking and it was a luxury I hadn’t had access to in ages.
“I suppose,” N’Ashtar grumbled, already naked even as he inched closer. When I hadn’t let him grope or kiss me on the walk to the hot spring, he had spent the rest of the time guiding me and scowling at the same time. All the delay, all the time waiting, had just heightened the anticipation, my stomach curling so tight I felt like it was going to explode.
“You could get in here with me,” I teased.
He rolled his eyes, an uncharacteristically human gesture that made me want to laugh. “I am waiting for a promise to be fulfilled,” he informed me tartly.
“Do you have soap?” I ignored that, focusing on scrubbing at least some of the dirt off my skin before I gave in to what the throbbing between my legs was demanding. My nipples were hard, and from the way N’Ashtar’s gaze kept slipping to them, he had noticed. I wasn’t apologetic for my arousal, but I also wanted to get clean before I got all dirtied up again.
“Soap?” Another blank stare.
Mentally, I added that to the list of things I would talk to Hetta about. Maybe she would have ideas on how to create some from what the world provided. I knew she had some experience with the local flora.
“Do you have anything I can use to scrub?” I mimicked scrubbing my arms, not sure how else to say it.
“Sand?” His face lit up and he ducked a hand underneath the surface of the water, going for the bottom that I couldn’t quite reach with my toes. When he returned, his head breaking the surface, his hand had a coarser type of sand piled on it. “Here, this is what we use.”
Except when I tried to take it from him, he curled his hand around it and gave me a sultry gaze. My heart skipped a beat, my nipples tightening and heat pulsing between my legs. Maybe I wouldn’t get a chance to wash off the dirt before I got dirty again. With the way he was looking at me, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Show me how to use this.” His voice was the quiet hiss of his command, and when he handed me the sand, there was a weight to it, a desire to follow what he wanted.
“Probably works the same way,” I muttered, but when N’Ashtar blinked at me, I shut my mouth. I didn’t want him to accidentally scrub my skin off trying to take care of me the same way he did himself. So I showed him.
I’d only managed an arm before he scooped the sand away from me and turned me until I was standing on one of the benches, my boobs out of water and not far from his face. He seemed fascinated with my pert nipples, his forked tongue flicking out tantalizingly close but not actually making contact with my skin.
He started with
