My fingers tightened on his.
“They’d have to get through me, Eva. And that will never happen.”
I couldn’t speak past the ache in my throat. The thought of Gideon facing my nightmare… seeing the man who’d done those things to me… tightened the cold knot that had been sitting in my gut all day.
Gideon reached for my shampoo and I closed my eyes, shutting it all out, everything but the man whose sole focus at that moment was me.
I waited, breathless, for the feel of his magic fingers. When it came, I reached out to the wall in front of me for balance. With both palms pressed flat against the cool tile, I savored the feel of his fingertips kneading into my scalp and moaned.
“Feel good?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
“Always.”
I drifted in bliss as he washed and conditioned my hair, shivering lightly as he ran a wide-toothed comb through the soaked strands. I was disappointed when he finished and must have made some sound of regret, because he leaned forward and promised, “I’m not nearly done.”
I smelled my body wash, then-
I arched into his soap-slick hands. His thumbs dug gently into the knots in my shoulders, melting them with the perfect amount of pressure. Then he worked his way down my spine… my buttocks… my legs…
“I’m going to fall,” I slurred, drunk with pleasure.
“I’ll catch you, angel. I’ll always catch you.”
The pain and degradation of my memories washed away beneath the selfless reverence of Gideon’s patient caretaking. More than the soap and water, it was his touch that freed me from the nightmare. I turned around at his urging and looked at him crouched before me, his hands gliding up my calves, his body an amazing display of taut flexing muscle. Cupping his jaw, I tilted his head up.
“You can be so good for me, Gideon,” I told him softly. “I don’t know how I could ever forget that. Even for a minute.”
His chest expanded on a quick, deep breath. He straightened, his hands gliding up my thighs, until he towered over me again. His lips touched mine, softly. Lightly. “I know today was all kinds of fucked up. Shit… the whole week. It’s been hard for me, too.”
“I know.” I hugged him, pressing my cheek to his heart. He was so solid and strong. I loved the way I felt when I was in his arms.
He was already thick and hard between us, but he grew more so as I cuddled into him. “Eva…” He cleared his throat. “Let me finish, angel.”
I nipped his jaw with my teeth and reached down to grip his perfect ass, tugging him tighter against me. “Why don’t you get started instead?”
“That isn’t where this was headed.”
As if it could’ve ended any other way when we were both naked and running our hands all over each other. Gideon could put his hand to the small of my back while we were walking and make me as needy as if he’d put his hand between my legs. “Well… revisit and revise, ace.”
Gideon’s hands came up and gripped the sides of my throat, his thumbs beneath my chin to push it up. His frown gave him away, and before he could tell me why it wasn’t a good idea to make love now, I caught his cock in my hands.
He growled, his hips jerking. “Eva…”
“It would be a shame to waste this.”
“I can’t screw this up with you.” His eyes were dark as sapphires. “If you ever freaked out while I was touching you, I’d lose my mind.”
“Gideon, please-”
“I say when.” The command in his voice was unmistakable.
My grip loosened automatically.
He stepped back and away, his hand dropping to fist his cock.
I shifted restlessly, my attention riveted to that dexterous hand and its long, elegant fingers. As the distance between us widened, I began to ache, my body responding to the loss of his. The heated languidness he’d instilled with his touch turned into a slow burn, as if he’d banked a fire that had suddenly been stoked.
“See something you like?” he purred, pleasuring himself.
Astonished that he’d taunt me after denying me, I looked up… and my breath caught.
Gideon was smoldering, too. I couldn’t think of another word to describe him. He was watching me with a heavy-lidded gaze like he wanted to eat me alive. His tongue slid leisurely along the seam of his lips, as if he tasted me. When he caught the full lower curve between his teeth, I could’ve sworn I felt it between my legs. I knew that look so well… knew what came after it… knew how ferocious he could be when he wanted me that badly.
It was a look that screamed SEX. Hard, deep, endless, mind-blowing sex. He stood on the far side of my shower, his feet planted wide, his ripped body flexing rhythmically as he caressed his beautiful cock with long, slow strokes.
I’d never seen anything so blatantly sexual or boldly masculine.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, riveted. “You are so fucking hot.”
The gleam in his eyes told me he knew what he was doing to me. His free hand slid slowly up his ridged abdomen and squeezed his pectoral, making me jealous. “Could you come watching me?”
Realization struck me. He was afraid to touch me sexually so soon after my nightmare, afraid of what it might do to us if he triggered me. But he was willing to put on a show for me-
“I love you, Gideon.”
His eyes squeezed shut, as if the words were too much for him to take. When they opened again, the force of his will sent a shiver of need through me. “Show me.”
The wide head of his cock was engulfed in his palm. He squeezed, bringing a flush to his face that had me pressing my thighs together. His thumb rubbed over the flat disk of his nipple. Once. Twice. He groaned a rough sound of delight that had me salivating.
The water pounding at my back and the billowing steam that plumed between us only added to the eroticism of the picture he presented. His hand quickened, sliding rhythmically up and down. He was so long and thick. Undeniably virile.
Unable to bear the ache of my tightened nipples, I cupped my breasts and squeezed.
“There you go, angel. Show me what I do to you.”
There was a moment in which I wondered if I could. It hadn’t been so long ago that I’d been embarrassed to talk about my vibrator with Gideon face-to-face.
“Look at me, Eva.” He cupped his balls in one hand and his cock in the other. Shameless, which was such a turn-on. “I don’t want to come without you. I need you with me.”
I wanted to be as hot for him. I wanted him as aching and needy as I felt. I wanted my body-my
With my eyes locked with his, my hands glided over my body. I watched his movements… listened for the catch of his breath… used his clues to know what drove him wild.
It was somehow as intimate as when he was inside me, maybe more so because we were wide open and on display. Totally bared. Our pleasure reflected in each other.
He started telling me what he wanted in that raspy sex god voice:
“Gideon.” I gasped, my fingertips massaging my clit in rapid circles, my hips grinding into my touch.
“Right there with you,” he said hoarsely, his hand jacking his cock with brutal speed and violence in his race to orgasm.
