Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [71]
The rough towel slipped around her waist. He pulled her closer, her back to his chest, thin linen doing nothing to shield her from the press of his erection between her cheeks and against her lower back. His free hand flattened across her belly, the towel sweeping slowly beneath her breasts. From deep in her chest, her purr vibrated against his hand, his stomach.
His low voice reverberated against her ear. “You won’t try to seduce me into bed?”
“I don’t need to.” Her head fell back against his shoulder. “This is just as good.”
“It is,” he said, and she heard his surprise. Boldly, he slipped his hand between her legs. She lifted her foot to the washstand, and he swept slowly down her thigh. “I thought it would be torture, but no.”
“You would do that to yourself?”
“Yes. I’d enjoy it.”
She laughed. “Come, Mr. Fox. I will do the torturing for you.”
She slipped into the shirt he’d discarded—God, but she liked his smell. Many in the Horde believed a person’s essence could be trapped in clothes worn so close to the skin. Yasmeen only knew that he was pleasant to look upon and delicious to her senses.
She tugged at his drawers. “Do you truly want to sleep in damp clothes?”
“No.”
The hoarseness of his voice said that this would be torture. Pleasurable, but not as she experienced it. He untied the waist, and they slipped down his muscled legs. The defined ridge over his hips told her he still hadn’t completely gained the weight he’d lost after Venice, but although he’d drunk his meals for two months, it hadn’t softened him. He carried no extra flesh anywhere.
“You keep yourself strong.”
“If I lie around for two months and try to run from zombies, I can’t run very quickly.”
“No, I imagine not.” She rolled the soap between her fingers. “What did you do in Port Fallow? Not running through the streets.”
“I went to the pugilist’s club.” Though his response came easily, his muscles were rigid, his head bent. Waiting for her.
“As your face is still handsome, you must not have fought too many men.”
“They’ve installed the weaving machines. Trying to punch those bags of sand takes more of an effort than fighting.” He closed his eyes. “It’s not half the effort of holding still for this.”
She smiled up at him, then moved around to his back as he’d been to her. Fingers slippery with soap and water, she slid them over his shoulders, washing in a long swathe. His muscles clenched, his buttocks like rocks. Soapy water dripped down his spine to the cleft between. She washed her way down his biceps, his forearm, to his hand. She worked lather into his palm.
“If you wish to wash yourself, Mr. Fox, I will pretend not to notice.”
A hoarse laugh escaped him, and was strangled when her hand slipped around, soaping those delicious ridges at his hip.
“Be practical in this matter, Mr. Fox. We will wake up in Vienna, where we might be chased by zombies. You can try to run after staying awake half the night with a stiff cock, or try to hide what you are doing in your bunk—or you can take care of it now.”
“Ever so practical.” His hand slipped forward. “Sensible.”
Not at all—this was madness for her, too. She listened to his harsh breathing, watched the long stroke of his hand. She could not see anything of what he did but the movement of his arm, but she knew what it would be to bed him. He would be slow. She would scream.
But for now, she wrapped her arms around him from behind and used both hands to soap his heaving chest. His free hand clutched at hers.
“Yasmeen.” He groaned her name.
She slid her inner thigh up the outside of his. She was wrapped almost completely around him now, his shirt wet between them. He stiffened, shook. His back bowed. He brought her hand to his lips and pressed his open mouth hard against her palm. His tongue tasted her flesh as he came.
His breathing