Page 68 of Shadow Man
Ican sense the stillness in a moment again.How could I have existed without it for so long?The notes are longer, thicker, and less staccato. All the bad stuff can’t touch me in here.
My body’s not used to it, though. My muscles keep twitching with inactivity, and my brain’s like an overexcited child. Yet, here I am. Lying in a white bathtub, in a dead devil’s lair somewhere in the middle of Colombia, watching the steam rise and the water turn from clear to opaque—recognizing that I’ve been running scared for too long, and that maybe I need to accept it and appreciate the silence, and then roll in it like catnip for a while.
My last thought makes me smile. I don't care about the chaos awaiting me outside these walls, or the list of my wrongs to make right that are daunting and endless. I only have this stillness, this moment, his words…
My God, his words.
How can a man as damaged and dangerous as him spin lines like Shakespeare? I believed in every cadence. I rebuilt from them; I forgave him. He reached inside of my chest, took a firm hold of what was left of me, and then sculpted it in his image.
Right now, I have no expectations for the future, and my past is a haze shade of gray. I just want to stay in this bathtub forever with him fast asleep in the bed next door.
That’s a lie.
I want to crawl into that bed with him and continue my moment there, wrapped up in his sticky warmth and watching his chest rise and fall to the beat of my newly formed heart.
Washing the conditioner out of my hair, I rise from the water, light-headed and drunk on him. With a towel wrapped around my body, I step into the bedroom that Gabriela showed us to earlier. The sun has all but set, purging the white and gold room and its four-poster with the palest of pinks. The cicadas outside are even louder than my thoughts.
Joseph’s shirtless again, sprawled out on his back, with one elbow tucked behind his head, still and silent. I stand in the doorway, appreciating his body even more now that the imminent danger has passed. The man has a set of abs to die for, with a dusting of dirty blond hair that leads me down the happiest of trails. His belt buckle is undone and top button of his blue jeans lies open giving me a glimpse of his black briefs. Skimming the huge bulge pushing against his zipper, I move lower still, down the long length of his legs to his boots with their trailing laces.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I lift one hand and measure it against my own. It’s nearly twice the size of mine, tanned and scarred—
“How was the bath?”
I jump as his fingers close around mine. “Shit! You scared me!”
“I’m a light sleeper, even jacked up on all this morphine.”
My gaze strays to the darkening red stain in the middle of his bandage.
“It's fine,Luna,” he says, sitting up and curling his other hand around my neck. “You smell…delicious.” A knot of panic tightens in my stomach as he burrows his face into my neck. He must have felt me stiffen because he lets go of me right away. “Lie down. Let me hold you.”
He shifts sideways to make a space for me, moving slowly because his chest must hurt like hell. I curl up in the warmth left behind by his body, my back to him and still wrapped in the fluffy white towel. He doesn’t say a word. He just places a heavy hand on my hip as our breathing falls effortlessly in time with one another’s.
It’s another moment. Another perfect moment. So much so, that I find myself reaching down and interlocking our fingers again. After another couple of seconds, I shift backward, and then again, until the hardness and heat coming off his body is scorching me through the fabric of the towel. But still, it’s not enough.
“If you go wriggling on my dick like that again, sweetheart,” he warns, “we’re going to have ourselves a problem.”
“Make me feel safe,” I beg him.
“I’ll make you feel everything.”
His fingers slide from mine to reach for the edges of my towel. With one quick jerk, it falls open to my jagged intake of breath. Rolling me onto my back, he pulls the loose material apart, like he’s unwrapping a precious gift.
“Christ, you’re beautiful.” The rawness of his expression causes my hand to fly out and cover my naked pussy, but he tugs it away. “Tell me you’re nearly a quarter moon.” He cups my breast, rubbing his thumb across the hardening nub of my nipple, before palming the hollow of my stomach with his fingers splayed out. My waist is so tiny and his hands are so large, he conquers the whole terrain.
“Post quarter… Waning moon maybe.” My eyelids flutter shut as I bask in the delicious burn of his touch. “Your declaration by the pool—”
“No,” he says sharply. “I’m earning that status tonight with my tongue and my fingers, not my confession.”
There’s a jolt between my legs and my eyelids flutter open again. “My pussy’s ready and waiting for you, Joseph Grayson. Only you can kiss me better.”
Gray-blues gleam,crystalize, and a smirk touches his lips. “Don’t expect me to be a gentleman and roll over when shit like that is laid out for me. I was shot in the shoulder, not in my dick.”
“I’m not in this bed because I want a gentleman.” I reach out and cup his jaw, his russet stubble grazing my palm, feeling the strength beneath my fingertips and needing to feel a part of it inside of me. “I’m in this bed because I want you.”
“Good… Because I’m a bad, bad guy, sweetheart.” He glides his hand downward and pulls my legs apart. At the same time, the two rings he wears around his neck collide with my shoulder. He pauses, his expression unreadable, and then he’s removing the chain and placing it on the nightstand. “That’s a conversation for another night,” he says, rubbing circles into my belly, and then inching lower until he’s close to where I need him to be. That’s when he leans over and murmurs into my ear,
“Give me permission to slide inside you,Luna.I can tell myself all the words, but nothing will adequately describe how tight your pussy will feel gripping my fingers in the next few minutes.”