Chapter 6: Drowning in Ecstasy
The heat was the first thing that permeated the haze. Not the dry, prickling heat of the sheets they’d tangled in, but a wet, enveloping warmth that seeped into tired muscles. Lex blinked awake to the rumble of water and the sight of steam curling towards her ceiling. The other side of the bed was empty, the sheets cool.
She pushed herself up, every muscle protesting with a delicious, worn-out ache. The memory of his weight, his possession, flooded back, a visceral echo between her thighs. She found him in the bathroom.
He stood under the rainfall showerhead, his back to her, head bowed as water sluiced over the tense lines of his shoulders, down the network of scars that she had traced with her tongue. The steam softened the harsh lines of him, made him seem less a monument and more a man. She watched the play of water over the fresh, red scratches her nails had left down his back. The sight sent a primal thrill through her.
He didn’t turn. “I can feel you staring,” he said, his voice resonating in the tiled space.
“Good.” She slid off the bed, the cool floor a shock to her bare feet. She pushed open the frosted glass door, the billow of steam greeting her like a breath. The air was thick with the scent of his soap, clean and citrus-sharp.
He finally turned. Water coursed down the planes of his chest, over the mottled patch of skin, catching in the dark hair trailing from his navel. His gaze was dark, appraising, but the raw hunger from before was banked, replaced by something warmer, more possessive.
“Come here,” he said. It wasn’t a request.
She stepped into the spray, the hot water a shock that made her gasp. It plastered her platinum hair to her skull, streamed over her face, her shoulders, her breasts. He simply looked, his eyes drinking her in as the water highlighted every curve, every valley, every silver-line scar.
His hand came up, calloused fingers tracing the raised line along her ribs—the fireplace. “Does it hurt?” he asked, his tone clinical, but his eyes were anything but.
“Only when it’s cold,” she said, her voice barely above the din of the water.
“I’ll ensure you are never cold again.” The promise was simple, absolute.
He took the bar of soap and began to wash her. It was methodical, thorough. He lathered his hands and worked the suds over her shoulders, down her arms, across her collarbones. His touch was firm, reverent. He kneaded the knots from her muscles, his thumbs digging into the tension along her spine until she groaned, her head lolling forward.
His soapy hands slid around to her front, cupping her breasts, rubbing the slick soap over her nipples until they hardened into tight peaks against his palms. She leaned back against him, feeling the rigid length of him press into the small of her back.
“You’re not just washing me,” she murmured, tilting her head back against his shoulder.
“I am becoming acquainted,” he corrected, his mouth against her wet temple. One hand slid lower, over the flat plane of her stomach, through the coarse patch of hair below. His fingers, slick with soap, found her folds. “Every part.”
He didn’t tease. He pressed two fingers inside her, deep and sure, while his thumb found her clit. She cried out, the sound echoing off the tiles. She was still swollen, sensitive from earlier, and the intrusion was a bright, shocking pleasure.
“Frankenstein—”
“Tell me,” he murmured, his fingers curling, scissoring inside her. The water rinsed the soap away, leaving nothing but the slick heat of her and the friction of his touch. “Tell me how that feels.”
“Full,” she gasped, her hands scrabbling against the wet tile wall for purchase. “It feels… god, don’t stop…”
He worked her with a scientist’s precision, learning what made her hips jerk, what made her breath hitch. He added a third finger, stretching her, the burn exquisite. His other arm banded around her waist, holding her up as her legs turned liquid.
“Come for me, Alexandra,” he commanded, his voice a low vibration against her skin. “Let me feel it.”
His thumb circled her clit with relentless pressure, his fingers pumping. The orgasm detonated, a swift, brutal wave that clenched around his invading fingers, wringing a shattered cry from her lungs. She shook against him, vision whiting out as the water pounded down on them both.
Before the last tremor had subsided, he turned her, pushing her back against the cold, wet tile. His eyes were wildfire. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist. The tip of his cock, hard and urgent, nudged at her entrance.
“Look at me,” he growled, the command raw.
Her green eyes, dazed with pleasure, locked on his.
He slammed up into her in one vicious thrust, burying himself to the hilt against the tender, sensitized flesh.
She screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound of agonized pleasure. The tile was cold and hard against her back, a stark contrast to the burning heat of him filling her. He held her there, impaled, his body rigid with the effort of control.
“Is this what you wanted?” he gritted out, his voice ragged. “More?”
“Yes! Fuck, yes! Don’t you dare be gentle now!” she spat, digging her heels into the muscles of his ass, urging him on.
A brutal smile touched his lips. He withdrew almost completely, then drove back into her, hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. The slap of wet skin meeting wet skin was loud, obscene, a chaotic rhythm under the steady drone of the shower. He set a punishing pace, each deep, rolling thrust hitting a spot inside her that made her see stars. The water streamed over their joined bodies, mixing with sweat, with the evidence of her previous climax, with the sheer intensity of the act.
“Harder, you immortal bastard!” she shrieked, her head hitting the tile, her nails raking down the old scars on his back, reopening the fresh scratches. Thin trails of blood welled, immediately washed pink by the shower.
He obeyed. His hips became a relentless piston, his grip on her thighs bruising. Her screamed curses turned to guttural moans, her pleasure building again, a coil of tension pulled impossibly tight. She could feel his own release gathering, hear it in the fractured rhythm of his breaths, see it in the wild, lost look in his eyes as he watched her come apart beneath him.
“Frankenstein… I’m gonna…” Her warning was a broken sob.
“Come,” he demanded, his voice cracking. “Come on my cock. Now.”
The second orgasm tore through her with violent, suffocating force. Her inner muscles clamped down around him in rhythmic, milking spasms. It was the trigger for him. With a guttural roar that was more pain than pleasure, he slammed into her one final time, holding deep as he erupted. She felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release, a seemingly endless cascade that filled her, marked her, as the water tried and failed to wash it all away.
He collapsed forward, his forehead resting against the wet tile beside her head, his body shuddering. They stayed like that for long minutes, panting, clinging, the water slowly cooling around them.
Finally, he lifted his head. His eyes searched hers, the blue now clouded, sated. He gently lowered her, her feet finding the shower floor though her legs trembled. He reached past her and turned off the water.
The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by their ragged breathing and the drip-drip from the showerhead.
He took a large, warm towel and wrapped it around her, rubbing her arms briskly before enfolding her in another. He tended to her with a quiet, focused efficiency that was profoundly intimate. When she was dry, he guided her out of the shower and sat her on the closed toilet lid. He dressed quickly in the clean trousers he must have retrieved from his car, then knelt before her with a first-aid kit she didn’t remember owning.
“Your ankle,” he said, his voice back to its usual calm tenor, though softer. He took her right foot in his hand, his touch clinical. The joint was swollen, a ring of purpling bruising where the thug’s grip had been.
“It’s fine,” she muttered, but she didn’t pull away.
“It is not.” He opened the kit. He produced a tube of salve from his own pocket, something that smelled of herbs and Arctic ice. He applied it with delicate precision, his fingers massaging the cool unguent into the inflamed tissue. The pain melted away under his touch, the swelling visibly receding. “There will be no permanent damage.”
He then attended to the shallow cut on her arm from the shattered phone, cleaning it with antiseptic that made her hiss, before applying a butterfly closure. Finished, he looked up at her. The vulnerability in that look, from a being of such immense power, stole her breath.
“I must report to my Master,” he said, the words seeming to cost him. “The individuals who attacked you… their methods and timing are concerning. They were not common criminals.”
Reality, cold and sharp, seeped back into the steamy room. The boot on the shelf. The knives on the wall. The world outside her apartment that wanted to break in.
She gripped his hand, the one that had just healed her. “You think they were after you? Because of me?”
“I think nothing is a coincidence.” He stood, pulling her up with him. “You will not be alone. I will make arrangements. But I must see him.”
She nodded, swallowing the knot of fear. “Okay.”
He dressed her himself, choosing soft, dark clothing—a long-sleeved shirt, trousers. He laced her boots with a soldier’s speed. He was rebuilding her armor, piece by piece. When he was done, he cupped her face.
“The bridge is built,” he repeated, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. “And I will burn anyone who tries to cross it to reach you.”
He kissed her, not with the devouring hunger of before, but with a searing promise. Then he was gone, moving through her apartment with a silent, lethal grace. She heard the front door open and close with a soft, final click.
Lex walked to the wall of windows, the city stretching out before her in the late morning light. The ache between her legs was a reminder. The healed ankle was a promise. She looked at the solitary combat boot on the shelf, no longer a relic of solitary survival, but a marker of where her old life had ended. She picked up a knife from the collection, its balanced weight familiar and comforting in her hand.
She was not waiting to be saved. She was waiting to fight. And for the first time, she wouldn’t be fighting alone.