Chapter Seventy Two
The shower felt like heaven, but the blood flowing down the drain looked more like hell.
It ran down my legs and broke away from my skin, dissolving under the hot caress of the water spraying on and across my body. My lower torso ached like crazy... it genuinely hurt to move.
Forget walking funny, I'd barely been able to stand when Sebastian had finally woken me up from my nap around eleven at night. When we'd headed into the bathroom together, he'd had to help me since my legs hadn't worked properly.
Now I was experiencing pure bliss.
I had never been more grateful for a shower in my life.
He was being super careful with me, contrary to all his comments about him not being kind, or gentle, or compassionate. I stood under the liquid heat, running my hands through my long hair and waiting until it was completely doused to gently work some shampoo into the strands.
The bathroom was very steamy and did well to warm my skin, but Sebastian's hands did a far better job of making me shiver. My toes curled as he ghosted his palm across my belly, slickly gliding them higher across my chest, and then lower, using a soapy rag to wash me clean.
I could feel how turned on he was but he was reigning himself in and I appreciated that far more than I wanted to admit, despite being fairly turned on myself.
Words simply cannot explain the emotions that were running through me as I stood there, washing my hair with his massive body resting hot against my back, his hands treating my skin as if it were made of glass, or something fragile that would break if he got too rough.
The silence between us was punctuated by the hiss of the water. Words didn't need to be spoken for him to know what I was feeling about all of this.
I was happy.
It was such a simple and common emotion for most people... but me? Never. I hadn't been happy, or felt true joy, or felt delight, or even such honest, open contentment in so many years that I'd literally forgotten how wonderful of an experience such positive emotions could be.
I'd gotten so used to being sad, depressed, and lonely that being happy had sent me into an almost dreamlike daze... I think the word I'm looking for is euphoric. I was euphoric, running on an emotional high that I hoped would never fade. Finally breaking down the walls between us had been like taking a drug for me and my broken emotions.
I tilted my head when his fingers brushed against my neck and gently prodded down across my shoulder, kneading and massaging in a way that almost made me melt. I almost let out a groan but I stifled it in favor of rinsing my hair free of the shampoo and moving onto the conditioner.
"Your hair is well-maintained," he suddenly muttered, and I paused to turn my head with a smile touching my lips; I didn't open my eyes for fear of soap getting into them. "Growing it out this long and keeping it the same length takes effort and dedication. You don't even have split ends."
"Thanks, but it actually took years and years to get it how I wanted it," I admitted. "I still have to maintain it like crazy, too, it's a lot of work."
"Is it worth it?"
"Well, yeah," I said, surprised. "I mean, having super long hair makes me feel good."
He was silent for a few seconds. All I heard was the water pattering on the shower floor.
"You wear it well," he eventually said; I swallowed when his big hands suddenly came to rest on my hips and held me still. His wet body pressed against me from behind and I shivered before sinking into his skin. I could feel every inch of him, from the brush of his body hair, to the heat of his muscled abs, to his happy banana which loved to poke me constantly.
And I felt contentment.
No embarrassment. No shyness. No hesitation.
Those barriers were gone.
I pillowed my head against his chest as his arms came around me, wrapping me up in a tight hug that made me feel safe. Water ran down across us as we stood there, facing the stream, letting it rinse away the lingering remnants of what had happened between us.
His hand shifted and brushed my cheek.
"I love you."
The admittance made my heart swell just like the words he'd spoken before I'd fallen asleep.
'Thank you for being born.'
I didn't think he'd even intended for me to hear it, which made it that much more powerful.
"I love you, too," I said honestly, carefully pulling away from his embrace and turning around so I could wrap my arms around his middle. I felt his hands come to rest on my spine, holding me against his chest, and I smiled a bit as a very light feeling set my insides aflutter.
This situation was a new one for me since William and I had never showered together, not even once. We'd taken turns because he'd been extremely OCD about his cleanliness and showers had always been his me-time. Not that I hadn't wanted to, of course, since there had been more than a few times when I'd wanted to be close to him... but it had never happened.
Sebastian was giving me this first and I was, admittedly, thoroughly enjoying it.
After a long while had passed, I finally pulled away from him and dunked my head back under the water, rinsing the conditioner out so I could open my eyes. I felt his hands touch my rear as I was doing so, and I heard him move slightly behind me as he carefully kneaded my flesh.
A flash of pain shot through me and I flinched when he spread my cheeks.
This is gonna take some getting used to, I mentally thought. What is he even doing?
I admit, I felt a little awkward, but I simply continued what I was doing and waited.
"I did a number on you," he finally grumbled, squeezing my flesh a bit harder for a second; the touch soon vanished and I felt his hands come to rest on my arms. "I... it's pretty bad. It'll be a while before it'll stop hurting, let alone before we can..."
The implied action lingered on his lips when he stopped talking. I sighed, finished rinsing the soap out, then slicked my hair back before looking up at him. Water trickled across my face and over my lips in warm little rivers as I baldly met his eyes.
"That doesn't mean you have to fully hold back," I gently reassured him. "You and I, we're together now... officially. There are other ways to give each other love, you know?"
He instantly raised an eyebrow at me, clearly curious as to what I meant.
I took a deep breath, heart rising up my throat, and gathered my courage.
This was a big, big step for me. And I mean big.
I let loose a huge sigh and refused to think too much as I carefully sank down on my knees.
I heard a muffled intake of breath and I looked up at him to see his eyes were wide, brows raised, but a slow, creeping look of hunger was sliding into that surprised expression. Just as I was about to steel my nerves and do the deed I'd committed myself to, I heard a knock on the door.
"Um, Bash?" Tiffany shrilly called, panicked voice muffled. "I think Aerin hurt himself! The smell of his blood is literally everywhere in the loft and even in his room, but I can't find him!"
My heart palpitated and I stopped, staring up at him with an awkward expression, but a wicked little smile slid across his lips.
"He's in here with me, Tiffany," he called in a husky tone, refusing to break eye contact with me as I knelt frozen directly in front of him, "and I admit he was hurt, but it wasn't intentional. I just happen to be a little too large and wild of a man for my own good, it would seem."
I heard a gasp, and then an almost deafening thud from the hall.
"You two really had sex?!" she screeched against the wood, and I rolled my eyes. "Oh, EM, GEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Wait, does this mean you two are in the shower together?!"
"Yes, we are," Sebastian purred, setting a hand on my head; I tensed when he pulled me forward because suddenly my face was on his... on his... "Now, if you'll do us a favor and let us be, we have unfinished business to attend to."
"Ah, sorry about that, but it might have to wait," Tiffany thinly called, and he froze; I blinked, still trying to get past the fact that he'd shoved his heaving junk against my face. "Richard found a werewolf pack down in South Carolina that has information about the vampire attack."
Sebastian tensed, eyes darting towards the door, and just like that the sexual tension vanished.
He instantly bent down and carefully helped me stand up before turning the water off and opening the sliding glass door of the shower. Lifting me up with literally zero effort, he hefted me over the edge of the tub's lip and set me down on the floor.
"I'll be out in a second," he growled, grabbing a towel from the cabinet and roughly dragging it across his curly hair. "Give us a moment to ourselves."
"Totally!" she giddily squealed through the door. "I'll be waiting for you outside, okay?"
Sebastian didn't answer her and the bathroom was suddenly silent. Water dripped onto my shoulders and off my fingertips as I stood there, looking up at him through dazed eyes. I watched him dry off, watched the way every single flex of his muscles made him ripple.
How did we end up this way? I hazily wondered. I almost went down on him. Like... actually.
Not that I minded, really. I would have done it without a second thought since I wanted to love him as much as he'd done to me, to show him through my actions what I thought of him and make him feel wonderful. From joy and happiness to physical pleasure, I wanted to give it all.
My stare was not light, however, and his luminous eyes quickly met mine.
He paused in the middle of drying his hair, traces of that wicked smile coming back.
"You've never done anything hotter than that," he said flatly, licking his teeth as he slowly eyed me up and down. "I admit... it caught me completely off guard. It's more than unfortunate that we were interrupted just as it was getting interesting, but I hope that when I return--"
"I'll be sure to love you in every single way," I interrupted, smiling up at him from the core of my soul; he instantly blinked, his own smile fading under the force of my own. "I promise."
He looked at me for a long time, gaze flitting across my features, across my body, and his eyes trailed across a single droplet that trickled down across the bite he'd given me. He let out a heavy sigh through his nose and padded forward, both arms coming around me.
I relaxed as he held me tightly; one hand fisted in my hair, the other clutched my waist.
"I'll do right by you," he rasped in a voice that came from the bottom of his throat. "For every hurt I inflicted on you in the beginning, I will do something to make your life better. I will do whatever it takes to bury our beginning beneath positive experiences. I want you to make this face all the time... this one. Not the face that looks like it expects everything to just... fall apart."
"Wait, w-what face?" I asked, startled. "What do you mean?"
"The smile you just gave me," he snorted, letting go of my wet hair and rubbing my back. "It was the very first time I've ever you seen you grin like that... the first time I've ever seen you fully happy, at all. To me, that says you weren't until now and I don't want that."
"Uh... but--"
"My stubborn nature and inability to move on brought you intense suffering!" he barked, and I blinked at his scowl. "It wasn't that long ago, either... it is not just you who feels that this thing we have between us is happening a little quickly. We have not yet had time..."
He trailed off, arms squeezing so tight that I suddenly had trouble breathing. I wheezed as the air was forced out of my lungs and quickly squeaked, "it's in the past! Let's just move forward! Make happy memories, become happy people. Not just me, but you, too."
He seemed surprised if the way he stiffened was any indication. He pulled back, copper eyes growing so dark that I had a bit of trouble telling where his pupil ended and his iris began. His hands remained on my arms, dark gaze flitting across me with a raw expression.
"You want me to be happy?" he quietly asked, bald stare dragging across my face. "Then... you need to live a long, healthy life with me. Don't act rashly if there are ever any emergencies... don't put yourself in danger."
"Um, why would I?" I asked, frowning. He immediately leaned down, back curving until we were nose to nose. My breathing hitched at his proximity and petered out altogether when his arms snaked around my back, eyes growing extremely harsh and utterly intense.
I wondered about that for a second, wondered why he was looking at me like...
Oh.
Ohhh... he was referring to the incident with Cassidy, wasn't he?
"I didn't think, I just acted," I instantly rasped. "I know it was a stupid move on my part, and my injuries were nobody's fault but my own, but I'd be lying if I said I regretted it. If things hadn't turned out the way they did, bad as it all felt at the time, we probably wouldn't have ended up together like this. I'd probably still be... going through a lot, with no respite or outlet."
Sebastian instantly lifted his hand and cupped my cheek with it, thumb stroking the skin below my eye before dipping to stretch around my jaw, though he didn't grab it with force or anything. I couldn't and didn't resist when he slowly turned my face away from his.
My eyes fell closed.
"Look," he growled, coming close to my ear with his mouth. Hot breath hissed, hairs on the back of my neck rising to attention. "Look, Aerin."
I opened my eyes.
He'd turned my face toward the full-body mirror stretching across the wall beside the sink. Our image was a provocative one, the two of us standing completely naked and pressed closely together, his massive body dwarfing mine and casting a striking contrast between his bronze skin and my extremely pale flesh. I looked like a ghost, a veritable white wraith standing frozen before a Roman God, someone who truly belonged in a movie about the ancient Spartans.
His stubbled mouth lingered next to my ear, large hand touching my ashen face, fingers ghosting near my wide silvery blue eyes even as his amber ones narrowed and smoldered. He was looking at me in the mirror out of the corner of the one facing the reflection.
"Do you see what I see?" he asked, tightening his grip on my jaw. "Tell me."
My brow furrowed; what was he talking about?
I couldn't keep focused, he was so close and—
He growled softly, making me shiver. The hand on my jaw let go, crept upward, and cupped my cheek. His fingers pressed against the left side of my forehead, just shy of my temple.
"Look there," he said, and I did.
Admittedly, I hadn't thought to look at the aftermath of the damage done to my temple in a mirror since the incident had happened, but what I saw actually shocked me. Just beneath my hairline was a small dent in my flesh, as if a chunk of skin had been ripped out of it.
"Oh, my God," I muttered, furrowing my brows in concern. "I didn't notice th--"
"Do you see what I see?" he demanded again, and I stopped talking, mouth shutting; he crushed his pelvis against mine and I jumped when his junk slid between my thighs. I blinked rapidly, trying not to move, but he kept us together and forced me to stare at the mirror. "Tell me."
I took in our reflection, from our faces, to our contrasting sizes and skin tones, to the spot where our groins were crushed together, and then back up to our faces.
We were two different beings in almost every single way, from our body type to our origins to our initial ethnicity to our age gap, even to the fact that we were different supernatural species. He was a werewolf, big, strong, kinda scary--a being who was just as much a vicious animal as he was a man. I, on the other hand, was a vampire... a monster that couldn't keep living unless it took another person's blood and drank it. Small. Pale. But not because I was what I was.
I was a fake human, a leech in a cute disguise. And yet, the two of us were together... he was holding me tightly and we were joined, right then, in a very intimate way. He had all of me, and I had all of him... despite what we were, despite what we'd been, despite what we'd done.
"I see love," I said after a long time, pushing my face against his warm hand. "You're holding me now, your skin on mine, because we connected."
"Connected?"
"Mmhm," I confirmed, nodding. "Think about it. We're supposed to be natural enemies, but look at us. We're together because we overcame a fuck ton of obstacles. What I see, Sebastian, is the sheer result of being a good person on the inside. We're here because we're both good men. "
He snorted, eyes crinkling in amusement as he drawled, "you're hardly a man."
I rolled my eyes in response to that since he had a point. The reflection in the mirror looked like it belonged to a girl, even more so than usual thanks to the angle he was holding us. I couldn't see my junk thanks to him keeping us crushed together in such a weirdly intimate way.
"Are you flexing or something?" I finally asked, giving him a half-lidded look. "Like, I know you're big and all, but come on... you don't need to rub it in by literally hot-dogging me."
He scoffed and turned my head to face him directly, forcing me to make eye contact.
His expression, however, shocked the hell out of me.
Pure, unadulterated lust, mixed with frustration, passion, desire, possessiveness, fury, and love... it smashed into my gut with the force of a weight that left me powerless to move. It was just as raw and chaotic as the expression I'd seen the night I'd wanted to leave him.
The night he'd broken down.
This time, however, the storm was completely different. His irises rippled, and I could only watch as his face shifted into an unfamiliar mask. We stared at one another, completely silent... him with that strange, unfamiliar tempest of raging emotion, and me with brain dead awe.
I felt a bead of water detach itself from my hair and trickle down across my chest.
His glinting irises dropped to the water on my skin, tracing its path with that sharp gaze. The hand holding my jaw lowered and I shivered as a sharp nail traced the line of my collarbone before he followed the droplet's shiny path down to my stomach.
He caught the drop with his fingertip.
I watched, dazed, as the droplet came up, hovered on nothing in front of his lips... and then he licked the water off, white fangs flashing between his parted lips. The gesture made my toes curl even more than the fact that his junk was literally squashed between my thighs.
"I have every intention of loving you, thoroughly," he huskily informed me, leaning close to my face and pressing a warm kiss against my mouth. I would have sank into it but he pulled back and finally moved away from me, returning to drying off his body and hair. I stood there, face flushed with shock and a myriad of other, much less innocent feelings.
I stared at him like an idiot, not knowing what to do with my hands, my legs, my brain, it just wouldn't connect. He threw the towel at me and it landed on my head, obscuring my vision; I heard a jingle and a few rustles as he pulled his jeans on.
"So, what's the deal with the vampire attack?" I finally asked, and he paused. "Why did they target you?"
"I don't know," Sebastian told me lowly, "but, I have my suspicions. They had a familiar smell about them which bothers me immensely since they'd all been recently turned."
"What do you mean?" I asked, baffled. "You're telling me a bunch of vampires who weren't vampires not long before that night decided to just up and attack you guys? Why?"
"That's what we're trying to find out," Sebastian informed me. "It came as a shock to all of us since the East Coast of the United States is werewolf country, through and through, and vampire attacks happen very rarely here. I believe that the coven responsible for butchering Richard's former packs and both of his previous families actually had something to do with this."
A cold chill immediately crept through my stomach and I stared at him without blinking.
"You mean... the vampires that... did all the horrible shit to him?" I asked, mouth going dry. "The ones that raped him and his family before killing them all right in front of him?"
"Yes," Sebastian roughly admitted, letting loose a threatening hiss through his teeth. "The monsters who scarred him physically and psychologically were all Shifters. He finally found someone who might have answers about it, though, so I'll be heading back home for a while."
"Okay," I said, but suddenly he paused and turned to look at me.
"You could move back in, you know," he quietly informed me. "After what happened between us yesterday morning, and then again earlier this evening... and just now, in the shower... having you move back into my home would be ideal. I am not good at pacing myself, however, and I am not certain if such a move would be happening too soon. So, that choice is up to you."
I thought about it for a second.
"At some point, yes," I admitted, then shook my head and said, "but to be honest, I like it here. I mean, we are officially going out now and we're also making intense progress, but at the same time we've only been a couple for... like, a week? Two weeks?"
"Roughly."
"Yeah," I sighed, shrugging. "We're just starting out, and while I admit that becoming intimate is a bigger step than moving back in, I somehow don't think we're at the house key stage just yet. Let's give it another month or something and see where we're at then, okay?"
"Hn, that's a good idea," he stoically admitted, pulling on his shirt. "If that is the case... I will be back as soon as I possibly can be. I will text you when I make it home, but if there is something you need to discuss or say to me after I leave, don't hesitate to call."
"I won't," I promised, and he suddenly paused, damp hair falling into his face as he glanced at me... well, specifically at my aching rear.
"Let Woodrow help you around the cottage if you need it," he quietly commanded. "You're going to be hurting for a while based on what I saw. Again, I'm sorry for rushing into things."
I self-consciously shifted my weight and said, "I still enjoyed myself. I mean, didn't you?"
As if I had thrown a switch, his face changed, going from apologetic to arrogantly cocky.
"I think your busted ass speaks for itself," he flatly informed me, bobbing his bushy eyebrows a few times when my jaw dropped; instead of saying anything further, he set a hand on my towel-covered head and mussed it up it before walking past me. "I'll call you later once I know what's going on. If you decide to hop onto Atlas Chronicles later today, let me know. I'll join you in playing it before I return."
"Y-yeah, okay," I chimed, watching as he opened the bathroom door; he glanced back at me, amber eyes softening for a second as we made visual contact.
"I love you," he rumbled.
"Love you, too," I said back. "See you soon."
"Hn."
And with that, he was gone, and I was left standing there in the bathroom. I would probably have happy danced around the bathroom like an idiot if I wasn't hurting so damn much, but I still settled for humming a happy little tune as I dried myself off and got ready for my night.
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Author's Note: Hi guys! I've got a question for all of you readers about the story cover! I need an opinion on which you think is better.
Cover A
Cover B
Let me know your honest thoughts.