She wasn’t out of the woods yet.
In more ways than one.
CHAPTER 3
Rhys burned.
He lay swaddled by the sleeping bag, facing the fire, trapped by the weight of the woman who curled with her back to him. Every contact between their bodies seared him: the shy brush of her feet, the tickle of her corkscrew hair, the thrust of her shoulder blades.
She was so warm.
He hadn’t expected that, hadn’t known he could be moved by something as simple and profound as the stutter of her breathing or the scent of her unwashed hair. It’s only human to care…
But he wasn’t human. He hadn’t let himself be human since he was eight years old. Or even half human. Caring was out of the question.
Restlessly, she stirred, her round buttocks bumping his heavy sex. She froze.
“Relax,” Rhys said, his lips moving against her hair. “I can’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered.
He grinned reflexively before his smile faded. He didn’t want to like her. It would make what he intended much harder.
Lying beside him, she pulsed with life and energy, solid and smooth as an egg, firm and ripe as a peach. Juicy. He wanted to turn her over, spread her wide, and sink into her living, giving heat.
He clenched his jaw, staring over her head at the dancing flames. Not yet.
She had to trust him, she had to want him, or there was no pleasure in possession.
Or revenge.
“Did you sleep well?” Rhys asked in his smoke-and-velvet voice.
They were lying spooned together—close together, Cait registered with the part of her mind that seemed to be working—in his sleeping bag. Beyond the overhang, snow glinted on the rocks and trees. The morning smelled crisp, cold, and delicious. Rhys smelled musky, male, and even more delicious.
Cait didn’t even want to think about how she must smell or what she was feeling and certainly not about what she might actually do next.
In the romance novels her mother loved, the virginal heroines were always swept away by passion into the embrace of dark and dangerous strangers. Cait had never been swept away by anything. But she admitted to a trickle of curiosity and, deeper, more insidious, the slow welling of desire.
She was twenty-two years old. Wasn’t it time she took this particular step into adulthood?
Step, hell. This was a giant stride, a leap of faith. What if she misjudged and fell flat on her face?
“I’m fine,” she said cautiously. “Why, did I snore?”
Or thrash? Or…Oh, God, maybe she drooled in her sleep.
“No.” He sounded amused again. “You just seem tense this morning.” His thumb brushed her cheek, his touch light as a snowflake. Cait trembled. Catching a strand of her hair, he smoothed it carefully behind her ear. “You’re all stiff.”
She cleared her throat. “So are you,” she pointed out.
That was his erection nestled against her bottom.
His soft laughter stirred the hair on the back of her neck and reverberated in the pit of her stomach. “I know something we can do about that.”
She held her breath.
His arm came around her, warm and heavy. She closed her eyes. Don’t breathe, don’t think…
Don’t stop.
A zipper rasped, loud in the stillness. The weight lifted from her abruptly. Cold air rushed in.
Cait yelped. “What are you doing?”
Rhys stood over her, smirking. “You should warm the stiffness from your body.”
She curled on the open sleeping bag, hugging her knees to her chest. “What did you have in mind? A jog through the snow?”
Rhys hefted his small pack and held out his other hand. He had beautiful hands, strong and long-fingered. “Come.”
Ignoring his help, she scrambled to her feet. “Where?”
He nodded toward a fissure in the cliff face behind them, a smooth, narrow passage in the rock. She was glad she hadn’t noticed it last night.
“That’s not a cave, is it?”
He smiled without answering and disappeared into the side of the mountain.
Damn it. She didn’t want to brave some spooky tunnel. In fact, the only thing she wanted less was to wait out here alone. Straightening her shoulders, Cait followed him into the dark.
Except it wasn’t dark. Not completely dark. Gray light filtered from high overhead and glittered from winking minerals in the walls. It wasn’t that cold either, despite the dampness in the air. Her boots scuffled on the gravel floor.
The way widened. The light and heat increased. So did the moisture. It clogged her lungs and ran down the walls. The passage twisted; opened. Steam drifted and swirled above deep, still pools ringed with stone. Water gleamed, dark with the shadow of the cliffs, silver with the reflection of the sky overhead. High above them, trees clung to the lip of the crevasse, their branches sparkling in a sheath of ice.
Cait caught her breath in wonder. “What are we doing here?”
Rhys ventured farther in, stepping from stone to stone until he reached a ledge along the opposite side of the gorge. “I thought you would appreciate a hot bath.”
She would kill for a bath. Her bones ached. Dirt chafed her skin. But…
“I can’t get my clothes wet. I don’t have anything else to wear.”
Rhys shrugged, setting his pack on the ledge beside him. “So take them off.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.” In one fluid motion, he pulled his shirt over his head.
She looked away.
He laughed.
Cait’s head snapped around. She opened her mouth to say something really cutting, but the words died in her throat.
The sliding light caressed the strong planes of his naked torso. She stared, transfixed by the sight of his dark hair spilling against his smooth shoulders, his broad, bare chest, his sleek, muscled arms. Wreathed in steam, silhouetted against the rock, his pale skin glowed in the gloom. He looked like a statue tribute to male beauty, like some ancient temple god brought to sudden, aching life.
She inhaled sharply, the sound echoing off the high walls.
Rhys smiled, taunting her, and dropped his hands to his belt.
She was beyond modesty. Beyond even pride. But she wrenched her gaze away, driven by simple self-preservation.
With her sight frustrated, her other senses yearned for him. She strained to follow the rustle of his clothing, the scrape of his boots, the clunk of his belt buckle. She heard his grunt of satisfaction as he entered the pool. Water lapped the rocks. Its faintly mineral scent filled her head and lungs. Under her clothes, she was hot. Sweating.
“It’s safe now,” Rhys said, his tone mocking.
Did he mean the pool? Or…?
She glanced at him, standing chest-deep in iridescent water, silver, brown, and blue. She could see his face, a shadowed oval, and the perfect column of his throat and the lean grace of his arms. He had pulled some kind of soap from his pack. Its scent, sandalwood and clove, drifted over the surface, mingling with the steam. He rubbed the bar slowly across his chest. Lather broke and ran down his flat brown nipples.
Cait’s mouth dried.
It wasn’t fair he got to wallow naked in all that lovely hot water while she trembled on the edge. She didn’t want to be an observer. She didn’t want to be afraid.
Bracing her butt against the wall, she unlaced her boots and peeled off her socks. The moleskin bandages came with them. She tugged off her jeans, one leg at a time, holding on to the rocks for balance. The stone felt slick against her cold, bare feet.
“Sit,” Rhys ordered. “Before you fall down.”
His eyes were hot and intent.
Her heart beat high and rapidly in her chest. Her hands trembled. She fumbled with her bra beneath her T-shirt, sliding the straps down her arms and off. Stepping out of her panties, she sat gingerly at the pool’s edge, feeling the full, shock
ing contact of warm stone on her naked bottom. The steaming water felt like heaven on her bare, battered feet. Her toes curled in pure pleasure.
She grasped the hem of her shirt. “Don’t look.”
Rhys raised his eyebrows.
Okay, he was going to watch. She swallowed thickly. She wanted him to watch.
She yanked her shirt over her head and slid off the boulder. Warming, soothing water rushed up her naked thighs and over her breasts. She gasped, her feet seeking the smooth, rounded stones at the pool bottom. Heat washed her, wrapped her, seeped into her. The water glided over her skin like silk, decadent, glorious. Her senses sprang to quivering life.
Rhys waded toward her. Cait held her ground as he stopped less than an arm’s reach away. The reflective surface of the water shielded him from sight. She was acutely conscious of his nakedness. And her own.
His skin was smooth and flawless as a child’s, but there was nothing childlike about his sleek, heavily muscled chest. Nothing innocent about the warm, lazy gleam in his eyes.
A different heat bloomed in her, opening under the water like an exotic sea flower, soft and strange, flowing, swaying with the pull of an unseen tide and the pulse of her blood.
She moistened her lips. “I’ve never done this before.”
His brows arched. “Very few have. This place is not on any of your maps.”
“No, I meant…I don’t normally take naked baths with strangers.”
Or have sex with them, either.
Her mind shied from the thought. But under the warm clasp of the water, her body accepted it. Welcomed it. Thrilled to it.
“I can’t do anything you don’t want me to do,” he said again.
She wanted him to touch her. She longed for him to sweep her away, to relieve her of her decision and all responsibility.
Grow up, she told herself. She was done waiting for things to happen to her. For her.
It was time she made things happen for herself.
“I want to touch you,” she said.
Something flickered in his golden eyes that wasn’t mockery. He braceleted her wrist lightly with his fingers and put the bar of soap in her hand.
She clutched it. “What’s this for?”
Stupid. It was soap. She was filthy. Obviously, he wanted her to wash.
He held her gaze. “Wash me.”
Oh.
Oh.
Okay.
She ran the flat, slippery bar over his chest. He went utterly, absolutely still. Encouraged, she washed him with bold strokes above the water and tentative forays under it: his broad, smooth shoulders; his lean, muscled arms; his flat abdomen and silky thighs. His erection brushed her arm, full and hot, and he made a sound low in his throat. His eyes glittered. She paused, hands shaking, heart pounding.
“Caitlin.” Just her name, in that dark, fluid voice, a command and a plea.
The blood rushed to her face. She touched him as she longed to, her fingers exploring under the warm water, tracing the smooth, blunt shape of him, testing his weight, his thickness, his unyielding stoniness.
The air grew humid and hard to breathe. She opened her mouth, and the scent of cloves and sandalwood filled her lungs, fogged her head, and lingered on her tongue.
“Now,” Rhys said.
She looked at him, lost. Now?
In the depths of her mind, a thought, a warning, a remnant of caution darted and disappeared, lost in dark and hazy delight.
His lips curved. “It’s my turn to wash you.”
Oh, yes.
He slid the soap from her hand.
He was very gentle and very, very thorough. His soap-[ ]slick hands flowed over her, before, behind, between…Her knees wobbled. He nudged his leg between both of hers, supporting her, positioning her to ride his hard thigh as his palms glided up to close on her breasts. The pressure above, the friction below, made her crazy. She foundered, gasping with pleasure, drowning in sensation.
Swept away, after all.
Rhys clung to the sheer edge of reason by his fingernails. It was her fault. Caitlin’s. She was hot and wet and eager, distractingly pink, delightfully awkward.
He wanted her.
Craved her.
And that was wrong.
She was supposed to crave him. He had leashed his own desires, smothered his feelings, and turned his considerable talent and technique to making her want him. To making her writhe and shudder. To making her twist and burn. To binding her to him.
But every time she gasped and floundered, flailed or grabbed at him, he felt himself slip another inch. She threw him off his rhythm. His heart pounded out of control. His blood thundered in his ears.
Cait arched and gulped, her curling hair sodden in the water.
She was messy, he told himself. A noisy, clumsy human.
And he yearned for her as he once yearned for his soul.
His hands shook. He forced himself to go slowly, penetrating her very gently with one finger, focusing on her pleasure, her arousal. He petted her, stroked her, over and over, torturing them both with exquisite restraint.
Caitlin sat up abruptly, water streaming down her back. “What are you doing?”
She was panting. So was he.
“Giving you pleasure.” Only after he had brought her to peak after shattering peak could he risk losing himself in that hot, pink body.
Her face flushed. “I don’t want you giving me anything.”
His hand stilled. “What?”
“I’m not getting off while you watch. I want you in this with me.”
“I’m here.” He rubbed himself against her to prove it, clenching his teeth against the excruciating sensation.
She grabbed fistfuls of his hair and dragged his face to hers. “Then be here,” she said, a demand and a plea. “Be with me.”
He shuddered. “I can’t. I don’t—”
“Do it.”
His control snapped and broke. His lust and his need sprang forward like unleashed beasts, snarling and clawing.
How could she? How dared she?
He pushed her hard against the rock and crashed into her with all the finesse of a boar in the underbrush.
She was ready, wet, aroused, but he heard her cry of shock or pain. His mind screamed at him. He was doing it too fast. Too hard. All wrong.
He couldn’t stop himself. He had to…He needed…
His hips pumped. His vision blurred. Her hands tightened in his hair. Scored his back. She felt so good. So hot. Water sloshed over them both as he pounded into her, lost in urgency, in simple animal hunger. He was frantic for her, desperate for the slap of flesh on flesh, for the hot, tight clasp of her body, for the grunt of her breath against his cheek, in his ear. He was shaken, shaking, coming apart.
For a man whose survival depended on his lack of feeling, who prided himself on his exquisite control, it was over embarrassingly quickly.
She cried.
He should have expected that, Rhys told himself as he held her body and stroked her back. But he had never touched another human’s tears, never known a mortal’s grief. Even his own father…
He shoved the thought away.
Her tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, precious, hot, and harrowing. He licked them, pressing his cheek to hers, wracked, unmanned by the musky scent of her skin and the salt taste of her in his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said against her temple, into her hair. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m all right. I asked for it.” Caitlin raised her damp, flushed face. Her smile wobbled, twisting his insides. “Literally.”
Rhys frowned. She shouldn’t be making jokes. “I hurt you.”
He intended worse than the brief, physical pain of penetration, but she didn’t know about that. He didn’t want to think about it.
Her fingers brushed the back of his neck, her touch soothing. That was wrong, too. He should be the one comforting her.
“Not really. I guess I just wasn’t expecti
ng it to be so…intense.” She attempted another smile. “But I’m okay. It was okay.”
Rhys’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” he repeated.
She nodded. “For my first time. You know.”
He didn’t know anything anymore. All he understood was that she had shredded his control, violated his emotions, turned his world upside down, and for her it was just…okay.
She watched him, her brown eyes troubled. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Defensive, mocking, he asked, “How would you know?”
She shrugged. “Girls talk. At least we weren’t drunk.”
Rhys scowled. He wasn’t drunk. He had no excuse for his uncharacteristic loss of control.
And she…[ ]She was immune. Even in passion, Caitlin remained obstinately, perfectly herself. Instead of being reduced by sex and magic to a mindless, wordless, whimpering bitch, she made demands. Jokes. Excuses for him.
He couldn’t stand it.
Puck, known to mortals as Robin Goodfellow, had warned her: Good won’t always protect you.
But it had. It had.
Instead, she had destroyed him. Challenged him. Not merely sexually—he might have coped with that—but emotionally.
He could barely forgive her for that.
Or himself.
Bracing his hands on the stone by her head, he launched himself from the pool. Water lapped and sloshed. He welcomed the chill on his body. Naked, he pulled a blanket from his pack and turned to offer her a hand.
Caitlin climbed out awkwardly, her bare toes gripping the rock, gooseflesh prickling her arms and chest. Steam rose from her warm flesh. He didn’t want to look at her. He wrapped the blanket roughly around her shoulders and then froze, staring down.
Pink smeared her white thighs. Blood. Her virgin’s blood, streaked with water. Unthinking, he reached to touch her.
She smacked his hand away. “I told you I’m fine.” She pressed her long legs together, pulling the blanket tightly around her. She sounded annoyed. Embarrassed. Not so immune, after all.
And she had cried.
Rhys met her brave brown eyes and felt a weight in his chest that might have been his heart.
If he’d had one.
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