He huffed a rough laugh and looked like he was trying to repress a smile. “You just don’t let me stop until I’ve beaten him, understood?”
“What exactly are you planning to do?” I asked, feeling my own smile threaten.
“Understood?” he asked, his voice taking on that commanding tone again.
“Understood,” I answered, hoping he hadn’t noticed that I’d already completely melted for him.
Valen slowly undid the tie on my robe, then equally slowly slid it off me.
But that was where the slowly ended.
He picked me up and pressed me against the wall of the shower as his lips claimed mine. I jumped against the chill of the tile, and I felt him smile against me.
Water rained down around us, me totally naked and him fully clothed, but he didn’t seem to care. He just kissed me like the world was ending. Like I was the air he needed to breathe. Like I was his.
“You’re getting wet,” I laughed.
He pulled back only enough to look at me. “So?”
“So, what are you going to tell people when you walk out of the girls’ dorm soaking wet?”
A wicked gleam lit his eyes. “I could say she was a squirter.”
I bit my lip because I didn’t know if I wanted to encourage that sort of thing. “Seriously, Valen.”
His hand ran up my body to cup my breast as he nuzzled into my neck. “Seriously, Harlow. I’m not really thinking about leaving you.”
My hand slid into his hair, and I rocked against him as he pinched my nipple lightly then nipped the skin under my ear softly.
“I thought this was a bad idea?” I breathed as pleasure shot around my body, awakening my senses in the most glorious anticipation.
“It is a bad idea.”
“Yet here you are?”
“Yet here I am.”
“Why?” I pulled his head away to look into his eyes.
“Why what?”
“Why now?”
“Because I don’t fucking care anymore,” he snarled. “I don’t care it’s a fucking bad idea. I want you.” He shook his head. “I need you. And I’m fucking having what’s mine. God be damned.”
We searched each other’s eyes for a moment. Like we were checking we both still wanted it. Like we both needed confirmation that this was bigger than his promise to Apollo. Like we needed one of us to walk away or neither of us ever would.
“Then take it,” I told him.
His lips claimed mine hungrily again. Our bodies moved together against the shower wall. My hands were in his hair. His were running all over my body, which was being held up only by him pinning me, and my legs around his waist. He lifted me higher and nuzzled my breasts.
“Valen…” I sighed.
Having his hands on me, his lips on me, being able to touch him. It felt like the world had been off its axis for the last three weeks and was only now suddenly righted again.
“It’s hardly fair that I’m naked and you’re not,” I told him.
I felt his smile against my sternum. “It’s more than fair from where I’m standing.”