“Your arm, scarred or not, is part of you, Sloane. I didn’t marry only the unmarred parts of you.”
Her look dropped to his chest. “There is more of me marred than you think, Reiner.”
“You mean your stubbornness? How angry you can get at me? How you like to swing a knife in my general direction far too often? How you still look at me with eyes laced with suspicion?” He stepped in closer, only the thinnest slice of air between his naked skin and hers. “I see all of it, Sloane, and I married all of it. Your arm—the scars on it—are all part of what led you to me.”
Before she could protest, he slipped his forefinger beneath the edge of the kidskin and tugged the glove down her arm. She didn’t resist. And with every inch he pulled it down, baring her scars to the light, his cock grew harder. Harder because she was letting him in.
Finally.
Letting him past the deep and deadly moors she had surrounded her heart and head with.
“So I take all those parts.” The glove went down past her wrist and he dragged it free of her fingers. Gently, he took her left hand and lifted it to his lips, the puckered skin oddly soft under his touch. “I celebrate them, for your body is amazing.”
Her eyes lifted to him, narrowed with suspicion. “Amazing?”
“That this could happen—your arm could go into flames, burn you, and your body managed to rebuild itself out of nothing. Out of charred flesh.” He lifted her hand in front of him, studying the tight, white stretches of skin. “It is a wondrous thing. True, I don’t imagine it looks like it once did. But it is whole, sealed again from the world. Tougher because of the trauma. It is amazing.”
The suspicion in her look drifted away, leaving only her blue eyes sparkling, glossy with tears in the light streaming in through the window. Accepting what he said, even though she fought it with every breath. “You are exasperating.”
He grinned. “And I would also like to bed my new wife.” His eyes flicked to the tub. “Or bathe her.” He looked back to her. “Actually, both.”
She lifted herself on her toes, her hands going about his neck as she kissed him. Her lips parted instantly, and he tasted her, savoring the sweetness of her mouth. Hell, he was hungry for her.
But he needed to slow this.
The first time was too fast. There had been no savoring of his body in hers. Of her folds stretching around him, taking him in so leisurely it was torture to move slower and torture to move faster.
He wanted all of that. Time to revel in every inch of her body.
And it needed to start in the tub before they lost all of the warm water.
He broke the kiss and stepped into the tub, grabbing the washcloth and the bar of soap on the floor as he did. He settled into the tub, leaning back against the slope of the metal. It had more space than it appeared and he spread his legs, even though he had no intention of having Sloane sit between his legs. She was going to sit on top of him or he was likely to come on her backside.
He reached out and grabbed her hand, tugging her toward him and only releasing her when she had to grab onto the side of the tub for balance.
She stepped into the tub, her feet between his legs, and for a breath, she looked unsure of what to do. He would have dragged her down onto him immediately, but he caught sight of the smooth creamy skin on her backside and couldn’t resist running his palms over the rounded swells. He tortured himself until the need to have her tucked tight to his body overrode all his thoughts.
With a groan stuck in his chest, he pulled her downward into the water, setting her on his lap just in front of his shaft. Damn. Not enough space. Not for how he wanted her body spread out and writhing.
Soap first. With discipline he never knew he possessed, he scratched the soap against the washcloth and set to scrubbing her back. Her head moved back and forth, soft moans coming from her throat.
“Dunk your head so I can get your hair.”
She moved slightly forward and leaned back the best she could in the tight space, sinking her head below the surface of the water. Mud seeped from her hair, spreading into the tub. He set the soap quickly into the strands, scrubbing the dirt free the best he could, and then tugged her upright in front of him.
He scuffed the soap onto the washcloth and dragged it up and down her arms, then purely for his own pleasure, dragged the cloth, and his fingers across her breasts far more times than necessary to clean her skin.
She leaned back against him as the washcloth took to every nook and cranny he could reach. He had taken to the task of cleaning her body with his control intact. But as his hand holding the washcloth slid between her legs, she wiggled on top of him and her right hand reached up to wrap around his neck. The movement unhinged him. Agony set into his member as her backside writhed against him.
The pain swelled so intense it forced him to jerk his hand from between her legs. “You’re clean.”
She craned her neck to look up at him. “I am?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Her head dropped, her look forward as she wiggled her backside against him. On purpose or inadvertently, the cruelty of it sent him near the edge of sanity. “I did think there would be more to bathing together.”
“More?” The word strangled from his throat, his control almost gone.