Page 42 of Stealing Cinder

He guides me under the hot spray. Water hits my shoulders and I groan, low and shameless. Five months of cold showers in a studio apartment with bad plumbing melts under the pressure of hot water sluicing over sore muscles. Steam wraps around me, thick as a blanket, and I close my eyes and let my head fall back.

Through the fogged glass, I watch him undress on the other side. His hands work his belt, his pants, dropping them to the tile. He turns and steam blurs his body into shapes and shadow, but the ink is unmistakable. Same torn-flesh landscape wrapping his ribs and back.

Those are the same.

I wipe the steam with the flat of my palm, clearing a streak across the glass.

But what has my attention now is the new ink. Vines climb from the darkness over his heart, wrapping around the script of my name, cradling the letters in thorns and small blooming roses. The detail is so fine, so deliberate, it looks like something living growing from the void.

My hand presses flat against the glass and my breath catches.

He steps into the shower and I step toward him. I reach for him and settle my open palms over my name and the garden growing from the darkness. His heart pounds beneath my fingers, strong and steady, and the warmth of his skin drives the last of the night's cold from my bones.

"I don't know what to say." I trace my name and the fine details of the red roses.

"You filled my heart with love that first night." His voice drops, rough and quiet, and the steam carries his words through me as much as the air does. "Say you'll stay with me. Stay with me and marry me, Cinder." His scarred hands cup my face, tilting my chin up until I'm drowning in the darkness of his eyes. "Now that I've found you, please never leave. Don't make me cuff you to my bed."

"You're kidding."

"Not even in the slightest, princess." His thumb drags across my cheekbone. "I want a forever with you. That is a promise."

I take him in. The hints of silver darken under the water streaming over wide shoulders. The gray in his beard, thicker than five months ago. Muscles built from violence and survival, scarred knuckles resting against my jaw. He is twice my age and can end lives in seconds, yet he’s the most beautiful man I have ever put my hands on.

"What devious thoughts are running through that head of yours?"

"Not devious." My fingers trace the new vines inked around my name. The thorns rise from his skin in delicate shadows. "Answer me something, my villainous prince. Do you ever break your promises?"

"Never." Water runs over his jaw and drips from the edge of his beard. "I’ve spent an entire life keeping my word. I do not plan on breaking that streak now."

I glance down. Blood from the graze on his bicep mixes with the water, swirling pink at our feet before it circles the drain and disappears. I watch it go.

When I lift my eyes, he is closer. One step and my spine presses against the far wall of the shower, the glass smooth and slick against my skin, offering no grip, no friction. Steam billows around us and the rainfall head drowns everything into white noise.

"I know which promise you're thinking of." His grin is deliciously wicked. "You will be screaming daddy by the end of the night. I promised."

I smile back. Tilt my chin higher. Let the challenge settle into my bones alongside the heat of the water and the heat of his body blocking out everything else.

"Then prepare for me to shatter that streak of yours to fucking pieces, because the only way I'm calling you daddy again is if you tie me up and fuck me until I don't know my own name."

His dark eyes hold mine. Water streams over both of us. Steam curls between our bodies. The white noise of the shower swallows the silence and neither of us blinks.

"Deal."

CHAPTER 13

SAMUEL

He doesn't bother turning off the water.

One second, the shower pounds hot against my shoulders and in the next I'm in his arms, my legs locked around his waist, water streaming off both of us onto the heated tile. My wet body slides over his and I grip his neck harder, certain I'm going to fall, but his fingers dig into the flesh of my ass with a bruising possessiveness that says he will never let that happen.

Steam follows us out of the glass enclosure and into the cold air of the master suite. Goosebumps race across my bare skin and my nipples tighten painfully against the wall of his chest. Water drips a trail behind us across the dark concrete. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, the sleeping garden glows silver-green under the landscape lights, still and strange.

He stops at the edge of the bed and tosses me into the center of the comforter.

I bounce once. My breasts bounce twice. His gaze drops to them and the hunger burning in those dark brown eyes is raw enough to strip me of every pretense I've ever hidden behind.

Before I can settle, he grabs a pillow and rips the case free in one clean pull. The fabric stretches between his scarred fists. His mouth curves, slow and wicked, and the intent behind that grin sends a flood of warmth pooling between my thighs.