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I’m not supposed to like this. I’m not supposed to want it. But my body is ahead of me. I’m straining into his hand, every muscle locked. My head tips back, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut. Pleasure is climbing, burning, so bright it blanks out the rest of the room.

“Let go, baby,” Adrien murmurs, and the tone is so full of pride and approval it detonates in my chest.

The orgasm is violent and immediate. I jerk in the water, arms pulling instinctively against the rope, thighs quivering as I spill over his hand, over myself, everywhere. My vision whites out. My heart hammers in my throat.

I think I say his name. I’m not sure what comes out—maybe a sob, maybe a thank-you, maybe just a desperate, ugly noise. The rush of it leaves me lightheaded, boneless, barely able to kneel upright.

Adrien doesn’t let go. He holds me through every aftershock, moving his hand in gentle, coaxing strokes until I’m shivering all over. When I finally open my eyes, I see his gaze locked on my face. There’s something in it that I can’t decipher—hunger, maybe, but also so much tenderness it hurts to look at.

“Good boy,” he says again, soft as a lullaby. He rinses me gently, making sure I’m clean, then peels the washcloth away and pours warm water down my chest, washing away any evidence.

I can barely breathe. I’m so full of feeling it’s leaking out of my eyes, but I’m too wrung out to care.

Adrien unties the rope and helps me lower my arms. They’re trembling, dead weight, so he holds them a moment, rubbing slow circles into my wrists while I try to reel myself back into my body. When my breathing evens, he wipes my face with his thumb and kisses my forehead.

“Did that feel good?” he asks quietly, like there’s a right answer.

I nod, still dazed, leaning into his touch. My lips are numb. Everything is numb except the part of my heart that’s beating hard enough to bruise me from the inside.

He helps me out of the bath, wraps me in a towel, and sits me gently on the toilet lid. My legs don’t work, so he dries them for me. Then he kneels, pressing my feet between his hands to warm them up, and looks at me like I’m something delicate or beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because my brain can’t process anything except how embarrassing it is to have just had my first orgasm in front of someone who was supposed to kill me.

13

Adrien

Kamden sits wrapped in one of the thick bath towels, damp blond hair clinging in pieces to his forehead and temples, his cheeks still flushed from the heat of the water and everything that happened inside it. His knees are pressed together beneath the towel, his bare feet curled against the cold tile, and there is something so thoroughly wrung out about him that the apology sounds absurd coming from his mouth.

He looks like someone just reached into him and pulled every ounce of tension out by hand.

Soft, loose, and halfway somewhere else.

I crouch in front of him. “What are you sorry for?”

“I… don’t know,” he answers, his voice dazed and quiet.

“That’s not an answer.”

A tiny little crease appears between his brows, as if even thinking about the question demands more processing power than he currently has.

“I was…” He swallows. “Embarrassing…”

“No.”

His eyes flick upward, and the bathroom light catches them, pale and uncertain.

“You weren’t.”

“I made noises.”

“So?”

The color in his cheeks climbs, blotchy at the edges, dark enough that I can see it through the steam still rising off his skin.

I almost smile, but he is far too vulnerable right now for teasing, sitting there with the towel slipping off one shoulder and his damp hair plastered to his forehead. Whatever amusement might ordinarily come from how easy it is to turn him red gets swallowed by something heavier.

Something protective; something possessive.