Page 16 of The Rhino's Rose

Until then, my hand is going to get one hell of a workout.

As if summoned, my cock breaks the surface of the water, its ringed crown like a magnet for my fist. I’m two long strokes in when her scent replaces all the rest. Sweeter than any bloom, it’s like a siren call. But I don’t turn to look at her.

She’d say my name or clear her throat if she wanted my attention. Instead, she’s hanging back, out of my sightline, not making a peep. Watching me, and from the arousal wafting from her, she’s enjoying the view.

Gods, I want to give her a show. Let my mate see the full length and girth of my cock, its wide ridges nature designed to pleasure my mate, how it erupts when I stroke it while saying her name. Except I’m not sure I could hold myself back afterward. Not with her smelling so fuckingready.

Forcing my hand from my cock, I lower my feet to the bottom of the pool, leaving only my head and shoulders above the water’s surface. “Do you need help?”

She answers with one of her gurgled gasps, and I can’t help smiling, especially since she can’t see it.

“I…I just…I…”

I shouldn’t enjoy that she’s flustered andembarrassed and turned on. But I do. I really fucking do. “Is there something I can do for you, Rose?”

For a moment, there’s just silence. Then, “Yes, actually.”

I push off from the wall and turn toward the house. “Give me a minute to dry off and I’ll be right there.”

“No, stay there,” she says, hopping toward me using the impromptu walking stick I made from a broom handle.

The need to protect her surges inside me. If I weren’t naked, I’d already be out of the pool. “Do you want to come in the pool—do you think it’ll make your ankle feel better?”

“Yes to the first question. But not in the way you mean it.”

There’s no mistaking that innuendo, and my cock is all for it. Thank gods the pool lighting is subtle enough to make her view of my underwater body parts indistinct.

My night vision is shit, but the shimmer in her eyes when she looks down at me from poolside is clear as day. The broom handle clatters on the stone patio. Then, propped against the pool stairs’ railing, she pulls the tie at her waist and lets the skimpy satin robe fall open, revealing nothing but skin underneath.

I barely stifle a groan as she wiggles the robe off of her body. “I think the medication Dr. Schaefer gave you is affecting your judgement.”

“Some extra-strength ibuprofen has nothing to do with this.”

“What exactly do you thinkthisis?” The words croak out of my dry mouth.

“Two consenting adults giving in to their mutual attraction,” she says, carefully lowering herself to sit on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water. Naked. Fully, gloriously, naked.

If I reached out my left arm, I could slide it up the inside of her leg, all the way up. “We’re not giving in to anything. I can’t.”

“I saw you, Cornelius. I saw your…” A soft little sound slips from her parted lips before she pulls the bottom one between her teeth. Totally naked in front of me, yet she can’t say the word cock, or any of its equivalents. Clearing her throat, she gives me a smile. “It looked pretty capable to me.”

Show her exactly how capable it is.I shake away the voice. The urges and instincts. “It’s not that I physically can’t. I won’t.”

Even in the dim lighting, the sting of rejection is written all over her face. “Oh gods. I-I’m so sorry. After earlier, I thought—I honestly thought you—” Shaking her head makes her hair fall around her face like a curtain as she bows her head while hugging herself.

This is it, the moment that ends it all. The rejection and embarrassment that sends her off for the last time. She’ll stop looking at me. Stop wanting me. She’ll go on to find an appropriate match. Someone who will give her the full, human life she deserves, like her father has often said.

“You thought right, Rose.” I shouldn’t do this, butwhen she looks up and meets my eyes, I don’t care about right and wrong, only wiping away the hurt I caused. “I won’t give in to it, but I am attracted to you.”

“Are you just saying that now so I don’t feel totally humiliated for trying to seduce you?”

Stepping back from the edge of the pool, I spread my arms wide and assume a floating position on my back, allowing my cock to break the water’s surface. Not the full length of it, but enough for her to see it’s hard as stone and standing tall like a sturdy tree. “I’m not in this state because I feel bad for you, Rose.”

Her wide-open eyes locked on my cock, she gasps, her full lips remaining parted as I lower my feet, removing the monster from view. Then her mouth snaps shut as she meets my gaze, her eyebrows pulling together at the bridge of her nose. “You could still be trying to make me feel better. Maybe rhino men are hard all the time.”

Thisrhino feels like he’s hard all the time, that’s for damn sure. And it’s always because of her. “No, that’s not the case. We get hard when aroused, the same as most creatures.”

“And you’re aroused because of?—”

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