Page 95 of Hopelessly Teavoted
“Mmm. Almost,” she said. “Take your boxers off and get in here. Touch yourself the way I want to touch you.”
“How do you want to touch me?” He snapped his fingers, staring at her from under hooded eyes, and his underwear was on the floor, one hand hovering above his erection, the tip of it beading and glistening in the cool morning light drifting through the narrow horizontal window above her.
“I want to touch you so hard you can’t stand it. Like, literally so hard you have to brace yourself. Come here and do it, Azrael.”
Carefully, he walked toward her, and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t stop. That he would take her in his arms and burn for it, the exquisite feeling of skin against skin. But he stopped and leaned against the wall of the shower across from her, the water from the larger, fixed showerhead streaming in rivulets down his hard body.
“Use both hands for a moment, Az. Stroke it for me until you’re desperate, and don’t you dare stop watching.”
He slid a hand down the length of himself, groaning a little,adding a second hand, and then leaning against the cream-colored tile. “You first.”
Vickie bit her lip, and stood up, sliding the mounted showerhead out of its holder. Water teased her now from the head, splattering across her body and onto his, almost like touching. At her thigh, the showerhead sprayed a steadier stream.
“Both of us together,” she insisted, sitting back down on the corner seat. Spreading her thighs all the way, and fumbling with the stream adjuster so that the water began to pulse.
Azrael moaned, slapping a hand against the tile. “Dammit, Vickie, you’re going to be the death of me.”
Moving fingers to her nipples and holding the showerhead at a distance for a moment, Vickie shook her head. “No dying. Watch. Do it the way I would, slow and slick and sweet at first, and then harder, rougher, until you can’t stand it.”
“Fuck,” he swore, his face flushed, but he complied, sliding his hand down his dick once more and cupping his balls with the other.
“This definitely counts as fucking,” she said, turning the showerhead on herself so that the spray pushed against her folds, her center. She sighed a little, running a hand through her wet hair to keep it out of her eyes, and then down her shoulder, her neck, her nipple, tweaking, before sliding her fingers down, to bracket where the water hit, slipping in and out of herself, angling her hips up to meet the water, forcing herself not to tear her gaze away from Azrael.
He was bracing himself against the wall of the shower now, teeth buried in his bottom lip, hand moving furiously up and down, panting, chest heaving.
“Vickie, this is not going to be an all-day affair,” he moaned.
She was too keyed up to answer, though: starting in bed and then stopping before the agony of almost touching had set her on fire, and the water was pounding, pulsing, just the way she liked it when she was alone. It was a thousand times dirtier with Azrael standing there, muscles straining in the corded forearm that braced against the wall, the slap of his other armagainst his body as he drew it back and forth and back and forth driving her toward madness.
This was more than pretending. This was the kind of love, the kind of lust, that undid people.
And Vickie was coming undone, one hand scrambling at the slick wall, the other pushing the showerhead closer and closer to her body, the intensity of the pressure building in her and against her, until sparks rose, gathering at her core, and heat coiled to a withering crescendo, and she finished, screaming his name.
Azrael watched her, eyes greedy, grip firm, for a few seconds in the aftermath as she writhed on the small shower bench, pounding on the wall once more as he spilled, steady spurts onto the taupe tile of the floor, the water washing the traces of both their pleasures away.
“Damn,” he whispered.
“Right? It wouldn’t be such a bad setup. Living like this.”
“No,” said Azrael, voice reverent. “No, it would not.”
Somehow in the postshower haze, while he was helping her prepare the shop in record time, Vickie agreed to join Azrael after work for that long-promised midnight hike. Which was how she ended up, water bottle in hand, at 11 p.m., dressed for the outdoors, and facing the haunted knocker of Hart Manor.
It groaned a little when she lifted it, and to her surprise, it was Priscilla who answered the door, dressed in hiking gear next to Azrael, a long dark braid hanging down over her left shoulder.
“Vickie! I thought I owed you an actual hike this time, since, you know, I bailed on yours last time.”
“That was years ago,” said Vickie, looking at Priscilla with suspicion.
A smile quirked up Azrael’s face.
“Where’s Evelyn?” Vickie asked as Azrael shook his head emphatically behind her.
“She went back to England. She’ll be here tomorrow for a few weeks before flying back permanently.” Priscilla stared at Vickie, eyes defiant.
“Oh no! She isn’t coming back after that?” Azrael was shaking his head again, and Vickie realized, a moment too late, what he meant.
“She’s thinking about it,” said Priscilla, and her voice was an octave too high and brighter than it ought to be. “We’re working through some things. The Council president is back from paternity leave, but only temporarily, and she’s trying to decide if she wants the job when he leaves, but meeting his new baby has made her… a little more urgent about some of the things we don’t see eye to eye on.”
