Page 96 of No Saint

I don’t wait for him to leave, I enter the room quietly, eyes finding Amelia’s sleeping form and bypass the bed for the bathroom, stripping out of my clothes along the way. The shower is instantly warm when I step beneath it, head bent as I watch the blood run from my skin.

Behind me I hear the door click closed and then the shower screen door opens and a warm, naked body presses up against mine.

“You were gone.” She murmurs into my wet skin.

“I had to.”

“I know.”

She was naked. Willingly. With the lights on.

This woman’s bravery astounded me. Brought me to my knees.

Slowly I turn, knowing damn well all the blood wasn’t off my skin, knowing she’s seen it before but this time, she knows this blood is for her.

Her eyes scan my face and then my body, finding every speckle of crimson, before she reaches up and brushes her thumb across my cheek.

“Can I look?” I rasp.

Her mouth tips up into a small, soft smile, “Yes, Gabriel, you can look.”

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His hazel eyes bounce between mine, his body, his beautiful, lethal body was speckled with blood but none of that mattered. Not even when I know where he went, what he did.

I didn’t care.

“I’m going to touch you, Amelia.”

I nod my consent.

His eyes drop as he takes a step back, lips parting.

“You are so beautiful,” he rasps. No inch of me is left untouched by his gaze. He takes in all of me, my breasts, the nipples peaked despite the warmth, the soft curve of my belly and flare of my hips. He gazes at my pussy, my legs, my arms, he looks at me as if I were a goddess given just to him. And then he touches. So softly at first, never lingering in one spot too long. First, it’s the arms, feeling them, feeling the skin and then my waist, squeezing gently and following the shape down to my hips, my thighs before he moves back up, over my stomach and a couple of scars, over the stretchmarks caused by child bearing that I loved most of all. His fingers bump over the ridges of my ribcage and then follow the path beneath my left breast, all the way round the mound until he flattens it over my heartbeat.

“Brave,” He whispers, the shower water running rivers over his skin, water droplets catching in his long dark lashes and at the edges of his mouth, “You amaze me,leonessa.”

My heart thuds in my chest, breath sawing from my lungs.

“Teach me to swim.”

I trusted him. All of him.

He nods, “I will.”

For minutes he doesn’t stop touching, his hand exploring while he watches how much skin and muscle yield beneath his hands.

“Can I?”

I nod.

He crouches, leaning forward as he presses kisses to a scar on the left side of my ribs and then another in the middle. He kisses every scar he finds before his mouth lands at the apex of my thighs. I was wet for him already but that small, chaste peck was enough to send a rush of warmth to my centre.

“Turn around, Amelia.”

I obey.

“Hands on the wall.”

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