And finally, when the hubbub had all finally died down, Acantha’s duties were done. The Palace was in a deep and much-needed sleep, the guards who’d been taken out of the battle early insisting on taking watch—even joking about having gotten the best nap of all during the battle. Was it too soon for gallows humor, she wondered? Did it still count as gallows humor if the victim had been resurrected from his certain death after the fact?
Her feet carried her on autopilot through the halls of the Palace. The cleanup operation was going to be extensive—the healing miracle had not included the architecture, unfortunately. But that, as Prince Conrad had made quite clear, was tomorrow’s business. Tonight was for resting… or what was left of tonight, at any rate. Something told her dawn wasn’t far away as she made her way home.
And the door was already swinging open in her hand when she realized her feet hadn’t brought her to her own chambers.
There he was, sitting on the edge of the bed… and just like he had back when they’d first been getting to know each other, he sprang to his feet the moment he saw her. Already gearing himself up to launch into a monologue, she thought faintly… and her heart was so full of love for him in that moment that she thought she was going to burst. Finally, his arms were around her, hugging her tight, pressing her armor into her in a thousand awkward places… but she still held him for a very long time before she finally pulled away.
“Acantha—”
“Bath,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’m so—”
“No,” she said sharply, raising a finger. “If we start talking about what happened, we’re going to tear all our clothes off and fall into bed, and I don’t want to sleep in a bed that’s full of dried blood and I’mcertainlynot changing any blastedsheetstonight, so—no.”
She stalked off towards the bathroom that adjoined these guest rooms… then heard an unfamiliar sound behind her. Cato was laughing at her. Actually laughing—not stifling a laugh out of fear, not hiding a laugh with a cough. Openly laughing, like someone who didn’t fear her one bit. If she hadn’t been so desperate to get the dried blood off her body, she might have had something to say about that. Instead, she simply stalked into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar behind her. If his near-death experience had emboldened him so, he shouldn’t have trouble understanding what that meant.
The baths in the Palace were a marvel. With taps connected to an underground water source by some long-lost marvel of engineering insight (or perhaps magic—at a certain point, it was hard to know the difference), hollowed-out depressions in the rock floor could be filled with hot water, with even the option to add cold water to ensure the perfect temperature. She stripped off her armor first, then her undershirt, using it to scrub the worst of the blood from the armor. The rest could keep until morning—she climbed carefully down into the deep bath carved from the stone as the water rose, steam wafting enticingly from its surface.
Cato was lingering in the doorway, his gray eyes fixed hungrily on her now naked frame. Impossible to ignore that kind of scrutiny… or the flash of arousal it sent through her to be admired like that. After everything she’d been through… the sleep deprivation, the battle, the trip to death’s door and beyond—and her body still wanted him? Ridiculous.
And not until both of them were clean.
It took a few rounds of filling, then draining the bath before the water remained clear, instead of turning an unpleasant rusty brown shade with all the blood. Cato’s mane of white hair was an especially difficult prospect, his braids matted with blood… it took them some time to work the braids out, and longer still to comb out the tangles, but eventually there wasn’t a trace of blood left… not in the warm water around them, and not on their naked bodies.
For the longest time, they were both content simply to sit there, the ripples on the water’s surface slowly dissipating and leaving the smooth, glasslike expanse stretched between them. They were both sitting cross-legged at either end of the bath, deep enough to submerge them both to their chins. And Cato, instead of talking her ear off as she’d expected, surprised her by lowering his head a little more until the water covered his mouth, too. At first, she didn’t understand. But then the quiet stretched on between them, his gray eyes locked with hers, unflinching, unapologetic… and soon enough, she realized, everything that needed to be said had been said.
And slowly but deliberately, she made her careful way across the water between them, and in waterlogged slow motion, wrapped her arms and legs around him and claimed his lips in a kiss.
It wasn’t long before they’d resolved the problem of the bath being too full of water to move in quickly—Cato responded with such enthusiasm to her embrace that most of it was dumped out on the floor within seconds. No trace of exhaustion, no hint of the trauma he’d been through that night. Acantha barely even noticed that the texture of his right hand was different from the texture of his left, remembering with a jolt only when the dull silver came into view as he pushed a damp lock of hair back behind her ear. But her unease couldn’t last long, not with how good it felt to finally be touching him again. Their chemistry, the undeniable heat between them, the way it seemed impossible to get enough of him touching her at once… it was all as strong as the first day they’d succumbed to this attraction. If anything, it was stronger—because unlike those first times, Acantha knew why their bodies seemed to fit together so perfectly, why what felt good for her was exactly what felt good for him.
“I forgot what you said before,” Cato whispered in her ear, making her shiver as his hand moved under the water, fingers deliciously slick on her skin. “About us. About us being soulmates.”
“Doesn’t—oh—doesn’tsoundlike you forgot,” she pointed out breathlessly, her decorum interfered with slightly by a sharp moan. She could feel him grinning against her throat.
“Can humans have soulmates?”
She sat back, almost as overwhelmed by arousal as she was by exasperation with him. “This is what you want to talk about? Now?”
Cato looked at her for a moment, his hands sliding up her hips and caressing the contours of her body before sliding up her ribs to cup both of her breasts. Ever so carefully, he teased at her nipples with his fingertips, applying just enough pressure to make her back arch and her whole body shudder with the effort of holding in a moan. Sometimes, when he did this, she felt like he’d be more than capable of bringing her to climax without touching any other part of her body… and it occurred to her giddily that his new hand seemed just as skilled as the old one.
“I think they can,” he said softly, and it took her pleasure-addled mind a moment to remember what he meant.
“Good,” she ground out, rocking her hips against him impatiently. Under the water, their legs were tangled, and she could feel his manhood hard against her thigh, slick beneath the water… she let a hand drift down there now to caress him, seeking out the sensitive places she’d found over the course of their time together. His eyelids fluttered shut and he groaned, his head falling back onto the lip of the bath as she stroked him… but then she felt his hand take her wrist and pull her firmly away. Protest died on her lips as he reversed their positions, lifting her out of the water until she was sitting, legs parted, on the edge of the bath, the water lapping at her sex. Her body was full of enough pent-up desire that even that made her groan a little, adding to her frustration… but Cato didn’t leave her languishing for long. He lowered himself into the water until his lips were level with her vulva… and then he buried his face between her thighs.
Yet more water slopped out of the side of the bath at the speed with which Acantha spread her legs further, urging him deeper, her back arching and her eyes rolling back with the exquisite relief of his skillful lips and tongue exactly where she needed them. He didn’t hold back, devouring her with a wild, all-encompassing urgency that was exactly as rough and desperate as she needed, the exquisite pressure of his teeth behind his lips, his tongue plunging deep inside her. Climax was hurtling towards her with the speed of an avalanche and she simply rode the pleasure, one hand propping her up, the other making new knots where it was buried in his long hair.
Before long, she could feel herself on the absolute edge, and she knew he was about to push her past that point of no return, knew from experience that he’d eagerly follow every thrash and moan of her orgasm with his tongue, edging out every wave and burst of pleasure that he could… even the memory was almost enough to undo her, but she pulled him away before she could reach that peak, her body shuddering in wordless objection even as Cato mumbled his own hoarse objections.
“Together,” she told him, her voice rasping with urgency. “Now.”
The smile on his flushed face was everything she’d ever want. “Yes, Captain.”
With dizzying speed, he lunged out of the water, making her laugh as yet more water slopped out onto the now thoroughly soaked bathroom floor. She didn’t care. Nothing could have mattered less as Cato’s powerful arms wound themselves around her, lifting her up until the hard tip of his manhood was sliding against her sex. Her whole body felt like it was throbbing with need as he slid himself inside her, and she pressed herself against him, thrilled by the opportunities for leverage offered by this new setting for their passion. Bracing herself against the stone, she slammed her hips up against him as he thrust, winning a moan from him that was so filthy it almost undid her right there and then.
Acantha held out, somehow, determined to ride the very edge of orgasm for as long as it took for Cato to catch up with her… but even her steely determination began to give way as the two of them moved together, holding each other tightly, the sounds they were making threatening to wake up the whole Palace. Let them wake up, she thought recklessly. Let them know exactly how the two of them were spending this night, this precious night that could have so easily been taken away from them both. They were alive, they were together, they were free… and as Cato’s thrusts became frantic and he started moaning her name against her throat, she knew there was no holding back any longer. Her scream echoed from the stone walls around them as the blinding, blissful shockwave rolled through her again and again, her body shaking and pulsating in the grip of an orgasm so powerful she was genuinely worried she might pass out before the waves of pleasure released her. Cato was trying to silence his own moans against her throat as he drove yet more aftershocks of pleasure into her with the final few powerful thrusts of his own climax.
When she came back to full consciousness, they were lying stretched out beside the bath—she was grateful that they hadn’t slid into what remained of the bathwater, at least. The stone tile was damp and chilly despite the reassuring furnace heat of Cato’s body, and she shifted a little in his arms… only to chuckle softly at the low growl of protest he uttered, rolling onto his back and wrapping his arms more tightly around her as he did.