She nuzzled his chest, uncaring that his weight was heavy and there was no give in the floor of the cave. She could have adjusted that, but she didn’t bother. She liked being his. Feeling as if he were surrounding her with his size and the sheer strength of him. She kept her arms around him, holding him to her while he kissed her neck, tracing the path where his teeth had bitten her several times. She wondered if he had left marks behind. She had the feeling he had—and on purpose, too.
“I am heating the water in the pool,” he murmured against her neck.
“It’s already heated. I prepared in advance.” She was certain she’d thought of everything.
“I like very hot water.” He waved his hand toward the steaming pool.
Adalasia frowned, flicking her gaze up to his face. He wasn’t looking down at her but studying her neck as if it were some kind of artwork. “How hot?”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Very hot. It will take away any soreness.”
“You can remove any soreness several different ways,” she pointed out, placing both hands on his chest to remind him to move off of her. “Super-hot water doesn’t need to touch my very sensitive skin. I’m not a lobster.”
“I have never understood the idea of boiling a lobster,” he confessed as he rolled off of her to lie on his back beside her.
“Don’t change the subject.” Adalasia turned her head to look at him, doing her best to look stern when he looked like sin. She melted every time she looked at him, wanting to give him anything he desired. He probably knew it, too. If he did know it, he didn’t make the mistake of smirking.
“You usually prefer to do things the human way.”
Of course he would throw that in her face. Did he have to look so gorgeous when he was sitting up, all those muscles rippling and that hair spilling around his face making him look like a fallen angel? Her body should have been sated. They’d had wild, primitive, crazy, feral sex, and yet just looking at him had more erotic images playing through her head, and her sheath pulsed and clenched.
“The human way doesn’t include being boiled alive. That is probably more in keeping with the Carpathian way, Sandu.” Keeping her hand low by her side, she waved it toward the steaming pool to lower the water temperature by a couple of degrees, just in case. She was fairly certain he had increased the temperature.
Sandu rose smoothly to his feet and reached for her, gathering her up and cradling her to his chest. “You face the Cave of Fire without flinching, but you balk at the thought of a little hot water.”
The laughter in his voice and eyes was her undoing. Before she could retort, he was kissing her, robbing her of all ability to think, let alone speak. He could kiss like sin. Perfection. The firestorm was back, the flames licking at her veins, lightning forking through her core so that she could feel pressure building all over again.
Then he was in the pool, wading with her into the center. Steam rose all around them. She could feel the heat seeping into her pores, adding to the feeling of being wrapped in that fiery hunger he could produce so easily in her. He lifted his head slowly, his black eyes still smoldering with those red flames.
“You are truly beautiful, ewal emninumam. The way you surrender to me is such a thing of beauty. I can only thank you. I needed to feel you give yourself to me.”
Adalasia framed the side of his face with one hand. He could disarm her so easily. Love overwhelmed her every time she looked at him. It was strange how she had gone from distrusting him to loving him more every moment she spent with him.
He lowered her into the pool. At first, the heat didn’t register, and then she gasped and would have shot straight toward the ceiling of the cave if he hadn’t had his hands firmly around her waist.
“I was thinking loving thoughts, and all along you knew you were going to boil me alive in this hideous water.” She tried to climb up his taller frame.
He threw his head back and laughed. The sound caught at her. She actually felt the burn of tears behind her eyes. Sandu rarely laughed like that. Real. Carefree. After the agony he’d suffered, the sound was so beautiful it tugged at her heartstrings and found its way into her soul.
“The water isn’t that hot, Adalasia. Already, I can feel your body adjusting, and it is soothing the soreness. I was hard on you.”
She wasn’t going to admit the water wasn’t that hot. “I probably do have skid marks on my back and inside, but who cares? That was . . . awesome. The best. I decided being Carpathian has some really good benefits.”