Page 32 of Tusk Love

The last of whatever annoyance Oskar might have felt due to his unexpected swim drained away. It had never stood a chance. Gone was the painfully timid lady he’d rescued from the bandits. In her place was a playful woodland nymph, her smooth brown skin glowing against the backdrop of layers of waterfalls, her eyes a deep, deep amethyst in this autumn light. This part of the lake came up a little past her waist, only sections of her pale, drenched hair covering her breasts.She was temptation incarnate, so vibrant, so filled with joy at being alive. He couldn’t look at her for long without a peculiar ache settling within his rib cage. But neither could he bring himself to look away.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, and he had to wonder at his own voice, that low, gravelly thing that was nearly inaudible beneath the rapids.

Guinevere hesitated only for a moment. Only long enough to swallow once, a graceful rippling amidst the water droplets that dotted her throat. Then she waded toward him slowly, the lake surface sloshing and the waterfalls cascading and the birds singing, and how could everything else be movement when Oskar’s inner world had gone so still?

This is harmless,he fiercely but silently insisted as she came to a stop in front of him. The lies that people told themselves. His hands settled on her shoulders, carefully turning her around. He gathered her pale hair in his fist and worked the soap through it with as much gentleness as he could manage, rubbing it into her scalp and then combing the rose-scented lather through the silken strands. He tried not to glance down her front, at her now uncovered chest—gods knew that he tried—but he was so much taller than her, and it was impossible to not catch a glimpse here and there. Her breasts looked as magnificent as they’d felt in his hands, perky and full, with dusky pink nipples that begged to be taken into his mouth. He’d thought that he was safe with his lower half submerged in cool water, but a certain appendage refused to succumb to environmental awareness. It twitched and, much to his horror, itrose,and he took a small, panicked step back so that she wouldn’t feel it against her buttocks.

“All right?” she hummed.

“Yes.” He coughed. “It’s slippery here, that’s all.”

“Be careful, Oskar.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself,” he muttered.

He was relieved when the time came to splay her hair down her front again, hiding those maddeningly perfect breasts, but it was a relief that didn’t last long. Because running the soap down her back, feeling all that slick skin, was both a gift and a slow torture, not helpedin the least by her little shivers of delight and the contented sounds she made.

“Ooh, that feels so good,” she breathed out as his thumbs traced the curve of her spine.

Gods help me.Oskar gritted his teeth. He was so hard that it hurt.Give me strength.He hurried through the rest of his task, scrubbing the lingering salve from her arms and neck, already pondering the logistics of retreating behind the nearby shrubbery to take himself in hand without her knowing. He knew that he would remember how her body felt beneath his fingers for the rest of his life. That tiny waist, those delicate elbows, those elegant shoulder blades, all that soft, soft skin—he would relive every bit of her in his dreams until his last breath.

But that was a concern for the future. For now,right now,every inch of him was clamoring for release. The sheer need fogged up his mind, leaving room for only the faintest glimmer of common sense: he had to stop touching her.

“All done,” he announced, his arms falling away from her form.

There it was once more, Guinevere’s hesitation. Oskar saw it in the way her shoulders tensed, coppery and dimpled against the falls. Some kind of decision seemed to unfold throughout her entire being, and finally that lovely spine straightened in determination.

Right before she backed into him, leaning all those soft curves against his frame.

“You missed a spot.” She sounded bashful yet fierce at the same time. As though bashfulness waved a battle flag. She smelled like roses. “Could you wash my front, too, Oskar? Please?”

Chapter Twenty-One

Guinevere

Elaras had told her to listen to the song of the universe, and so she had. She’d listened to the sound of water, roaring, rippling, splashing. She’d listened to the wind stir the burnished leaves and the birds warble their hymns of harvest’s close. As Oskar’s large hands moved so carefully over her, she’d listened to his breathing grow ragged against the back of her neck and his voice drop as low as night in her ear, and she’d understood that this was a melody as old as time.

Most of all, Guinevere had listened to herself. To her heart speeding up and her blood bringing a flush to the surface of her skin. To the throb of desire within her that unraveled throughout the secret parts of her body like hunger and like hope.

This had definitely not been what the warden of the forest had in mind, but she’d listened, and she’d made her decision. Because she wasn’t about to go the rest of her life not knowing.

But now she was leaning back against Oskar and he wasn’t doinganythingand oh, dear stars above, what if she’d miscalculated? She’d miscalculated, and she was naked in a lake with a man. Her face started to flame from reasons that had naught to do with arousal, and she made to peel away from him and perhaps sink under the water and never emerge ever again—

He reached around her, parting her hair and pressing the soap into the valley between her breasts. It was an outcome brought about by her own making, her own wanting, but still she hadn’t been prepared for the sensation. She would have given a jolt of surprise, but his arm slung across her torso held her still, trapping her against the wide wall of his bare chest.

In truth, there was very little by way of seduction in how Oskar washed her. He was efficient. He had a job to do, and he did it, and it wasn’t long before her upper body was squeaky-clean and covered in pinkish suds. But he was peering over her shoulder while he worked, and the intensity of his golden gaze scorched her soul. Every time his rough palm grazed her breasts and her stomach, it added to the fire. And she could feel…him.His manhood, as the other girls back in Rexxentrum had laughingly called it in conversations held well away from their chaperones’ ears.

Guinevere had never seen a manhood before. She desperately, voraciously wanted to see Oskar’s. But that would mean turning around and no longer feeling it resting on her buttocks, hard and thick against the base of her spine—which was another kind of revelation, in its own way.

He must have noticed that she’d noticed. “This is the consequence of what you asked for,” he said gruffly. “Just ignore it.”

“What if I don’t want to ignore it?” Heavens, she was shameless. This little adventure was making quite the strumpet out of her.

He scoffed. The soap traveled lower and paused, as though its wielder waited for confirmation that this was still permissible. Guinevere could only nod. Oskar’s hand dipped into the water and pried her legs apart so he could scrub at the inside of her thighs, and once he did that, once he opened her up like that, something leaked out of theplace that the Shimmer Ward ladies had also laughingly called their flowers—the dripping wetness of arousal, quickly whisked away by the lake’s currents. The side of Oskar’s hand brushed very near where it had come from, and Guinevere could no longer hold back what sounded almost like a sob.

She needed him. She needed, she wanted, she craved. Teinidh was swirling within the walls of Guinevere’s heart in a dance of flame and darkness, and Oskar was…

Oskar had let go of the soap. His hands had latched on to her waist. “Hold your breath,” he instructed. She did, and he guided her under the water, rinsing off the suds. And when she came back up, he was still her glorified backrest, only this time—

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