Page 57 of A Murderous Crow
I smiled faintly and held down my hand to her. She took it, and I murmured, “Let’s get you out of that bath before you turn into a prune.”
She laughed, and nodded, letting me help her to her feet. I picked up a towel out of the towel warmer I had set up nearby and wrapped her in it, helping her over the edge and onto the bathmat.
“Thank you. That was lovely,” she whispered and I smiled at her and rubbed her arms through the warm terrycloth of the bath sheet I’d wrapped her in.
“Oh, I was just getting started,” I said, and I led her in the direction of the bedroom.
Chapter Nineteen
Savannah…
Corbett led me by the fingertips toward the bedroom, which I just now realized was similarly lit with a golden glow as the bathroom had been, but the light from the bedroom was several times less than the flickering candlelight of the bath.
In here, it was cooler, and fewer candles were lit.
The dark wrapped around us, making things more intimate somehow, as he guided me to his side of the bed, closest to the door.
“I still have a ton of paperwork,” I protested, and he gathered me to him lightly and said, “Not tonight you don’t.”
“Corbett,” I tried to argue.
“Ah!” he cut me off, giving me a stern look. “In the morning, Savannah. It will be there in the morning.”
I gave him a petulant look and he smiled, genuinely, and while he was so damn handsome when he was oh, so, serious, but when he smiled at me like this? My heart swelled and gave an irregular little flutter against the inside of my ribs and I swear my knees went weak.
“Lie down on your stomach,” he ordered gently, and he tugged the towel from my grasp at my chest.
I let him have it and hated how my cheeks flushed with embarrassment like he hadn’t already seen me naked several times and been inside me in just about every way to make a preacher faint on Sunday.
“Lie down on your stomach,” he murmured, running two fingertips from the hollow of my throat down between my breasts.
A heat curled low in my belly, as I crawled up onto his side of the bed and lay down, delving my arms beneath the pillow as I turned my head toward the nightstand and the glowing set of candles there.
One of them was a single wick in an aluminum tin, the label turned so I couldn’t quite read it. It smelled wonderful, though. Like honey and a light hint of vanilla.
He straddled the backs of my thighs and scooted down to about my knees, but kept himself off me by kneeling to either side of me in the plush bed. He rubbed his hands together briskly, the sound a tantalizing one, then picked up the candle in the tin and tipped it over my back.
I tensed, expecting it to burn, but a pleasant hot oil was delivered in delightful little rivulets down my spine and drips across my shoulders to his dark little chuckle.
“Relax, it’s made for this,” he said, and he set the tin with its cheerful little flame back down on the dark bedside table.
His hands pressed into my skin, seeking below the layers of tissue and finding and teasing at the knots of tension there, his thumbs working deep, and in even little circles, the pressure mounting until the knot gave with a little pop, and he was able to glide through the area with little to no effort at all.
I closed my eyes and groaned into the pillow as he worked through some of the lighter and smaller nuisance knots and lumps in my muscles, working them slowly into submission.
I lay helpless under his touch as he teased every bit of tension out of me, and yet, no matter how hard I tried to get it to quiet, my mind raced.
I questioned everything…why was he doing all of this?It didn’t feel like this was what was supposed to beno-strings-attached fun.It felt very much like we were tethered, a thin line of spider silk betwixt our souls. I had yet to identify if that thin line of gossamer was some kind of a trauma bond, or if it was something more… something lighter… something, dare I say it?Good.
“Relax,” he ordered gently and I realized I had stiffened up under his touch. “What are you thinking about?” he asked after I had relaxed my muscle groups one by one.
“That this doesn’t feel likeno-strings-attached fun,” I confessed.
He chuckled lightly and said, “I don’t want anything from you,” he said.
“Now how is that, exactly?” my tone was chiding.
He laughed, “Touché, once again, Kitten.” He was silent, almost meditative for a time and I shifted so I could look at him. He tapped my nose with his index finger and ordered me sharply, “Relax.”
