He quickly lathers his hair. “You’re going to survive.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yeah, you do.”
He comes to lather my hair with new shampoo, and his attention, so wanted, is now solely on me and my hair. “They hate me,” I say up at him. “I won’t be able to go to your fights now without fear of getting lynched.”
He grabs the shower head and angles it directly above me. I close my eyes and let the soap bubbles drip down my face, and when I open my eyes, he’s looking straight at me. Rivulets of water slide down his square jaw and cling to his eyelashes as he brushes a strand of wet hair away from my forehead, and I become aware of the fast gait of my pulse.
His eyes are brilliant blue, and as they remain resting on mine, they feel a thousand times more brilliant than usual. He’s just as wet as I am, and suddenly he holds my face between his hands and stares deeply into me. He’s breathing hard. His eyes slide down the length of my nose, to my mouth. He strokes my lips with a fingertip that is thick, blunt, and callused. And I can feel that stroke in every cell of my being. “That’s never going to happen,” he says in an odd, hot whisper.
Weakness travels up my legs and it is taking over every ounce of my willpower. I’ve never craved anyone’s gaze like I crave his. Need anyone’s touch like I need his. Or want anything as painfully fiercely as I want him.
My throat feels achy as I speak. “You shouldn’t have … said that about me, Remy. They’re going to think you and I … that you and I…” I shake my head, aware now of how my fingers tingle in the water with the urge to touch his wet spiky hair.
“That you’re mine?”
The word “mine” on his lips, spoken as those intent blue eyes look into me, makes my stomach constrict with painful unrequited lust. I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” He shoves open the glass door and wraps a towel around his hips, easily letting his wet drawstring pants slap to the floor, then his t-shirt follows. He comes back and covers me in a large towel and hauls me to the bed. He sets me down in the center, his voice with a hint of laughter, but his face frowning. “Is the thought of being mine funny?”
He reaches under my towel and pulls off my panties, and then my bra, then he works the towel through my hair and then my body, his blue eyes not glinting anymore. “Is the idea of being mine funny?” He covers both my br**sts with the towel and dries me, still watching me. “Is it funny, Brooke?” he insists, peering intently into my eyes.
“No!” The word is just a gasp as desire shoots through my nerve endings. My h*ps tilt up when he starts drying me between my legs, and I can’t help but be totally turned on.
He runs the towel through the length of my legs, and I lick my lips as he bends his head at last, and my bones become liquid with pure red-hot want. He seems especially obsessed in drying my bad knee. The towel almost feels loving as he rubs it over my scar. A burning fever follows the path of the towel as I helplessly watch him.
A drop of water clings to one of the small, brown tips of his ni**les, and it takes all my willpower to fight against a deep, soul-shattering need to lean over and suck it into my mouth. Not the drop of water. His nipple.
My heart pounds when I reach out, my hand quaking as I touch the top of his head. “Have you ever been anyone’s?” I ask, a feathery whisper in the quiet bedroom.
He lifts his head to mine, and I want him so bad I feel consumed inside, like he’s already possessed my soul, and now my soul aches for him to possess my body.
A powerful emotion tightens his features as he reaches out to cradle my cheek in his big hand, and there’s an unexpected fierceness in his eyes, in his touch, as he cups me. “No. And you?”
The calluses in his palm rasp on my skin, and I find myself tucking my cheek deeper into them. “I’ve never wanted to.”
“Neither have I.”
The moment is intimate. Heavy with things unsaid. Charged with something without a name, leaping between us. From him to me. Me to him.
He drags his thumb along my jaw like he’s memorizing it.
Ripples shoot across my body, shooting from his thumb straight to my core as he continues caressing my face, all the time watching me with those breathtaking, heartbreaking, beautiful blue eyes as though engrossed. His voice is velvet on my skin. “Until I saw this lovely girl in Seattle, with big gold eyes, and pink, full lips … and I wondered if she could understand me…”
My chest heaves at his unexpected words, and when he bends his head closer, his gaze almost asking permission, I border on sensory overload as his scent of soap and shampoo and water cling to my nostrils.
The ache for his touch throbs through me, but instead of reaching for me, he spreads the towel and draws it over my body and gently covers me. His voice is rough with emotion.
“I want to say so many things, Brooke, and I just can’t find the words to tell them to you.”
He sets his forehead on mine and inhales deeply. Slowly, still breathing me in, he drags his nose along the length of mine.
“You tie me up in knots.” He presses my mouth with his. Briefly. Then he withdraws, breathing hard, and looks at me with heavy-lidded eyes. “I want to play you a thousand different songs so you get a clue of what … I feel inside me…”
Raw need streaks through my bloodstream, my nerves, my very bones, as he strokes his thumb up my jaw and around the shell of my ear. Shivers run through my body as he slides his index finger across my top lip. He strokes liberally across my bottom one too, and I whimper. There’s an ache in my beaded ni**les, my wet sex, my heart.