“Give me a minute.” He disappeared into the opposite toilet and shut the door.
Fiona quickly looked around for a toothbrush. There were several in a drawer still in their original packages. It was heaven to scrub her teeth—she was still doing it, in fact, when Kelan went to the sink to wash his hands.
It felt strangely comfortable standing with him in a shared bathroom, brushing her teeth. He was doing the same. He looked at her in the mirror. His eyes smiled at her. She looked away, shocked at how normal it all seemed.
When she finished with her teeth, she gathered a couple of towels and set them on the warming bars near the shower. She chanced a glance at Kelan. He was standing a few feet away. His eyes were heavy with unspoken words. She froze in place. Was now finally the time they would be together?
Chapter Eight
Kelan bent over to drop his briefs. Fiona lowered her eyes to give him privacy. He straightened. “Fiona. Look at me.”
She lifted her eyes to his, but they moved down his chest to his navel, then up again to take in the broad width of his shoulders. He had very little chest hair. A narrow trail of dark hair led downward from his belly button to his boxer briefs…and the big bulge in them.
“Don’t look away.” His voice was deep and steady. He pushed his briefs all the way down his legs and kicked them aside. She kept her eyes on his. Watching him, yet resisting her instinctive curiosity to look there, set her skin on fire. He didn’t move. There was no hurry in his eyes. He simply waited.
The silk gown she wore irritated her erect nipples. A strange heat coiled low between her hips. She blinked. He waited. She looked at his chest and drew a deep breath. Her gaze moved lower, over the rippling muscles covering his ribs, to the dark hair leading down between his hips, then her eyes jumped to it.
It was huge. And darker than the rest of his body. It pointed slightly upward and to the left. At its base was a thick patch of dark, coarse hair.
“Does my body please you, Fiona?” His voice was even deeper than usual, as if it was hard for him to breathe and speak simultaneously.
She looked at him and nodded. Her mouth moved with her answer, but the sound never hit the air. She cleared her voice and tried again. “Yes.”
“May I see your body?”
Fiona licked her lips then lowered her gaze to the floor. Now was the moment she’d waited for so many months to experience. Now, when she hadn’t groomed herself as she would have wanted. She hadn’t shaved her legs or underarms in a couple of days. She wasn’t clean. Even her hair wasn’t her own.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m not ready.” She ventured a look and saw his wounded expression. “I mean, I’m ready. I’m sooo ready. I’m just not put together yet.”
He closed the distance between them. Every step he took deepened the drumbeat of her heart. “We’re bathing. Nothing more.”
“I want more.” He was only a foot away. So close, but he wasn’t touching her. “I want to be perfect for you.”
He didn’t smile to alleviate her fears. The corners of his jaw worked. His nostrils flared. He reached for her hand and placed it on his heart. “You don’t understand the depth of my feelings for you. It has nothing to do with the shell of you. You are my other skin. Do I doubt my own flesh?” He shook his head. “No. Love is too shallow a word for what I feel. We are part of something bigger than ourselves. Like the earth is nothing without the pull of the moon, and night would never know light without the sun’s transformative burn. You and I together are part of the infinite that is. Without you, I am nothing, not even an afterthought of the universe.”
Fiona blinked. A tear spilled free. How could she argue with that? Locking her eyes with his, she lowered one shoulder of her loose gown, then took her hand from his heart and lowered the other, slipping the fabric from her body, letting the gown drop to the floor.
She heard his sharp intake of breath. Her eyes flashed his way while his were still moving over her. Tension had etched itself on his face. Thinking something had to be wrong with her, she looked down at herself and noticed the gross makeup that had been all over her face was also on her nipples, and the tawny hair that was neatly patterned in a triangle on her mound had been artificially darkened.
She looked at him in horror, folding her arms over her breasts. “Kelan, it’s here, too.”
He eased her arms apart. “It’s only cosmetic. We’ll get it off.”
“Why did they do this to me?” God, they—someone—had touched her while she was naked and unconscious.
“I suspect they wanted to enrage me in that arena so that every time I looked at you, I would see your beauty and what your gown barely covered. Like a spear in the neck of a bull at a bullfight, seeing you exposed and in danger was meant to motivate me to fight.”
“It did. You never stopped.”
“Nor would I.” He stepped over to her sink and grabbed the container of coconut oil.
“Kelan, what if…what if they raped me?”
He looked at her, then set the coconut oil on the bench in the shower and came back to stand before her. She was glad he didn’t just brush her fear away.
“Do you have discomfort down there? Are you bleeding? Sore? Is there any odd discharge?”
“Does that happen after sex?”
“Sometimes. You wouldn’t normally bleed after consensual sex, but if you were taken against your will…”
She shook her head. “I didn’t feel anything—until I was here, with you. I’m achy and…wet.”