I sucked in a shuddering breath, shaking my head.
“Listen to me, Eva. No one can touch you,” he said fiercely. “No one can get to you. Never again.”
My fingers tightened on his.
“They’d have to get through me, Eva. And that will never happen.”
I couldn’t speak past the ache in my throat. The thought of Gideon facing my nightmare . . . seeing the man who’d done those things to me . . . tightened the cold knot that had been sitting in my gut all day.
Gideon reached for my shampoo and I closed my eyes, shutting it all out, everything but the man whose sole focus at that moment was me.
I waited, breathless, for the feel of his magic fingers. When it came, I reached out to the wall in front of me for balance. With both palms pressed flat against the cool tile, I savored the feel of his fingertips kneading into my scalp and moaned.
“Feel good?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
“Always.”
I drifted in bliss as he washed and conditioned my hair, shivering lightly as he ran a wide-toothed comb through the soaked strands. I was disappointed when he finished and must have made some sound of regret, because he leaned forward and promised, “I’m not nearly done.”
I smelled my body wash, then—
“Gideon.”
I arched into his soap-slick hands. His thumbs dug gently into the knots in my shoulders, melting them with the perfect amount of pressure. Then he worked his way down my spine . . . my buttocks . . . my legs . . .
“I’m going to fall,” I slurred, drunk with pleasure.
“I’ll catch you, angel. I’ll always catch you.”
The pain and degradation of my memories washed away beneath the selfless reverence of Gideon’s patient caretaking. More than the soap and water, it was his touch that freed me from the nightmare. I turned around at his urging and looked at him crouched before me, his hands gliding up my calves, his body an amazing display of taut flexing muscle. Cupping his jaw, I tilted his head up.
“You can be so good for me, Gideon,” I told him softly. “I don’t know how I could ever forget that. Even for a minute.”
His chest expanded on a quick, deep breath. He straightened, his hands gliding up my thighs, until he towered over me again. His lips touched mine, softly. Lightly. “I know today was all kinds of fucked up. Shit . . . the whole week. It’s been hard for me, too.”
“I know.” I hugged him, pressing my cheek to his heart. He was so solid and strong. I loved the way I felt when I was in his arms.
He was already thick and hard between us, but he grew more so as I cuddled into him. “Eva . . .” He cleared his throat. “Let me finish, angel.”
I nipped his jaw with my teeth and reached down to grip his perfect ass, tugging him tighter against me. “Why don’t you get started instead?”
“That isn’t where this was headed.”
As if it could’ve ended any other way when we were both naked and running our hands all over each other. Gideon could put his hand to the small of my back while we were walking and make me as needy as if he’d put his hand between my legs. “Well . . . revisit and revise, ace.”
Gideon’s hands came up and gripped the sides of my throat, his thumbs beneath my chin to push it up. His frown gave him away, and before he could tell me why it wasn’t a good idea to make love now, I caught his cock in my hands.
He growled, his hips jerking. “Eva . . .”
“It would be a shame to waste this.”
“I can’t screw this up with you.” His eyes were dark as sapphires. “If you ever freaked out while I was touching you, I’d lose my mind.”
“Gideon, please—”
“I say when.” The command in his voice was unmistakable.
My grip loosened automatically.