Suddenly the door opens a crack, one beautiful blue-gray-green eye blinking at me. “Oh, and by the way. Just to be clear, when I call you in. Please be”—pink dances up the sliver of her cheek that I can see—“clothed. I think I can only take one of us naked at a time, to start things off.”
I lean into the crack of the door and steal a kiss. “Clothed it is.”
* * *
—
Now it’s my turn to sit on the edge of the bed, staring into the fire.
“Ready!” she calls.
I straighten like I’ve been shocked. Clearing my throat, I stand from the bed. “Coming,” I call back.
“Heh,” she says. “So soon?”
“Watch it, Wilmot,” I tell her, even though I’m smiling, reaching for the door and once again realizing my hand isn’t steady.
“Ooh, I’ve been Wilmot-ed. And I thought calling me Katerina was as stern as you could sound.”
Opening the door, I tell her, “Katerina, you haven’t even seen stern . . .” My voice dies off.
A mountain of bubbles surrounds her, obscuring most of her body, but not all of it. The tips of her bare toes. Two knobby knees. The freckled tops of her shoulders. All that hair, piled high on her head, delicate wet tendrils plastered to her neck.
Her face, flushed and lovely, tight with nerves.
“Take a look,” she blurts, lifting one long arm out of the water, pointing toward the polished, now-dry tiles, the neat stack of folded damp towels in the far corner where the broken towel rack rests. “I can sure make a mess, but at least I can clean it up, too. What do you think?”
Staring at her, I drag the door shut behind me. “Unimaginably lovely.”
She frowns. “That’s a strange way to describe a tidied-up bathroom.”
I ease onto the edge of the tub and set her wine beside her. “I’m not talking about the bathroom.”
Her cheeks stain deep, rose pink. “This tub,” she says, staring down at the bubbles, “is incredible. Get your digs in now. I will forgive anything so long as I’m soaking in this thing, even outlandishly sweet compliments like that.”
I smile, guiding a hair off her cheek that’s stuck there. “Are you telling me that all I should have done when I tried to fix things with you was throw you over my shoulder and toss you in my tub?”
She laughs. “Yep! Little did I know, all I had to do was get drunk and spill my guts for you to be nice to me.”
My heart clenches. “Just ‘nice’?”
“Well . . .” She makes a thoughtful face. “Maybe a little more than nice. Maybe caring. And unexpectedly gentle. And thoughtful. And excellent at providing upright orgasms, which I have yet to master for myself.”
She’s rambling. Which means she’s nervous. I rest a hand over hers, tracing with my fingertips the droplets of water beading her skin. That’s when I feel her trembling like I have been, too.
“Kate, honey—”
“I’m okay,” she says, flipping her palm, squeezing my hand hard. “I promise.”
She slides forward in the water, wrapping her arms around her knees, baring a long expanse of smooth, pale back that I’ve seen only once before, the night at her apartment that she gave me right back what I’d given her. It does not feel remotely the same. “Would you wash my back?” she asks. “My shoulder’s still a little too stiff to reach it.”
I set my hand between her shoulder blades, tracing my fingertips down her vertebrae. “Yes,” I tell her, savoring the trail of goose bumps that blooms on her skin in the wake of my touch.
I reach for a washcloth and dip it in the water, then glide it over her back. She sets her chin on her knees and sighs. “That feels nice.”
“Good.” I scrub over her shoulders, tracing carefully over the one she broke. “Kate, should it still be stiff like that? Do you need physical therapy?”
She turns her head slightly, giving me her profile, the sight of her teeth, sinking into her lip. “I might.”
Bending, I kiss her shoulder. “You have to take better care of yourself, Katerina. Or I’m going to get very high-handed and do it for you.”
A smile tugs at her mouth. “I’m sort of bad at self-care, but I’m trying to be better, and you seem to enjoy bossing me around. Maybe we can meet in the middle.”
I smile against her skin and kiss it again before sitting up. “Deal.”
She reaches for my hand resting on her shoulder with the washcloth and guides my touch down her arm, into the mysterious sea of bubbles. I follow her lead, scrubbing her arm as she leans against the tub on a sigh and rests her temple against my hip. “I didn’t realize how much I neglected myself until I came home. I just got so hyperfocused on work, things like clothes without holes in them and regular meals felt like annoying interferences.
“I loved that work, and I’m proud of what I did. I will always want to use my camera to wake people up to the world’s wrongs, wrench them out of their complacency by showing them what’s so much harder to ignore and do nothing about when you see it. But I can also recognize that work took a hell of a lot out of me. I’m ready to move on and take better care of myself.”
A knot’s in my throat as I bring the washcloth back up her arm and guide it slowly across her chest, above the bubbles concealing her breasts. “And let others take care of you, too?”
“Not just anyone.” She hesitates, then glances up at me. “I think I’ll start with a few people I trust. Who matter to me the most.”
I swallow roughly, searching her eyes.
“Like you,” she says quietly, grabbing my wrist, pulling me in. Her kiss is cool and faint. It feels like forgiveness. It feels like love breathed over me, seeping through my skin, to my bones, to the heart pounding in my chest.
“If I got to do one thing for the rest of my life,” I tell her, “it would be taking care of you, Kate.”
She stares at me, wide-eyed, a fierce flush flooding her cheeks.
I can’t believe I just said that, just revealed so much. I reach past her, dragging the washcloth down her arm.
“You’d choose that over inventorying your empire?” she says, a smile suffusing her voice.
I narrow my eyes as I stare at her. “You know I would. None of that would matter if you weren’t . . .” I wash her neck, which she offers me, tipping her head away. Bending, I press a kiss there, breathing her in. “It wouldn’t mean anything to me if you weren’t with me to share it.”
“That’s a good answer,” she sighs.
“I know,” I whisper against her neck.
She laughs, loud and smoky, then she’s there, turning, her wet hand on my cheek, her mouth finding mine, hungry and hot, tongues stroking, breaths echoing in the space. I lean in, sinking a hand into her hair, wanting her, drinking her in.
Her hair starts to fall loose as I tug it, tipping her head, coaxing her mouth to open for mine, deepening our kiss.
“Kate,” I mutter roughly between kisses. “Can I take out the bird’s nest?”
She gasps, then pulls away and splashes me. “Asshole!”
I laugh, splashing her back. “Relax, Katydid. I love your bird’s nest.”
“Some way to show it,” she grumbles, turning her back on me.
I lean in and press another kiss to her neck, nuzzling her hair, breathing her in. “I might be a little obsessed with it, actually.”
She turns my way, her nose brushing mine. “You’re obsessed with my bird’s nest?”
“God, yes. I want to see it down.”
She searches my eyes. Then she lifts her hands toward her hair. My hands shoot out and wrap around them, stopping her.
“You want to do it?” she asks.
I nod.
She smiles. “Go ahead, then. You can take it down.”
Her hands fall away. I reach for the tie, unwrapping it cautiously, going slower than I know she would, but wanting to be careful not to hurt her. And then the tie is in my hands, free of her hair. I set it on the edge of the tub, then I unwind her hair in slow circles, until it spills down her back, a chestnut waterfall that steals my breath.
It sinks into the bathwater, so long it lands near her hips. I stare at it, gliding my hands down the silky strands as they turn wetter.
“You’re so quiet,” she says.
I spread my hands across her shoulders, down her arms, to the waves of hair floating in the water. “I might have . . .” I swallow roughly. “I might have wanted to do this for a while.”
She smiles, carving dimples in her cheeks. “To touch my hair?”