Honestly, I didn’t know what I needed. But I knew I didn’t want to go home yet, and I was grateful that he’d given me some time before he kicked me out, even if it was time spent without him.
I lost track of time in the shower. I lost track of thoughts. I didn’t worry about sorting out my brain or my emotions. I just turned the water as hot as I could stand it and stood under the rain showerhead and let it pour over me until I felt like I could move again. Then I used some of Donovan’s shampoo and body wash, cleaned up quickly, and got out smelling like him, which made me smile unexpectedly with every inhale.
After drying off, I realized that my dress and bra were missing. Donovan must have taken them out with him when he’d left. I squeezed the water from my hair as best I could and, with a towel wrapped around myself, left the bathroom to look for him and/or my dress.
I found him first, in the bedroom looking out the window, one arm braced against the glass, a tumbler of scotch in the other, and as soon as I saw him, the breath left my lungs. He’d changed out of his suit, and now he was wearing a pair of dark sweats that hung loosely around his hips, and nothing else. His feet and chest were bare, and I couldn’t stop staring at the toned ridges of his abs, at the dips and curves of his biceps, at the sharp V lines that disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants.
It was a relaxed version of Donovan. As relaxed as he ever got, I suspected. And there was something so sensual about it. Something so inviting and intimate and alluring.
It did strange things to my body to see him like that. Made my blood hot like I was still in the shower, made me shiver as if I’d been out in the cold.
He turned when I opened the door and studied me as I studied him. I was probably the one who should speak, should thank him for the shower and all that, but I’d lost thoughts of everything but the way my heart felt racing in my chest like it did.
So he was the one to talk first. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to get you dirty again.”
Goose bumps erupted along my arms. “I’ve never seen you with your shirt off.” I sounded like a lust-driven teenager. Felt like one too.
He didn’t seem to mind. “If I’d known it would elicit such a reaction, I would have stripped sooner,” he said with a smirk.
“Would you really?” I had the distinct feeling he liked the power it gave him to be dressed when I was not. Or maybe that was just me.
“Probably not.” As I’d thought. He pointed to a small tray on the ottoman in the sitting area. “I brought some cheese and grapes. What can I get you to drink? Wine? Gin?”
I gaped for two seconds. I’d expected to come out of the shower and be sent home. This hospitable side of Donovan surprised me. Elated me. How long did this mean I could stay?
With a glance at the tumbler already in his hand, I said, “Scotch, please.”
If he was startled by my choice, he didn’t let on. He simply smiled. “Scotch it is.”
He set his own drink down on his nightstand, but I stopped him before he disappeared out of the room. “Where did you put my dress?”
“I hung it up. You can get it later.”
So he really wasn’t kicking me out…yet.
When he left the room, I was the one that was smiling.
Spotting his discarded clothes draped on the back of a chair by the fireplace, I exchanged my towel for his dress shirt. I rolled the sleeves up and grabbed the tray of cheese and grapes and scanned the room for my seating choices. The chairs faced the fireplace. Eating on someone else’s sheets was tacky.
I ended up choosing the floor at the bottom of the bed. The area rug extended far enough that I wasn’t sitting on hard floor, and this was the best way to enjoy the view.
Donovan returned a few minutes later and seemed mildly surprised to find me where he did. He handed me my drink, his brow raised.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from him. Without him pressing, I rushed to explain my choice. “I wanted to look out the windows.”
Apparently that wasn’t the cause for the brow raise. “I offered food and drink. I didn’t offer clothes.” Though the way he looked at me now, his gaze searing as it traveled down my bare thighs, I didn’t think he really minded all that much.
“You’re dressed,” I challenged before bringing a grape to my mouth.
His eyes flicked from my own to my lips. “My house, my rules.”
“I guess you’re going to have to enforce them then. Because I’m kind of comfortable as I am.”
His jaw ticked, but he didn’t push further. Instead, he retrieved his drink and took a seat next to me, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
God, those legs. Those arms. That body. Just sitting next to him made me crazy with desire. Made my pussy pulse with want and—
“We didn’t use a condom.” It hadn’t occurred to me until just then. Quickly, gears shifted from lust to panic.
Donovan, however, remained calm. He picked another grape from a stem. “You’re on birth control,” he said, before throwing it in his mouth.
I was on the pill. Not that I’d ever told him that. But pregnancy wasn’t the only reason to use a condom. I bristled. “And you assumed...?”
He tilted his head toward me. “You had a safe word. You didn’t use it.”
I had to think about that for a minute because the thing was that protection hadn’t occurred to me while we were having sex either. Which was weird. I’d never had unprotected sex.
But if I had thought about it, would I have interrupted the game to tell him to suit up?
No. I wouldn’t. Part of the fantasy was about letting Donovan do whatever he wanted to me. Letting him take me however he wanted to take me. And if he wanted to take me bare, then he would take me bare. It wasn’t up to me.
“I didn’t want to use my safe word,” I said after I’d thought it through.
He gave me the devil’s smirk, the one that said he’d known I’d come to that conclusion all along. “Then what are you fussing about?”
“I’m not fussing. Just…” I trailed off. How was I supposed to ask about STDs? The deed was over and done. The only thing I could do now was get tested. I wrapped both my hands around my tumbler and took a sip, trying not to wonder about how many women Donovan might have slept with previously without a condom.
The thoughts slipped in anyway, making my stomach twist. It hurt to think about him having sex with anyone else, let alone to imagine him being so intimate with someone that he’d go bare.
Which meant I shouldn’t be thinking about it.
But how could I stop?
“I haven’t had unprotected sex in over ten years,” he volunteered.
My head snapped up to see if he was kidding. His expression said he wasn’t.
“Oh.” Since Amanda, probably. He’d used condoms with every woman he’d been with since his fiancée? I liked hearing this. I hated how much I liked it.
“And,” he went on, “I haven’t fucked anyone else since you came into town.”
While the first announcement had been a surprise, this one was a shock. “Why?” I asked, my voice thin.