This electricity between us found new routes. The tops of my ears burned, the tips of my fingers. The back of my throat.
He carried me through his house, past my room, through the last door at the end of the hallway. It was his room and I barely noticed. I was too busy feeling his lower ribs vibrate as he breathed.
There was fine hair at the nape of his neck. Soft when I stroked it one way, like the bristle of a brush when I touched it the other way.
I could do that all day.
My twenty-four-hour birthday wish.
Something cold touched the back of my thighs, and he flipped on a light and I blinked into the reflected brightness in the mirrors. We were in his bathroom. A bathroom so big my trailer could fit in it.
His kiss lingered. His hands slid from my ass to my waist and my shoulders and I twitched. I did the same to him. I took all the touches I didn’t take earlier. I ran my hands all over his body. All that silky bare skin, the thick muscles beneath it. My fingers brushed over the scars on his ribs and he twitched.
“Does…does that hurt?”
“It’s not comfortable,” he said and kissed me again. I kept my hands away from his scars.
When he pulled back, his lips were swollen and damp. Pink.
I reached up and touched them with my fingers. “You have a pretty mouth,” I said.
He sucked my finger into his mouth and then slid back, until it fell from his lips. “I have a girl’s mouth,” he said. “A cocksucker mouth.”
“What?” I cried.
“Pop’s words,” he said.
“What a stupid thing to say,” I muttered and pulled him back toward me. I touched his mouth, all the edges, the soft curves, the hard edge of the scar tissue, and he twitched and tried to pull back but I put my legs around him, keeping him still. “You’ve got a beautiful mouth.” I had no idea if my opinion mattered, but I wanted to say it. I gave him one hard, quick kiss and let him go.
Smiling, he reached into a glass-lined shower and turned on the faucet. Water thundered down from a big, round showerhead and the glass near the floor immediately got foggy.
There was a bathtub next to the shower, one of those big Jacuzzi ones. And a toilet beside that. Outside the window over it, there was only sky.
“Are we taking a shower?” I asked, excited by the idea.
“You are. And you’re going to take your time.”
“Are you telling me I stink?”
“No. I’m telling you I need twenty minutes to get things organized.”
“For what?”
“Your birthday.”
He grabbed the hem of my shirt and lifted it up over my head. This was another strange minute when I kind of missed my long hair. It would feel good falling down over my bare shoulders. It would probably look good, reflected back in all these mirrors. And I sort of…I sort of wanted him to see it. To see part of the old me and find it desirable. The parts of me that no one found desirable. I wondered what he would think—of my red hair. My Del Monte cap. My cowboy boots.
The steam was filling the room now, and when he reached around me to pull at my pants, I braced my arms behind me and lifted my hips.
He smiled down at the red hair between my legs, his thumb stroked through it, and I looked down to the see the red curls there around his thumb.
Other women shaved. I didn’t. I’d never been waxed. I trimmed the hair because it was hot and I felt cleaner when I did it.
“Why’d you dye your hair?” he asked.
Because I’m running from my husband who tried to kill me.
Reality was intrusive. A bully pounding on the door, and I ignored it as best I could.
Twenty-four hours and then I’d go back to reality.
“I just wanted a change,” I lied.
His thumb slid deeper and I spread my legs wider, lifting my hips higher, jerking when he hit my clit and then lingered there, rolling it against his thumb.
“Dylan…” I breathed, leaning back against the mirror behind me.
He growled but then he stepped back, took a deep breath. “Get in the shower,” he said.
“Now?” I blinked.
“Preparations,” he said. He pressed a quick, hard kiss to my shoulder and then was gone.