He smiles and I know he knows.
I twirl my finger to let him know he needs to turn around and he complies. Leaning forward, he braces his arms on the wall while I scrub his back and legs.
His entire body twitches when I slip a soapy finger between the firm cheeks of his ass and I giggle.
“Easy,” he says under his breath.
I smack his right ass cheek lightly.
“There. All clean.” Next I step out of the line of the shower spray and watch while he rinses off.
I am wet in every way possible right now.
“My turn,” Gavin says evenly, palming the bar of soap I just returned to the tray.
He gives me a much more thorough washing than I gave him, covering every inch of my skin with his strong, soapy hands.
I moan involuntarily when he digs his fingers into the flesh on my thighs and again when he massages my neck and shoulders. I’m practically panting when his fingers begin tracing the taut peaks of my breasts. He’s behind me with his arms around me and I can feel his erection against my backside.
My body goes limp against him when he kneads my nipples between his thumb and forefinger.
“Gavin.”
“Hmm?”
I smile because he’s distracted—by me. By my body. Our connection is so powerful, I can hardly believe we denied it as long as we did.
I need him to make all the pain go away. What happened between us, the ways we’ve destroyed each other over the years, the lies, the images from the attack, the concerns about Liam. For right now, I need to be selfish and I need him to give me what I need.
“I need . . . I need the truth, please. And maybe this isn’t the time or place and maybe there will never be a time and place that feels right but . . . I need it. The other night,” I begin to tell him, feeling unexpectedly desperate for him to know the truth. “I didn’t mind the . . . dirty stuff. I liked it.”
His head snaps up and his eyes meet mine. “I took it too far. I—”
“I can handle it, Gav. If you need a hate fuck or a punishment fuck or a talk-dirty-to-me fuck, I can handle it. As long as it’s not meant to teach me some type of bullshit lesson about how terrible you are.”
I press my mouth to his, enjoying the sensation when he breaches the seam of my lips to sweep his tongue inside.
“I am so sorry, baby,” he says while burying his face in my neck. “You know I didn’t mean any of the—”
“I know, Gavin. I know you better than you think I do. I want all of you. The light and the dark and the broken parts.”
“I am all broken parts,” he says into my ear. “That’s all I am.”
“We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in,” I tell him, quoting something I read years ago in high school. Hemingway, I think it was. I remember reading it and thinking immediately of Gavin, but then I am always thinking of him in one way or another.
Gavin washes and rinses my hair and his own and shuts the water off. I’m vaguely aware when he wraps me in the towel I brought him.
I want to protest when he lifts me off the ground and carries me to my bed like a bride over the threshold but I can’t make my mouth form words. The room blurs and disappears.
“Looks like you’re sleeping in the buff tonight, Bluebird,” he tells me as he tucks me into my bed.
“Stay,” I mumble, growing sleepier by the minute as the last twenty-four hours crashes down on me hard. “Please.”
“I am,” he tells me. But I mean here, in my room, in my bed. I’m too exhausted to verbalize it so I just pull at him until he gets the message and crawls into my bed, naked and damp from the shower, beside me.
“Sleep, baby. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Sweeter words were never spoken.
I’m hot. Burning up and sweating.