Chapter 272: Reid
By the time we get home she’s moving on autopilot, soft goodnights to the house and then straight to the bathroom, shoulders a little hunched like the night scraped more off her than she wants to admit. I give her a minute, then knock.
“Come in,” she says, and when she sees it’s me, her gaze drops, that tiny crease between her brows like she’s mad at herself for still being mad at me. I step inside, shut the door with my hip, and peel my shirt off in one clean pull.
“If you want, I’ll burn these,” I tell her, tossing the shirt toward the hamper like it insulted her personally. “Boots too. Hell, I’ll set the whole bar on fire.”
Her mouth twitches, like she’s trying not to laugh, but the gloss in her eyes wins. “I’ve never been jealous before,” she whispers, voice threadbare. “And now—God—I’ve never been this mad and sad at the same time. I don’t even recognize myself.”
That undoes me. It always does—this girl who will stand in front of a storm with her chin up, now blinking back tears because something ugly tried to make a home in her chest. I cross the tile and cup her face. “Listen to me,” I say, low and even. “I wasn’t interested in meeting anyone before you. And since you? I haven’t looked. Not once.” I let that sit, let her feel the weight of it. “She means nothing. Never did. I didn’t get hard when she touched me. I didn’t find her pretty. My body doesn’t listen to anyone but you.”
Her bottom lip wobbles like she’s twenty seconds from crying and twenty seconds from kissing me, and I tip forward and catch it with my mouth because I can’t help it. When I pull back, I brush my thumb over her cheek. “How about this,” I murmur. “Let me in, and you can scrub me head to toe until you’re satisfied there isn’t a molecule of her anywhere on me.”
A small, wet laugh. A nod. “Deal.”
I turn the water on and steam climbs the mirror. She undresses, slow and stubborn, watching me like she’s making sure I’m really here, really hers. I strip the rest of the way, and when her eyes drag down and back up, heat kicks under my skin, but I keep it leashed because tonight isn’t about hunger, it’s about reset.
“Arms on the wall, trouble,” I tell her, guiding her under the spray. The water sheets over her shoulders, turns the little flyaways at her hairline into dark curls, runs in thin rivers over skin I have memorized and still can’t get enough of. I hand her the soap, step close, and bow my head so she can start. Her palms are small and sure. She lathers my throat, my shoulders, each long line of muscle down my chest with a thoroughness that’s half penance, half possession, and I let her, every inch of it, because she needs to take this back.
She works her way down my arms, fingers around my wrists, bringing my hands up to kiss my knuckles like she’s sealing them—mine, not hers. She steps behind me and drags soap across my back, slow, steady strokes like she’s wiping a chalkboard clean, like she’s writing her name instead. I brace one hand to the tile above her head and breathe her in—coconut shampoo, hot water, that warm-vanilla skin that wrecks me—and when she reaches my hips, I catch her waist and pull her forward into my chest so the spray hits us both.
“You with me?” I ask against her temple.
“Always,” she whispers, and turns her face up. I bend to her mouth and the kiss starts soft—gratitude, apology, promise—and turns into something deeper, deeper still, a slow, sinking anchor of tongue and breath that makes heat bloom under all the bruised places. She rises onto her toes to chase me; I bend lower to meet her; water drums our shoulders and the world narrows to the slide of her lips and the little sound she makes when I angle her jaw just so. I'm so fucking hard, my cock rubbing low on her belly and begging to be inside her, but not yet. Maybe not even tonight. She's vulnerable and needs to know that I'm hers and hers only. And, yes, I could show her that by fucking her the way I've never done with anybody else, but something tells me that's not what she needs.
When she finally breaks away, she rests her forehead to mine, breath catching. “I’m sorry,” she says, eyes shining but steady now. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I just—when I saw her hands on you—”
“I know.” I brush a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Don’t be sorry. I liked watching you be as possessive of me as I am of you.” I nip her bottom lip, a punctuation mark. “Besides, that was a nice fucking punch.”
That wins me a real laugh, soft and scandalized. I reach behind her, shut off the water, and wrap a towel around her shoulders before I take one for myself. She lets me dry her hair with the gentleness I save for her and the boat, eyes half-lidded, somewhere between shy and smug. I can’t stop touching her—thumb at her jaw, knuckles up her spine, palm warm over the flat of her belly in a way that makes something dangerous and hopeful twist in my chest.
If she only knew there’s a ring tucked away upstairs, round and bright and exactly right for the girl who turned my whole life into one long, unblinking yes. If she only knew I could not care less about any other woman on earth.
I hook an arm under her knees and lift her out of the bathroom, kissing her temple as I go. “Clean?” I ask, just to hear the answer.
She snuggles in, smug little hum vibrating against my throat. “Scrubbed,” she says, tipping my face down for another kiss. “And yours.”