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I gasped, planting my hands on his chest for balance. I had nowhere to go as my body adjusted to the shocking cold, and my legs wound up straddling him. “Asshole,” I breathed.
“You want honesty?” He ran his thumb across my forehead, moving my hair away from my scar, where his eyes lingered. “I think this makes you more beautiful than all the girls at school. It means you know real pain. Real suffering. It means you are real. When I look around Parker, I just see a bunch of vapid idiots. People who think tragedy is their BFF not getting nominated for prom queen. Then there’s you.”
“Beautiful?” I wanted to say something else. Something deeper and more meaningful. Especially something that would make me seem like I hadn’t picked the lowest hanging fruit in what he’d said and latched onto it just like one of the people he was talking about.
He touched my face again, more tenderly than I thought he was capable of. “You asked for honesty. That’s honesty. Now how about you return the favor?”
I sucked my lower lip between my teeth. “Could we have this conversation somewhere warmer?”
He pulled me closer, then winced when my full weight went on his bruised body. “No. Seeing you cold and wet is bringing back fond memories.”
I wanted to give him a dirty look for that, but I found myself smiling. “The truth is I don’t want to like you. I still don’t. But I feel connected to you. It’s like I know you’re always going to haunt me. Even if I found the perfect guy and settled down, you’d be the shadow in the corner of the room. The dark promise of some other future. Something more…”
“Real,” he finished.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll never be the perfect guy. But I can be real. That much, I can promise. I also promise I’ll definitely haunt you if you ever try to be with someone else.”
I swallowed. I was already shivering, and I didn’t know how Cassian wasn’t. The ice and water were seeping through my skin, making my bones feel cold. I tried to sit up, but the position was immediately suggestive, as my legs were spread over his hips and my shirt was clinging to my breasts, highlighting my hard nipples.
“What?” I asked with a teasing edge to my voice. “Are you trying to say you want to be exclusive?”
Cassian gripped me by the hips, pressing me down into himself.
“Doesn’t cold water make it shrink?” I asked
He used his hands to move me against himself, grinding into me. “Guess you’ll need to heat me up.”
I gripped the slippery edge of the tub with one hand and planted the other on the wall. I wasn’t sure if it was the cold on my legs or the growing hardness between his legs—and mine—but my lungs didn’t seem to want to function. I closed my eyes, breathing harder as he urged me to move myself against him.
“If you try to stop me from coming again, I’m never—”
“Not this time,” he said. “I want you to come on me. I want to hear you moan my fucking name.”
I shuddered. I hoped I wasn’t putting him in some kind of danger by pressing myself into him like this right after he got his ass kicked, but at least I was distracting him from the pain, right?
Cassian gripped my breasts through my shirt and ran his thumb across my nipple as I drove my hips into him. I started to feel a growing heat spread from between my legs.
“Come for me, Charli.”
My eyebrows knitted together. I still didn’t want him to know how much I was liking it, even as ridiculous as that seemed—given that I was in a bathtub full of ice cubes and grinding on his cock at the moment. I tried to stifle a moan, but it slipped out anyway.
He took a fistful of my shirt and tugged on it, urging me to move faster and harder. “Say my name.”
I shook my head but didn’t stop working myself against him.
“Say it.”
“Cassian,” I whispered.
“Again.”
“Cassian.” His name came out of me like an exhalation at the same moment my body lit up. I tightened all over, scissoring my thighs around his waist and gripping his shoulders.
When I stopped, I realized he was shivering. I reached behind us and unplugged the drain. “We should probably get you out of here.”
He put his hand up to touch my chin, then thumbed my lip. “Your lips look a little blue.”
I looked down at his bruised body. “So do your ribs. And face.”
Cassian rolled his head to the side. “After the day I’ve had, I imagine my balls do, too.”
We both laughed at that, which felt strange. Laughing with Cassian. Helping him out of the tub and drying him off. Letting him press a towel to me and peel off my wet shirt.
