“How long?”
“Forever long.” I took his hand and turned towards the bathroom. “From the moment I met you.”
Ranger let me tow him along, kicking his boots off along the way. “We met in Crow land. I thought you were Italian.”
“You thought I was Sambini?”
“I thought you were a cunt.”
He could have called me an angel and it would have sounded the same from his rough mouth. “I thoughtyouwere a King spy. And I thought Folk was a government infiltrator. They were the only explanations I could think of for why the two of you were in such a place.”
“What about Rocco? And Locke?”
His friends. One of them dead. And I spoke of him first. “I thought Rocco was trapped and I knew it would kill him. I did not know for sure that Locke existed until after the warehouse fire. He was kept out of sight when I was around.”
We reached the bathroom. Lights built into the floor cast a golden glow into the small space I had spent many nights and days when pain and addiction had consumed me.
Only Ranger consumed me now.
I pulled my shirt off and dropped it on the floor, feeling the heat of him behind me. Close, but not close enough.
The shower was open, just a rainfall head fixed to the ceiling, no screens or doors.
Like barracks.
No. This was nothing like that—this was nothing like anything, and it did not feel strange to strip in front of Ranger. I had done it before. It washimwho had always been clothed.
Naked, I moved to the shower, the only sound in the room the twisting of the dial and Ranger’s measured intake of breath until the water flowed from the ceiling. “You are still dressed.” I did not need to look to know. “You do not have to do this.”
“Neither do you.”
I rotated to face him.
Ranger held my gaze, his attention never straying from my face. “Nothing about you and me will ever be transactional.”
“You do not believe me,” I realised. “When I say this has been what I wanted all along.”
“I believe you. I just—” Ranger rubbed his lips with a tense hand. “I can’t be another fucking thing that hurts you. It’d kill me.”
His fear made sense, and it broke something inside me. But his earnest gaze healed it right back up, and whatever that did to my face twisted Ranger’s features into a dry scowl. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No.” I held out my hand to him. “I am thinking that your smile is like rumpled sheets, and I have never thought that about a man before.”
“Sounds like a good time.”
“Maybe we will find out.”
Slowly...so slowly, Ranger reached back and tugged his faded biker tee over his head, revealing the torso I had seen so much of already. The dark ink. The healed slash wound. The skin that was now kissed by the sun.
It left him in the cargo shorts I’d long ago forgotten were Jake’s. One loose button at the waist.
My breathing heavied, my throat dry despite the steam filling the room. Fear or desire, I could not tell. And it didn’t matter. I had spent my whole life chasing nightmares. I could not let wanting Ranger scare me.
I beckoned him closer with my outstretched hand.
My heart thudded as he chose his path. Skipped a beat as he chose me, and his fingers tangled with mine.
I used my free hand to pop the button on the shorts. They fell away, leaving him in underwear, and I did not blink until they were gone. Ranger’s lean abdomen touched mine, skin to skin. I shivered and edged back, coaxing him beneath the hot spray, and kissing him felt somehow safer with water cascading over us.
