She braced her right foot on the ledge in the corner of the shower and steadied her left hand against the wall. Slowly she bent over, little by little. Before she even made it halfway, her back screamed with pain, a sharp bolt down her spine and through her hip. She cursed and jolted upright, knocking over the bottles of body wash and shampoo precariously balanced on the narrow shelf along the shower wall.
Noah was through the door before she’d even fully registered how loud the crashing bottles were, their impact with the river rock floor echoing against the marble walls.
“What happened?”
“Noah!” Callie hugged her arms around her body in an attempt to cover herself from his view.
On the other side of the steamed-up glass door, Noah’s eyes swept over her. The panic on his face faded, a restrained heat taking its place.
“Sorry.” He turned his back, covering his eyes when they locked with hers in the mirror. “I heard a crash. I thought you fell.”
“No, I just dropped…everything. I just wanted to shave my legs,” she muttered to herself.
“Is something preventing you?”
“I can’t…bend like that right now. It’s too painful.” She could feel the tears building again, but she refused to cry over something as stupid as shaving her legs. It wouldn’t be the first time she couldn’t do it, nor would it be the last.
“What do you need to make the pain go away?”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “It doesn’t work like that. Nothing makes the pain go away. There are things that help—”
“Tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you.”
“I already took ibuprofen and I’ll put on my cream when I’m done in here. There’s nothing to do but ride it out. I thought the heat would’ve loosened things up enough by now, but…” She sniffled.
“Callie.” His voice was full of concern. He dropped his hand from his eyes and met her gaze in the mirror.
She waved it away. “It’s stupid. No one will even care if my legs are shaved or not. I just wanted to, I don’t know, feel a little like I used to before—”
Noah, fully dressed in a white button-down and dark dress slacks, threw open the shower door, the spray from the shower’s multiple heads hitting him with a fine mist that left dark spots on his clothing.
“What are you doing?” she squeaked, pulling a towel off the nearby towel bar and holding it over herself. It was immediately soaked through, the fabric plastering itself to her body.
He stepped into the shower, closed the door behind himself, and dropped to one knee at her feet.
Of all the ways she’d imagined being in a shower with Noah Van Aller, this was never it. Despite that, the flush creeping over her face was much less about being embarrassed and much more about the fact that Noah was only a few inches from her naked body. He kept his gazed fixed on the floor, but if he were to raise his head, he’d be eye level with her most intimate place. She could hardly breathe at the thought.
He took her foot in his hand with a firm but gentle touch and placed it on his knee, her toes resting on the soaked fabric of his dress pants. He retrieved the fallen bottle of body wash and squirted a generous amount into his hand. And then he touched her. His hands skated over her calf, her knee, massaging the slippery liquid into her skin. As he did, his thumbs pressed into the tense muscles of her calf.
“What are you doing?” she asked again, softer this time.
“I can’t take away the pain, but I can shave your legs for you.”
Callie’s breath hitched as his hands traveled over her thigh, massaging the body wash into her skin. His knuckles brushed against the edge of the towel that barely concealed her nakedness from him as he worked. She fought the urge to squeeze her thighs together as desire pulsed deep in her core. Not that she could have anyway, with one of her feet still propped on Noah’s knee.
“Razor?” He held out his hand.
“You don’t need to do this.”
He lifted his head to meet her eyes. “Let me take care of you, love. Just this once.”
There it was again—love.Like she meant something to him. Like she was more than just his little sister’s best friend. Surely the fact that he was about to shave her legs meant she was more?
She handed him the pink, plastic razor and watched as he dragged it slowly, carefully over her skin in long, even strokes. His movements were methodical, precise. He kept one hand wrapped around her calf to steady her and made a thorough job of shaving her leg, unfazed by the shower pouring down on him and soaking through his clothing, pushing his hair into his eyes in streaming wet tendrils.
When he was done, he set her foot back on the floor and began again on the other leg. Callie tried to focus on the rhythm of it, the softness of his hands on her skin. She did her best not to think about how labored her breathing had become, or how much she ached for his touch to move higher. For so long she’d wondered what it would be like to have him touch her—she’d never thought she’d find out.
As he moved to her thigh, his hand slid higher, holding her knee tight against his chest. Even with the water crashing down around them, the weight of his breathing hung between them, the harsh exhales and shaky inhales as he went about his work.
