“Don’t act like it doesn’t need it!”
Once her hair is fully wet, she points to the rose-pink bottle of peach shampoo, and he has to whack it against his palm to get it to come out. And…oh. She feels that motion right between her legs.
When his fingers touch her scalp for the first time, she has to swallow back a moan. He moves them in slow circles, like he wants to be sure he’s shampooing every inch.Heavenly.
Suddenly she doesn’t feel like joking around anymore. With how attentive he is, she remembers how his hand trailed up her leg beneath her skirt. How he rocked her against his jeans until she fell apart in his arms. She’s replayed it in her head every night before falling asleep, pretending her fingers are his.God, he made her feel so, so good, and she’s desperate to be able to do the same for him. She wants him needy, blushing, wrecked with his own pleasure. Swearing her name. Begging for air. Until he’s sinking teeth into the back of her hand, unable to hold out any longer.
This man deserves to feel good things. In every sense of the word.
His fingers rub a little harder, working the shampoo into a lather, and she can’t help it—this time, the moan slips out.
For a moment his hands still in her hair. She hears his rough exhale, commits it to memory before he starts back up again. Ifshe weren’t sick, if this weren’t forbidden, she might drag him into the bathtub with her. Put her mouth on every inch of his bare skin.
“Tip your head back,” he says when it’s time to rinse, and she instantly misses the pressure of his touch.
When she catches a glimpse of the two of them in the mirror, she expects them to look ridiculous. But it’s undeniably sweet, the way he’s tilting the stream of water through her hair, lifting up heavy strands of it. As focused as if he were grading a paper. He’s beautiful from every angle, especially with water flecked onto his chest and dotting the lenses of his glasses.
With everything he does, he treats her like someone worthy of care.
Then she makes the mistake of looking down—at the way her belly folds over the bikini bottom. The bulge of her thighs. She’d been so relaxed, and now she can’t help wondering what he sees when he looks at her. After all, he just watched her concert. He’s probably comparing her to that girl on his TV screen.
When she lets out a shuddery breath, his hands pause as he’s smoothing conditioner through her hair. “Is everything okay? Am I doing something wrong?”
“No. No, you’re amazing. It’s just—I haven’t had my clothes off in front of someone in a while,” she says. “I know you’re just washing my hair. And I’m not naked. But…the tabloids all said I got fat. After I retired. The way they wrote about it, it was like it was the worst thing that could happen, the worst thing they could say about me.” A firm shake of her head. “My body was starved. I was miserable. And they all thought I looked so much better than I do now.”
“Ramona,” he says softly, and there’s her first name again.Has she never noticed the way he says it? Like he’s savoring it, holding each syllable between his lips.
“I know it’s fucked. It shouldn’t bother me. And most days, it doesn’t. I don’t even know why I feel the need to explain it to you, just…”
She turns to face him, because she wants to be brave. In the past few hours, he’s already seen so much of her that no one ever has.
Nick swallows hard. The next time he speaks, there’s a tremor in his voice. “I think you look perfect.”
21
He doesn’t plan to staythe night, but it gets later and later and neither of them brings it up. Ramona plants herself in front of the drying station she has set up in her bathroom, a space-age contraption blasting warm air at her head.
Then she curls onto her bed with heavy-lidded eyes. Pats the spot next to her. “Stay here with me?” she asks in a sleepy voice that pulls tendrils of longing from his chest. “Just for a bit?”
Nothing in the world could make him say no to that.
With his heart in his throat, Nick climbs onto her bed, with its fluffy white duvet and too many pillows. “Should I take my jeans off?”
Somehow she still has the energy to smirk. “No, it’s fine.”
So he settles in next to her, trying to give her as much space as possible, even as she props her head on one elbow, watching him attempt to get comfortable. She smells like fresh peaches, and now he knows how every strand of her hair feels between his fingers.
He’s dimly aware of Janet keeping an eye on him from her bed in the corner.
Ramona stretches out her arm, grazing his elbow with a lazy finger. The soft expression on her face—completely at ease. Has she ever been like this around him?
“Thank you. Again,” she says, and the gratitude seems misplaced, because he’s not sure what he’s done to earn it. He thinks he might have crawled over broken glass to get here.
Before he can figure out how he wants to reply or if she’s even expecting him to, she’s passed out, hair spilling in every direction across the pillow, fingertip still tucked into the crook of his elbow.
He listens to her steady, only slightly congested breaths.
The force of wanting her could tear him apart. Rip him limb from limb until there’s nothing left but a bruised and bloodied heart. Take away his job, and everything he’s worked for. Splash his unidentified male face all over the internet.
