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“No.”
He steps in then. “Whose room is it?”
“Yours.”
“Mine.”
My body trembles when he says that. All shivery and hot.
And then he closes the door behind him and I’m dripping with sweat.
He begins to walk toward me, prowl really, and I’m dripping with all these emotions and feelings, with love.
He goes for his tie, loosening it from around his neck and I whisper, “What are you doing?”
I know I should’ve spoken louder; his room is extremely big, much bigger than my room at the mansion. It’s quite possibly the size of his cottage living room and dining room and kitchen combined.
But I know he hears me.
I know that.
Even though he’s chosen to remain silent.
Even though after discarding his tie, he’s now going for his shirt. He’s now unbuttoning it, his fingers deft and sure, his eyes still on me.
Clutching the t-shirt that I’m wearing — his — I ask, “What are you doing, Alaric? How did you know where I was?”
“Mo.”
I watch his fingers work quickly and he’s only made it halfway to me. “I-I thought you went to California.” I look up at his face, all sharp and beautiful, and so brimming with intensity and ferocity that it’s going to bring me to my knees in a second. “I thought you had an important meeting there. If you’re missing it because you’re here right now then it’s not my fault. You can’t be mad at me and leave me like you did last night.”
Now that he’s done unbuttoning his shirt, he slides it out of his dark gray dress pants and, rolling his shoulders, he discards it on the floor. I don’t know where it lands, the shirt, because I can’t take my eyes off him.
I can never take my eyes off him when he reveals his body.
His massive gladiator chest, his ladder-like torso.
When he comes to a halt in front of me, I crane my neck, my hands all clenched in my t-shirt and my toes all curled. “You didn’t even say goodbye, Alaric.”
No, he didn’t.
He just left.
And now that he’s here, I’m realizing that I’m mad at him.
I’ve been so busy with all the revelations and worries and anxieties and the sheer ache that he was gone that I forgot that I was upset too. I was, am, angry.
His face is dipped as he stares down at me. “The meeting’s over for tonight.”
“What does… Does that mean it’s not over for good? Like you have to —”
“Go back tomorrow, yeah.”
“So then what are you —”
“I forgot to run you a bath yesterday.”
I draw back. “What?”
“When I left,” he goes on. “I didn’t get a chance to run you a bath.”
“But that…” I frown up at him. “Is that why you came back? To run me a bath.”
“I took your ass last night and it hurt. But I wasn’t there to make it better.”
“That’s insane. That’s —”
He picks me up then like he did last night, when he carried me from his living room over to his bedroom. But tonight, he does it gently. He does it carefully and tenderly as he wraps his fingers around my waist and drapes me over his shoulders.
I watch his back, all astonished and speechless.
At the craziness of this.
At the sheer madness that he’d fly back from California for the night just to run me a bath. Because he took my ass last night.
“It didn’t even hurt that much,” I tell him.
He carries me over to his en suite, and when we reach his clawfoot bathtub that I’ve only ever seen during my sneaking in and out, he puts me down and replies, “I’m going to run you a bath regardless. And then I will.”
My fingers dig into his smooth dense biceps. “You will what?”
“Say goodbye.”
My body goes numb at his words.
My body loses all function.
I stand there like a statue, like an inanimate doll, as I watch him turn the tap on. As I watch him go over to the closet under the sink and take out all the bottles and things that he knows I like.
Cherry blossom bath salts and bombs.
Even though it’s not the fruit cherry, he still bought it for me. Because it’s something I said to him in passing when we were taking one of our baths. “I wonder if they have like cherry pie bath salts or oils or something. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
At the time, he was lying behind me, his eyes closed and his head resting on the rim of the tub. His only response was a non-committal grunt so I didn’t think he’d paid attention. But the next night, there they were, tiny pink bottles of cherry blossom bath salts and bombs and oils.
“Well, this is the closest they had to the cherry pie that you asked for,” he said when I asked him what they were doing there.
