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“I’m trying not to look.”
He chuckled. “Very polite, I’m sure, but you’re going to tip me into the fire if you’re not careful. Please look at what you’re doing and I apologize if it offends you.”
It didn’t offend me. What bothered me was that my eyes were treacherous and kept looking where I didn’t want them to, which then kickstarted my imagination of what it might feel like to get into that bath with him, to feel his touch on my naked body as I touched his. To let my finger trace patterns across his wet skin as he drew me to him, seating me in his lap until…
“Selena?”
“Yes? What?”
“Little help?”
I lowered him into the bath. Devon sighed with relief.
“Thank you. You may go back to standing and facing the wall.”
I sighed. “How are you going to wash yourself?”
“I’ll manage.”
“No, you won’t.” I reached for the soap and the cloth. “Let me.”
The next half hour seemed to pass in slow motion, and every moment of it formed an indelible memory in my mind. The smell of the soap was sharp in my nostrils as I applied it to the cloth and then started to suds Devon’s broad chest. I could feel his heart beneath my hand, and felt it speed up slightly at my touch. His breathing too increased, my soapy hand rising and falling with the swell of his sculpted chest.
“You have a lot of scars.” My voice was low and thick, as if I was struggling to speak.
“Yes.” He seemed to have the same problem.
“What is…” My fingers found a long dinted valley in his skin where one particularly noticeable scar ran and I traced its length, my heart fluttering in my chest as I did so.
“A knife fight,” Devon explained.
It didn’t look like a knife wound to me though, more like an animal claw, but that wasn’t the first thing on my mind at that moment.
I didn’t think I was deliberately taking my time—no, I was going slowly because I was working around a recent wound, and because it felt like if I went any faster, my pounding heart might break my ribs from the inside.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” I said, making conversation as much as anything, trying to keep things ‘normal’.
“You’re not hurting me.”
“Your heart’s beating fast.”
Devon swallowed. “That is an unrelated issue. Well… not completely unrelated but… You’re not hurting me.”
“Oh. Oh!” Glancing down into the increasingly soapy water I glimpsed what he meant. Devon was an impressive man and getting more impressive by the moment. No wonder the water seemed to be staying hot.
“Should I stop?”
“Maybe if you moved onto the dressings,” suggested Devon.
“Right.”
We seemed unnaturally close. I mean… it was impossible to wash someone without being close to them, but we somehow felt closer than we physically were. As if the walls of the room had been closing in around us so the world was limited to him and me and the bath tub.
The hot water made the soaked bandages easier to remove and I peeled them gently from Devon’s body.
“You really do heal fast,” I murmured, examining the spot where the cauterized skin was closing and even starting to get its color back.
“Lucky,” said Devon.
