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I look down. We are too. Covered in dirt and who knows what else from our adventures on the other side of the hotel.
I stand, taking his hand. “Only one thing to do about that,” I say, smiling slightly wickedly. I pull him into the bathroom.
I should take it slow, I know we should. Maybe it’s something I’ll work on in the future.
But not now. Not with Tristan here, in the flesh.
He hesitates at the door.
I slip the shoulder straps off my dress so I’m standing before him in only my strapless bra and underwear. Turning around, I pull on the shower. “You coming with me?” I ask.
“Cora, I don’t—”
With my back still to him, I unhook my bra and let it fall to the floor, then I pull off my underwear, letting them fall too.
“Fuck me,” Tristan rasps. “You’re naked.”
“Apparently.”
I step into the shower, leaving the curtain partway open.
The shower is loud, but not louder than the thundering of my heart. He might not come in. Maybe I was once again too forward. Taking leaps where there were none to take.
But he kissed me, didn’t he? He kissed me first this time.
I lather up the soap and begin sliding it over my body, the shower jet hitting my front.
The curtain rings sing as he pulls the shower curtain open behind me. I smile, warmth spreading across my chest just as quickly as the heat curling lower.
“Let me help you,” Tristan says, his voice thick.
When he comes up behind me, it’s his hands I feel first, sliding around my hips, meeting mine at my belly. He takes the soap from me and begins sliding it upward, toward my breasts. He uses the soap over me as if it was his hands—the hard bar teasing the lower swell of my breast, then gliding over my tight nipple and up my chest to my throat.
He steps closer, and that’s when I feel the press of hard, hot flesh on my ass.
He brings the soap around to my back, sliding it down, sudsing up my ass while his hand in the front travels over my breast. His palm slides over my nipple while he glides the soap over my bottom.
Water courses over my front, dripping down off the triangle of hair between my legs.
Tristan brings his lips down to my ear. “I don’t know if I can give you what you want, Cora,” he says, his voice strained.
It should make me pause. It should hurt.
But it doesn’t. Because I already know this is a now thing, and not a forever thing. It’ll hurt later.
“I want this anyway,” I say. “I don’t want promises, Tristan. Just this.”
The soap drops to the floor of the tub and he grasps my hips, turning me around. Then he lowers his lips to mine.
There’s something different about taking things in the present tense. About savoring the way his lips feel against mine; his tongue searching, needing me as much as the press of his hardness against my belly.
“You’re too good for me,” he whispers when he breaks the kiss. He brings his hands to my jaw. Water pounds against my back, steam pluming up around us. “You offer everything so freely and I… I’ve never known how to…”
Love? Is that what he’s talking about? Is it possible he’s loved me all this time the way I have him? Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? All these years I tried to find what I’d been missing with all those relationships—I’d tried to foist the feelings I had for Tristan onto these random men, ones who couldn’t handle the depth of my feelings toward the boy I never got to have.
This still isn’t having him. It’s getting a taste; it’s closure; it’s something I’m going to ride as far as it’ll take me.
He kisses me again, unable to finish his thoughts. I know his life was hard—I know he was the kid who went to the store to buy food with money he found in the couch cushions. I know his stepfather hardly tolerated him. He and Sam talked about these things sometimes in the rec room, and I’d listen in, my little heart breaking at the top of the basement stairs. What would it be like to have parents who didn’t remember to buy food? Whose best friend packed an extra lunch so you could have enough to eat at least one meal a day?
