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Everything was inevitable. Even free will—
“So I found a porcelain bowl in there.” Anne came out of the bathroom. “It was full of wax fruit—I hope Fritz doesn’t mind that I emptied it out? And God, do you smell this soap? It’s like a garden—there was French writing on the wrapper. It’s all so fancy in this house.”
Anne was talking fast while she came across to the bed, and he couldn’t decide whether she was nervous or just truly fascinated by everything she was discovering under his roof.
His boss’s roof.
Fuck.
As she put the basin down on the bedside table, he took a deep breath and wished that Fritz stocked the house with unscented soap: Even though he was glad she liked the perfume, in order to catch her scent, he had to sort through the flowers of it all.
“You’re on your back,” she said with disapproval.
“I’m feeling a lot better.”
“That doctor is a miracle worker.”
When she sat down on the mattress, her eyes went to his bare chest, and as they lingered on his pecs, he thought… yup, he was suddenly feeling much, much better.
“Your boss has nice towels.” She took a small one and dipped it in the warm water, then wrung the thing out. “These are so soft.”
When she put the washcloth on his upper arm, he closed his eyes and tried to keep the erotic shudder to himself—
“Sorry, am I hurting you?”
He captured her wrist as she went to remove the cloth.
“No, please. Don’t stop.”
As the words came out of his mouth, something told him he was going to be saying them a lot. If she’d let him.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Anne was impossibly gentle as she went back and forth to the bowl, the little towel warm as she stroked it over his biceps, his skin cooling when she returned to the soapy water to rinse things out. As she moved up to the base of his throat, he found himself arching back and offering her his vein—and her lack of response to the instinctual movement was a reminder of the reality that he refused to dwell on.
By the time she started with his pecs, his lungs really were burning, and speaking of s’mores, he had totally forgotten all about his back. Then again, he was obsessed with her face. He focused on her eyes, her lips, her neck, partially because in the soft light, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen… mostly because the sight of her hand upon his flesh would have sent him right over the edge—and he was already in a debate with his dumb handle.
He didn’t want her to know how aroused he was, but things below the waist were getting harder to hide. The good news? As the essential thickening at the center of his hips intensified, at least she seemed too absorbed in not dripping water on the bed’s coverings or the floor to notice.
Or maybe her preoccupation was deliberate. He couldn’t tell.
With a quick jerk of the hand, he pulled the drop of the duvet over his pelvis, just as Anne stretched across to his other arm—and yes, he could have moved toward her to help her reach that biceps, that forearm… but then he would have missed the sensation of her leaning on his chest—
Without any conscious thought, he captured her wrist again.
It was not to stop her.
On the contrary, it was to…
As her eyes met his, he knew that he had crossed a line, but he couldn’t help it. And he asked her, without speaking, the question that was tingling in the air between them.
In reply, her stare dropped to his mouth… and she answered him in the same way, silently. Intensely.
And it was a yes.
“I don’t want to waste time,” she said hoarsely. “And I’m done with having no horizon.”
“I feel the same way. I want to be out of purgatory… I want to live.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
Shifting his hand to the nape of her neck, Darius drew her to him—and when they were close, he held her there. Just in case she wanted to change her mind. She didn’t. She was the one who finished the distance, and their lips meeting once again was the most natural thing in the world.
Yet she was the one who ended their connection.
He kept his disappointment to himself as she returned to the bowl—
Anne came back with the little towel, pushed the covers off him, and placed the cloth on his abdomen. As his six pack tightened reflexively, he looked down his body. On the far side of her hand, behind the fly of the cargo pants that really needed to come off because they were dirty and carried a whiff of gasoline and house fire and lesser blood… his erection was oh, so obvious.
And she saw it, too, her stroke over his stomach stilling.
