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She tilts her head back and lets the shampoo run from her hair. Some of the suds roll over her tits and down her belly, across the plane of her mound. She’s waxed there, smooth as glass, and I know she must have groomed herself in memory of him.
The thought should drive me wild. But I know he’s dead. She killed him. And she’s with me because she wants to be here. I’m the winner in the end.
I reach for the bar of soap and roll it between my hands. The lather is thick and heavy, and I smooth it over her skin like cream. I wash her back. I wash her ass. I turn her around and slip my hands between her legs.
She pushes against me as I bathe her folds, her spine slick against the hair on my chest. My cock is more impatient now, pressing hard above the cleft of her ass, but I set my jaw and remind myself we’ve got all night.
She’s glowing as water rinses away the suds. Her skin is pink, flushed with the heat of the shower and the sneaking tease of my fingers. Her hair is almost long enough now to curl around her face.
When I turn toward the faucet to cut off the water, her hand closes around my arm. I let her pull me around. I stand still while she fetches the smooth bar of soap, and I bite back a groan as suds foam around her fingers.
She washes my chest, teasing the chips of my nipples. She rolls down my ribs, hands steady and firm. She gathers more soap before she traces the fur from my navel to my rock-hard cock.
I want to catch her wrists. I want to push her hard against the tile wall. I want to find her mouth with mine and drink her breath as my dick plows the sweet wet crease between her thighs.
But she’s the one who’s driving. She’s the one who handles my cock, who soaps me up and rinses me clean. She’s the one who cups my balls, bathing them in the shower’s liquid fire. She’s the one who frees me.
I don’t have to be her avenging angel, not tonight. I don’t have to be her protector. I don’t have to be the man who’d lie for her, kill for her, die for her.
I just have to be the man who loves her.
When the water runs clear, she’s the one who turns off the faucet. We reach for towels together. I wrap her in thirsty terry, using a second towel to dry her arms, her legs, her hair. She does the same for me, wiping me dry.
Leaving the damp towels where they fall, we lace fingers and walk into the bedroom. How many times have we stood by this bed? She’s only been free for ten weeks—only two and a half months since she killed Herzog—but it feels like we’ve been here forever.
I turn to face her. I cup the back of her neck. I match her gaze with mine and I find the words I never thought I’d say.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be that man.”
It feels like I’m dying. I’m extinguishing my soul. Some truths are as basic as the sun and the moon and the stars, and this is one: I can never cause a woman the type of pain Alix craves.
But the sun will eventually die. The moon will crumble out of orbit. Every star in the sky will implode someday.
I’ll become the man Alix needs. I’ll do the things she begged me to do when I left her in Herzog’s torture chamber. I’ll hurt her because I trust myself to save her, because I’ve spent years measuring out a lesser type of pain. I know how to make it, to shape it, to brake.
Another man might kill her. Herzog almost did.
Losing her will definitely kill me.
So I say the rest, everything I’ve thought, every night of the two long weeks she’s been gone. “I’ll never know what you lived through, how it changed you, how it made you who you are tonight. But if you need that pain to feel anything at all…” My throat closes, but I have to go on. I have to say every last word. “I’ll hate him till the day I die. And I’ll hate a part of myself too. But I’ll do it. For you. Because I love you.” I need her to know that, I need her to understand, before I do the things that will destroy my soul. “I love you, Alix Key. And I’ll be the man you need me to be for as long as you’ll have me in your life.”
43
ALIX
* * *
He doesn’t know. He dropped everything and drove to Herzog’s, speeding through the night just because I called him.
I haven’t had time to tell him about the videos. I haven’t figured out the words.
I’m not the woman who stood in Herzog’s study and begged him to break himself for me. I’m not the woman who was in so much pain, who was so lost, so broken that agony seemed the only path to freedom.
I cup his jaw with my palm. I touch my forehead to his, then shift back, just enough that he’ll be able to read truth in my eyes. I squeeze his fingers with our linked hands.
“Thank you,” I say.
And there, I see it. Just a flicker. Just a flash. I see him recognize his own damnation, accept it and embrace it, because he still thinks that is what I need.
