Page 22 of Need Him Like Oxygen

I didn’t want to even talk about my wrist and ribs. At this rate, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to move without pain for months.

And I needed to get the hell back out there, find these pricks, and make them pay for this.

I needed my crew to know I was still around and in charge.

Sure, I’d covered my ass by lying to the boss and telling him I was fine, just working on shit behind the scenes. And I was keeping tabs on everyone under me via text. But that wasn’t how I ran things. Eventually, people were going to wonder why they hadn’t seen me, why I wasn’t out on the streets like usual.

I had to heal and get back out there.

Maybe the first step to feeling more human was taking a shower.

“Need any help?” Dav asked, placing the towels on the rack and the shirt and panties on the sink counter.

Panties he’d clearly bought me, I might add.

There was a whole pile of them on the dresser in the bedroom, tags still attached. And we were not going to talk about the strange little thrill that moved through me at realizing he’d been the one to pick them out. Especially when he’d chosen simple, not fussy ones. A part of me thought that, given the chance, he’d buy something ridiculous like silk or lace or all strappy for no good reason.

He’d picked out what he thought I would like, not what he liked.

You had to appreciate that.

“The day I need your help taking off my shirt and underwear is the day you can just take me out back and shoot me,” I grumbled.

“I have to admit, I like the idea of taking your panties off for the first time in a much more mutually exciting way,” he said, giving me that damn playboy grin.

“That’s never going to happen.”

“Sure sure,” he agreed, heading toward the door. “I’ll be a couple feet away when you realize you’re being a stubborn-ass and need help with your hair,” he said. “Though, if you need help scrubbing any other are—“

“Out,” I snapped, but there wasn’t much bite to the word.

Alone, I stripped, removed my wrist brace, and moved into the shower niche, just letting the water run over me for a while, finding some relief in the sensation.

Until, of course, I reached for the bottle of body wash. That smelled just like Davide when he would sneak into my room right after his shower, shirtless, hair wet, still glistening a bit.

Just slathering it on conjured a bunch of mental images that I had no business thinking of on a good day, let alone when I was badly beaten.

But there was no denying the way my skin started to warm and my core ached in the painful knot of desire as the scent filled the air of the shower around me as well.

I pretended to ignore it as I washed the grime from the attack and days of lazing in bed off of my skin, catching sight of bruises I hadn’t even known existed until then. Up my arms, down my legs, over my hip and stomach. I saw more purple and blue than I did my actual skin tone as I looked myself over.

Finished with that, I reached for the bottle of shampoo… then nearly blacked out when my hands lifted past my chest.

The string of curses I let out was enough to make my fellow mafia capos blush.

“Ready to admit defeat yet?” Dev called from outside of the door. “Or are you intent on making this harder on yourself than absolutely necessary?”

“Fine,” I grumbled, reaching a hand to drape across my breasts.

I wasn’t overly modest. He was going to see my full ass. But with all of the comments about my boobs over the years, I felt weird letting him see them in this sort of context.

Not that there would ever be any other sort of context. There wouldn’t be.

“And by ‘fine,’ I assume you mean Hey, Dav, thanks for helping me not look like a swamp creature,” he said as he moved into the bathroom.

To his credit, he didn’t ogle me.

He moved toward the shower niche, glanced at the removable shower wand, hemming and hawing something.

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