Page 52 of Tempest

“How long has this been going on?”

“I’ve only had a couple before, but never as bad as this. I woke up in the middle of the night, freezing cold,” she says when I place her on her feet next to the tub. “I think I overdid it yesterday.”

“Tori said you enjoyed yourself.” I stretch her chin up and look at her neck, not knowing why. I have no idea what a swollen thyroid looks like, but if I don’t get familiar with her neck, I won’t notice when it is.

“I did, my body didn’t.” She runs a hand through her long dark hair, too easily finger combing out a clump. “L-look.”

“Is that normal?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, Gavin. What if it all falls out?”

“That’s not going to happen,” I say, untying her silk robe and finding nothing underneath. She’s suffering, so I suffer in my own way and don’t take her in the way I want. I don’t touch and explore every inch of her soft skin with my mouth.

Instead, I take her hand and help her into the tub. She exhales a deep sigh when she submerges her shoulders under the water. I go to the counter and take a hairbrush before undressing down to my boxers and climbing in the bath behind her. She doesn’t move at all, not even a flinch as she buries her face in her knees.

“My business depends on how I look,” she says. “I can’t lose my hair.”

I pick up a different bottle of oil and dump some into my hands, slowly massaging it into her scalp.

“You’re not going to lose all your hair,” I say, even as I watch more strands easily fall out. “You have healthy, thick hair. You’ll survive losing a little while we figure out how to prevent it. But even if you did lose it all, you’d still be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Your hair doesn’t change that, or the fact that you’re the best at what you do.”

“My brain says you’re right, but my nerves can’t hear that right now. Oh god, that feels amazing.” She melts under my fingers, her body falling back into mine. I’d been trying to keep from being skin to skin with her, not wanting to blur boundaries just because she’s in crisis. But fucking hell, she’s soft and impossibly silky against my hard muscles. My cock reacts all on its own.

“Try and relax,” I say, scooting back an inch.

“Your dick is making that a little hard,” she says, but can’t do it without laughing.

“Your ass is making my dick hard; this is your fault. I’m trying to be a friend here.”

“Well, I’m sorry I have such a great ass,” she says. “Whose crazy idea was this?”

“Mine. But you didn’t argue.”

“We could have gotten in the sauna.”

“Of course, this place has a sauna,” I say.

“Right? I’m not sure it’s in functioning condition. This house is crazy, what was I thinking!”

“You’d have to answer that one, Odette.” I add more oil to my palm and work her nape, making her moan.

“I haven’t done many overly lavish things in life. I lived in the same shoebox apartment for years, it barely had furniture so I could fit all my racks of clothes and shoes. I amassed all this wealth and didn’t do anything with it,” she says. “My sole focus was styling other people’s lives. When I moved here, I needed new distractions. This house is taking the brunt of it.”

“You’re styling it instead of people.”

“That is exactly what my mother said. Lower, please?”

“Sure,” I say, working my fingers to her shoulders. “This isn’t weird for you?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She laughs. “It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever done. But I’ve also never felt like this. I think I was on the verge of a panic attack when you showed up, so thank you for that. I’m sure I’ll be mortified later when my brain starts functioning properly. But it isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, I guess.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty weird for me, too.”

“Really? Aren’t you athletes all man-whores? I figured you’d have a piece of ass in every city you play in. Don’t you have a harem of them here at home?”

I don’t know why, but I like that she already thinks of Seattle as her home.

“Is that what you think?”

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