Page 28 of Roads Behind Us
I looked at her, and sympathy crossed over her features, but she smiled softly.
“You understand her,” I whispered.
“I do.”
Chapter Ten
Bea
“Lean back,” I said when I was convinced I’d gotten all the paint out of Bax’s hair and had scrubbed the wall behind him so it wouldn’t get dirty again.
He did as I asked, and I reached for the clean washcloths I’d brought from the laundry room. I set a pile of three on my thigh and grabbed the white one on top. When I leaned over the tub’s edge and dipped the cloth into the soapy water between his spread thighs, Bax shifted away from me.
He was trying to be a gentleman, but deep down inside, I wanted his caveman tendencies to come out. I wanted him to drag me into the tub by my hair and get me wet in more ways than one.
Note to self: Don’t go so long without human contact and sex next time, Bea. It turns you into a shameless, horny bitch.
The intimacy of the situation floored me. No man had ever let me be so close in such a vulnerable situation. Granted, I couldn’t remember ever being in a situation this delicate, but it spoke volumes about Bax’s character that he’d let me in so quickly. He barely knew me.
I didn’t know him either.
Actually, maybe I did. I knew his grief and how it added shadows to his happiness no one else could see. And I knew his daughter because I’d been her in another life.
“Bea?”
“Hm?”
“You okay?”
His concern for me zapped me out of the trance I’d gone into, and craziness came out of my mouth when I looked in his eyes. “What would you do if I slid my hand beneath the water again? If I touched you, what would you do?”
He froze. “I’m not sure.”
“Because of your wife?”
He nodded once. “Yes.”
“And Athena?”
He relaxed and began to breathe again. “Yeah.”
“I won’t,” I said. But oh, how I wanted to.
Athena had become a safety blanket for Bax. That was painfully plain to see, but I wasn’t meant to be the one who stole that comfort away from him. I knew the cost too well.
But he whispered, “I want you to touch me.”
I searched his nervous blue eyes, and he searched mine too. But did he really want that? Because I wanted to touch him so much, I ached inside.
One more slow dip of his head told me yes.
Could we allow ourselves a moment to give into this insane connection? Seriously, where had it come from? But any longer than that, and I would be risking ripping the blanket away forever.
Grabbing the bottle of body wash from the edge of the tub, I poured a little onto my washcloth, then dipped the cloth in the water again and worked up a lather in my hand. Bax watched like my fingers were little cobras ready to strike.
When I lifted the cloth to his clavicle and pressed it softly against his skin, his head tipped back against the wall, hands gripping the edges of the tub. His eyes rolled closed, and he drew in a breath slowly between his teeth. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched his cock twitch beneath the surface of the water, the useless bubbles long gone now.
The man was the definition of sexy. The way he didn’t hide his sex from me, or his attraction to me, even though he had no clue what to do about it, was the most alluring thing I’d ever witnessed.
