Page 41 of Liar & Champion
“You are good. Better than good. The best. Tell me what you want.” He made it sound so flirty, and his voice, so raw and deep, it went through me like honey and thunder.
I stared at him. “You. I want you.” I did. So much. Forever. Like this and like at the campfire and like the morning I woke up with my head on his shoulder and felt safe and warm and protected like I’d never been before. I wanted his hands, his mouth, his heart, his soul, his life, and I wanted it with a terrifying fierceness that made it hard to breathe, to move, to do anything but stare at him like an idiot.
He smiled slowly. “You’ve got me, Kitten. What do you want to do with me? Or what do you want me to do with you?” His eyes smoldered while his hands held perfectly still on my sides.
What was he waiting for? I didn’t know what I wanted, except him. Was I supposed to know details? Also, I couldn’t want him like this, that was asking for disaster, except it was fine as long as he didn’t know I was attached, and as long as he wasn’t, because I wasn’t about to get with some guy who was devasted when I dropped dead in six months. Two months. Two days. Whatever. I had to live in the moment, but he was looking at me, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted when I couldn’t ever want anything too much or it would break me. I was dying, yeah, but I wasn’t broken.
“Kitten?” he asked, moving back a bit, hands on my knees while he studied me with new concern.
“Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out what you want me to say, but I don’t know. I’ve never shown anyone my underwear, except for this one time in a rainforest with a bunch of friends, when we went down these water slides, and then I got this slug under my panty line, but this isn’t at all like that, because you’re clearly not a slug. Um. I shouldn’t have said that.”
His brow furrowed slightly then smoothed as he smiled back at me all sweet and tender. “I like you too.” He straightened and picked me up, then stepped with me into the tub, lowering us into the water while I held onto his neck and tried to not feel weird. He was still wearing his jeans. Wet jeans were the worst.
Once we were settled into the comfortably contoured tub, he kissed my shoulder, then my arm, then my forehead. “You’ve had a long day. Why don’t you tell me about your ex-boyfriends.”
I squinted while I tried to remember exactly what I’d told him about that. My thoughts were still spinning, I mean, I was on the lap of a mostly naked man who wore my wooden band onhis left hand. My husband. And he felt so good. No pain. Not one drop. “I don’t date.”
“Never?”
I shrugged and tried to turn, but his grip on me tightened so I couldn’t move a centimeter. “Nix?”
“Hold still, Kitten, or I’ll lose control. We’re having a very important conversation.”
“Oh. Okay.” Did he have this talk with everyone he slept with? Of course he did. This was the STI talk, and safe sex, and if I was on the pill, or birth control, or if I’d been checked recently. Of course it was. “Tell me about your ex-girlfriends. Do you like condoms or does she do condoms, do they have women’s condoms? I don’t even know. Have you been tested recently? I haven’t been specifically for STI’s, but I’ve recently had a doctor’s check-up and I am, obviously, still a virgin, so sexually transmitted infections aren’t really likely. I’m not on any birth control pills, so that’s important to know. I don’t exactly want to get pregnant. That would be a disaster.”
He shifted me slightly, turning me so I was more on his knees, less on his lap, and kind of facing him so he could study my face. “I’m clean. Condoms for me. Always. I’ve never been with anyone without trying to minimize all those kinds of risk.”
I smiled while a wave of relief went through me. He could take care of the practicalities that I really didn’t know anything about. “I’m glad. That’s smart to be careful with your health.”
He studied me for a long time before tucking me back against him, cradling me against his chest. He kissed my hair and idly stroked my shoulder, my arm, like he was thinking about something else. “Can I wash your hair?”
“Does it stink?”
He laughed, a rumble that went through me so deliciously. “No. I just want to touch you. It feels like need, and I’m about on the edge of my self-control. Can I wash your hair?”
I nodded and then he dipped me back so my hair was in the water while he stared down at me, his eyes running along my body while my wet hair spread around my face. He slowly raised me back up, kissed my mouth then turned me and settled me between his knees so he could massage my scalp. I relaxed against him and slowly the lapping warm water and his slow steady hands released the tension I’d been holding since we stood up in front of that priest.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured.
I sighed and let my eyes drift closed. “I love the way you touch me. You always make me feel so good. It shouldn’t be possible how good I feel. Are you also a professional shampooer? I’d pay big bucks for this.”
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in close so my head was in the crook of his shoulder. “You sound sleepy.”
“Mm. Shouldn’t sleep in the tub or I’ll get all pruney.”
“Sleep, Kitten. I’ll put you in bed before you’re wrinkled up too bad.”
“But how can I sleep and miss how good you feel?”
He laughed, a low rumble that was like a cat purring. “Life is full of tough choices.”
“I love life,” I whispered, and then I drifted off while his hands caressed me, willing me to sleep. And I dreamed, naturally, of him.
I woke up in my husband’s arms, my head on his shoulder like that first morning together, when I’d cried and he’d held me so tenderly. Tenderness was one thing he had in spades. A shiver went down my spine, but I needed my meds, and I needed to contact my aunt, get a new phone, and eat something healthy.
But he felt so good. So good. So incredibly incredible. I nibbled on his neck and nosed his skin, trying to breathe him in. Where had he been my whole life? I slept with Beastie sometimes, crashing in a tent or on a boat, but not like this. Healways kept his distance instead of Nix who was wrapped around me like I was his teddy bear.
Ah, delight.
