Page 66 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
I finish up, wash my hands…
And that’s when I realize something is…not quite right.
I blink, and realize the bathroom is filled with steam.
Steam?
Uh-oh.
I twist in place, and there’s James. My shower curtain is see-through, so he’s on display.
Standing with wet hair plastered back against his scalp, covered in shampoo, beard straggly and dripping. Big chest swelling and receding as he sucks in slow breaths. Cock hanging against his thigh—and growing, it looks like, as he stares at me.
His big brown eyes are wide.
“Um.” I blink at him. “Hi.”
He just stares. “Hi.”
“I, um. I tend to not notice obvious things when I’m out of it.” I can’t stop staring at him. “Like someone in my shower, for example.”
He nods, like he’s as unsure how to handle this scenario as I am. “I see.” He pauses. “I woke up feeling like shit. So I made coffee and figured I’d jump in the shower. Thought I’d be done before you woke up. Sorry.”
I shrug, my eyes raking over him—taking in all of James, naked and wet and in my shower. “It’s okay.”
“It’s okay?” he asks.
I shrug again. I’m staring—as I watch his cock go from hanging mostly limp to standing rigid against his belly. “Yeah. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry about last night,” he says. “I was a fuckin’ mess.”
I shake my head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.” I meet his eyes. “Unless it was just the booze talking.”
He doesn’t answer for a moment, his eyes fixed on mine, intense and unreadable. And then, abruptly, it’s like a curtain falls, and I can see a wealth of emotion in him:
Uncertainty. Fear. Embarrassment. Desire.
He shakes his head slowly. “No. It wasn’t the booze talking.” He lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “I mean…the booze got me talking, but it wasn’t just the booze.”
“You remember it all?”
He nods. “I don’t black out. I remember every word.” His heavy shoulders lift with a deep breath, and then lower as he lets it out slowly through his teeth. “I meant every word.”
Silence, except for the hiss of the shower.
I swallow hard. “James…” I close my eyes, take a shuddery breath. “I’m afraid to want too much too soon.”
“I know.” His eyes flick down to my breasts, to my nipples poking against the thin fabric of my T-shirt, then back to my eyes. “Was I dreaming, or did we…um…cuddle, this morning?” His cheeks go pink, as if he’s embarrassed to use a word like cuddle.
I can’t help a smile from stealing across my lips. “We did.”
He nods. “I’m glad that wasn’t just a dream.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
He’s enormously erect, thick and hard, his balls tight against his body, the tip of his cock straining near his belly button. I can’t stop looking at it—wanting it. Needing it. Needing James, needing more than we’ve had so far. Needing to know how it feels to…to be his. For him to be mine.
But I’m scared to want that. Scared to reach for—for an us that I’m not sure he’s capable of giving me.
“Nova…” He clenches his fists, then shakes them out. His eyes close, and then open—the way I do when I’m summoning my courage. “I want…”
I’m not breathing. “What, James?”
“You.”
“I want you too, but…” I force the hardest truth out. “But not unless you’re all in. Not unless you can give me all of you.”
He pushes aside the shower curtain now, so there’s nothing between us but steam. “There’s a part of me that’ll always be…a little broken. Time heals all wounds, but some wounds never heal, not totally.”
“I know that. Same for me, but—”
“I can only offer you…me.” He wipes water off his face, off his beard. “I’m all in, Nova. If you can accept that I’m…damaged, I guess, then…”
I huff a gentle laugh. “James…” I shake my head. “All of us are damaged. I know you can’t give me the part of you that belonged to Renée—I wouldn’t want you to try. That’s part of you, James.” I swallow a massive lump in my throat. “That’s part of what I’ve been falling in love with—you. Just…you. All of you. The fact that you understand where I’ve been more deeply than anyone else ever could…the fact that you’ve come through what you have, that you’re here for your girls.”
“I said it last night—I want more than to just to be here. I want more than to just live.” He holds up his hands, drops them. “I want that with you, Nova. I’ve been fighting it, fighting wanting it. Fighting the guilt over everything.”
“I can’t fight your guilt, James. Nor can I compete with a ghost. I won’t try.”
He shakes his head. “She’s not a ghost, Nova. She’s my past. She’s there; she’ll always be there, but…” A shrug. “I know I was drunk last night, but when I said goodbye to her, I meant it. I hate that I had to get so messed up to be able to say that, to do that, but it was real.”
