Adair closed the door and reached back, locking it without looking. I walked backward to mine, clasping my hand around it. “Not a word,” I warned before yanking on it to make sure it was locked.
He just smiled, his assessing gaze raking over me before he opened his arms.
It was such an Adair thing to do, and I walked straight to him and wrapped my arms around him.
He held me to him securely, sighing deeply as he nuzzled into the top of my head. “You had a long day.”
I pressed my face into his chest, inhaling his pine-and-fresh-air scent. “And probably still smell like hairspray,” I added.
He buried his nose in my hair, and I laughed, pulling back.
“A little bit,” he confirmed, keeping hold of me.
“Still want to help me with that?”
He licked his lips, glancing from me to the shower. “In there?”
“Unless you want to get my board and your scooter and roll back to the Zinnia House salon.”
His chuckle cut off with a choke as I stepped out of his hold and stripped off my top in one movement. His eyes dropped to my chest, then back to my face, then back down. You’d swear he hadn’t thoroughly buried his face there and explored me twice already by the way he was looking at me, all disbelief and unchecked hunger.
I shimmied my shorts and panties off, barely holding back a smile at the thick swallow that moved his throat. He picked at his T-shirt, pulling it away from his body as he drank me in.
I tilted my head to the side, not moving anymore orsaying anything, giving him the opening to tell me what was making him anxious.
“You’re perfect,” he rasped. “More than I could have ever dreamed.”
Oh.
A herd of rabbits sprinted across my grave this time, competing with the butterflies flapping in my stomach, as I took a step toward him. “Shower with me?”
He nodded, gaze still raking over my body, and I turned to open the shower door. A choked noise came from him, and I flushed with pleasure as I turned on the shower.
Once it was a good temperature, I turned around and found Adair exactly as I’d left him, save for the arousal tenting his sweatpants.
My gaze lingered there, and he groaned as his dick twitched behind the material. “Indigo,” he warned, his voice deeper.
I shivered again, glancing back at his face. “Need help with the boot?”
He shook his head, but his fingers fumbled as he unstrapped the boot. He tossed it aside before peeling off the long purple compression sock.
I inhaled sharply, realizing this was the first time I’d ever seen his entire foot.
Our relationship was riddled with fun facts like that. Knew each other’s deepest desires and failures, thanks to all the notes we exchanged, but had never seen each other outside the campus of a retirement village.
I wanted to look closer, to ask him questions about how it felt, how it was healing, but I’d been standing here naked for so long now that it was threatening to become awkward. After a quick once-over, I decided the senior safety features in the bathroom were enough for him toget himself into the shower safely—I’d heard him doing so without falling for quite a while now—so I stepped inside, giving him space to decide what he was comfortable with.
I left the door open as I washed my face, getting rid of the makeup that hadn’t already melted off. My fix on the shower had held up well, the pressure just right without being a safety hazard.
My heart skipped when I heard shuffling nearby, and then one of my classical music playlists filled the room.
Adair had them all now, and he’d chosen one of my favorites for ballet.
I held my breath, skin tingling as I kept my gaze anywhere but on the opening of the stall as “The Swan” fromThe Carnival of the Animalsby Camille Saint-Saëns filled the room.
Just as the strings joined the lilting piano, Ifelthim.
Turning slowly, I wasn’t even sure where to look first.
