She snorted but didn’t protest. He reached down and picked up the soap, while she turned so her back faced him.
She felt the silence stretch as he soaped up a washcloth. She could feel the weight of his eyes on the nape of her neck.
When she turned her head slightly, she caught him with rapt eyes, his attention squarely on her backside.
She arched her brow. “You have seen me naked, no surprises there, right?” she said, throwing his words back at him. “Come to think of it, you never did like looking me in the face when you fucked me.”
His head jerked up, face tight with guilt. “Nothing I say to that is going to be right.”
“No. It won’t.”
He exhaled shakily. “Let me help you, please. Let me do this for you.”
His hands were tentative at first, running the lather across her back, shoulders, down her arms, along the tender skin of her armpits. He was careful with the almost healed wound over her ribs, the one which had almost ended her life. Then, after hesitating for a few seconds, his hands slid to the front of her body. His fingers trembled as he lingered at her breasts, the lather slowly tracing over her skin with reverence.
“I love your breasts,” he murmured, the words like a prayer he didn’t mean to speak aloud.
She said nothing, but her nipples tightened in an involuntary reaction to his ministrations.
He seemed to catch himself, cleared his throat, and tried to shift into a more impersonal touch with quick, clinical motions. But his hands still shook.
Faolan studied him as he continued with his self-imposed task. Though the nurses used to help her in the hospital, this was a totally different experience—akin to being pampered with how careful he was with her. She was a tall woman at five feet eight, but he towered over her at well over six feet. The veins along his forearms, the way the light hair dusted his skin, the strength underneath it. The winding black ink on his left side conveyed a tangled script of grief and fury, but above his heart, barely visible beneath the droplets of water, was something that caught her breath.
A small red tattoo.
A pair of red slippers, faded with time.
She stared.
He followed her gaze, and his mouth twisted into an expression which was almost bashful.
“That was my first tattoo,” he confided after a minute.
She didn’t need to ask why.
Steam curled in the shower, softening the edges of everything, even the ache in her arm. Faolan shifted slightly, the water rinsing soap down her back as her voice drifted out, low and slightly slurred from medication.
“I want to wash my hair…” she muttered sleepily.
How she could sound so relaxed, so calm, when his arousal pressed insistently between them like an unspoken truth, was anyone’s guess. But she did. Somehow, she felt safe. He had knitted a warm, protective cocoon just for her.
He nodded, reaching for the bottle on the shelf. It smelt like lemon and Bergamot, her favourite brand. She didn’t even register the significance.
She was vaguely aware of him squirting some into his palm.
Then his fingers were in her hair—strong and slow, circling against her scalp. He worked the lather in carefully, dragging her into a place where sensation dulled the edge of pain.
An involuntary moan escaped her lips before she could stop it.
Her head tilted back on instinct, neck arched, chest rising slightly as the tension in her body loosened. Her mouth curved at the corners.
She didn’t open her eyes, but she could feel his gaze on her face.
“Tilt your head back,” he said softly, like he was trapped in the same dream as her.
She obeyed, not wanting this to end.
He rinsed the shampoo from her hair with slow, steady hands. Then she heard the faint sound of another bottle opening and his fingers returned, slower now, stroking the conditioner through the damp strands with an intimacy that felt almost sacred.
