She’s my sister, and if tomorrow I said,Wilder says the sweetest things, he changed out all of the light bulbs in his house to ones that flicker like fire, and I love him, Lydia. I’m in love with him.
She will believe me.
Like I believe in her.
And she’ll say,that motherfucker has all the good ideas.
Lydia and Talent, Wilder and me—we’re in this together. There’s a lot about their pasts I don’t understand, but this rage that simmers beneath Wilder’s skin isn’t new. It’s not normal to wield charm as a weapon like Talent does, and his solid, unwavering patience is deadly, learned behavior. Their upbringing may have been packaged better than ours. They didn’t grow up in a strip club or inside a forsaken Sunday school classroom. But there might be a gateway to Hell in Grand Haven that’s brought us together because this place calls to the wicked.
This, right now, standing in this magnificent shower in a house on a hill illuminated by flame without fire feels like destiny.
And what did Giovanni say?
It must be protected.
“Are you going to tell me how you got that bruise on your face?” I ask.
Wilder groans and wraps his arms around my waist to turn me toward the water, under the stream jetting from the wall. “I just want to be alone with you for an entire fucking night. Don’t make me bring that in here with us. It’ll be there tomorrow.”
“And the next day. And the next day. And the next day,” I say, tilting my head back to wet my hair. “Maybe we can stay in the shower forever and hope it goes away.”
He pushes my hair away from my face, running his fingers through my long tresses until it’s soaked from scalp to ends. Warm water falls atop my shoulders and trickles down my back, cascading over my chest to run off my nipples. I lather his bar of soap between my hands, looking into his eyes as suds drip down my forearms and swirl around the drain at our feet.
There’s something intimate about using someone else’s shower, the one place where we’re vulnerable, naked, and usually alone. It’s a personal space, where we think about our blessings and our problems. We shower when we’re sick. We shower before a special occasion. We shower when we’re happy, sad… aroused. It’s a neutral space, where anything goes. And we adjust the temperature accordingly.
No one shares soap with someone they don’t love. I run my hands along Wilder’s chest and across his abs, biting my lip when bubbles catch around the base of his length. He chuckles and takes the soap from me, working it over my breasts and down my belly. I turn to face the water, rinsing away last night’s makeup before I start to wash my hair.
“Let me do it,” he says, taking over.
He massages my scalp, and I look over my shoulder with a headful of bubbles and a smirk on my lips. It’s sweet that he wants to help, like he’s washing away my sins. Mint shampoo tingles everywhere it touches, or maybe he really is exorcising the bad from me with his strong hands. In that case, I say, “You’ve got to scrub harder than that.”
The water never cools, and when we’ve run out of things to wash, we kiss. But it’s different in the shower. He tastes like hot water, and any kind of friction is impossible. Wilder lifts me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist, but we’re slippery, and water pools between our bodies.
“Can you just take me to bed?” I ask, hoping he doesn’t drop me.
We don’t stop to dry off and drip through the bedroom, glad to finally kiss without drinking a mouthful of water. I fall back onto the bed, and he crawls between my open legs. Wilder’s hair is more curly than wavy when it’s this wet, dimension dulled, leaving the color blacker than brown. Our skin is warm. It’s soft and pruned at our fingers and our toes. We’re hyperaware of every touch and sensation, and it’s too good not to take our time.
Before he slides into me, Wilder reaches over to the nightstand to turn off the lights. My heartbeat quickens, but I’m determined to see this through. This perfect moment won’t be ruined by my dark past. But I have nothing to worry about. In the blink of an eye, the overhead lights wink out and two nightlights on each side of the bed flicker on, draping the entire room in firelight.
I lift myself onto my elbows to press my lips to his and whisper, “Thank you.”
We go slowly, in a proper bed, rinsed of our transgressions if only for tonight. Nothing exists outside of these four walls, this castle on a mountain.
I’m not a harlot, and he’s not carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
We’re just two people falling in love one kiss, one touch, one sigh at a time, hoping it’s enough to keep our nightmares away.
We don’t stop until the sun peeks over the horizon, when the stars fade, and the sky is the color of raspberry sherbet. I’m sprawled across his chest, and he brushes his fingers up and down my spine, wordless and spent, still free from outside worries. Sleep comes to me restlessly, and I only flirt with the idea of getting any kind of rest, pressed against Wilder’s body. I thought I would sleep better with my legs weaved between his, body to body, but I miss him too much when my eyes close.
I dip in and out of consciousness until I finally plummet into a dreamless sleep all at once. When I wake up a few hours later, I’m alone in the center of the bed, tangled with the blankets. My hair is damp, knotted from loving and sleeping too hard. My skin smells like mint and Wilder, still sticky after I begged him to come on me. He shot ribbons across my stomach, and I rubbed it in like lotion, over my breasts and up my neck.
“Fuck, that’s hot,”he moaned breathlessly, stroking every last drop from himself.
That was only the first time.
And it’s my favorite thing.
His face doesn’t bunch up when he comes unlike most of my clients. They make a dramatic show of it, because being with a woman as beautiful as me with a price tag as large as mine is deserving of a performance.
