Chapter 17
She took him into the shower and didn't let him speak.
Not because she didn't want to hear him—because the words would have been about the map in his pocket and the circled X on her window and the man with the rifle who'd had her schedule written in small, precise handwriting, and she couldn't hold those words and his body at the same time.
So she took his hand and walked him into the bathroom of his cabin and turned the water on and started undressing him while the steam filled the small space.
His cut first. She took it off his shoulders and hung it on the hook behind the door, careful, the way she'd seen the brothers handle their leather—with reverence, because the patch meant more than cloth.
Then his shirt, pulling it over his head, uncovering the scars she knew by touch now, the landscape of buckshot damage she'd mapped with her mouth in the dark.
He had cedar needles in his hair. Gunpowder residue on his forearms. A scratch across his cheekbone from a branch he'd walked through without noticing.
She catalogued all of it the way she catalogued everything—carefully, completely—while her hands worked his belt and his jeans and stripped him bare.
He stood in the steam and let her. His eyes were on her face with that look she'd come to understand as the most vulnerable thing he did—watching, waiting, giving her the power to decide what happened next.
The man who spread damage wide, standing still and naked under a woman's hands because she'd asked him to.
She undressed herself. Quickly, without ceremony. Jeans, shirt, bra, everything on the floor. Then she took his hand again and pulled him under the water.
The shower was too small for both of them. His shoulders filled the space and the water ran over them both, hot, and she had to press against him to reach the soap—which was the point, the excuse, the reason she'd done this instead of falling into bed the way they had before.
She washed him.
Slowly. Her hands working the soap over his chest, his shoulders, the terrain of scars she could navigate with her eyes closed.
She traced each pockmark with her fingers the way she'd traced them with her mouth on the dock—deliberately, thoroughly, claiming every mark on his body as territory she'd walked and would walk again.
The cedar smell came off his skin and went down the drain.
The powder residue dissolved under her fingers.
She washed his arms, his hands, the creases of his palms where the sawed-off had left its calluses.
He stood under the water with his eyes closed and his head tipped back and let her hands go everywhere.
His breathing was slow. Deep. The adrenaline from the ridge was gone, drained out of him the way the water drained at their feet, and what was left was something she'd only seen in the moments after he fell asleep—a man with his guard down, standing in the open, trusting someone else to watch.
She washed his back. Ran her hands over the muscles on either side of his spine, feeling them shift under her palms. Down to the small of his back, across his hips, lower.
He made a sound when her hands curved over him—not a moan, not a word, just a breath that came out differently—and she felt him harden against her stomach as she pressed close.
She looked up at him. Water running between them, steam in the air, his face inches from hers.
He opened his eyes.
He kissed her.
Not the way he'd kissed her before—not claiming, not possessive, not the hard collision of two people who wanted each other in the aftermath of violence.
This was something else. His mouth moved against hers slowly, deliberately, like he was learning the shape of her lips for the first time.
One hand came up and cupped her jaw, tilting her head, and he kissed her deeper—open-mouthed, tasting, his tongue sliding against hers in a rhythm that was nothing like urgency and everything like intention.
She leaned into him and felt the water run between their bodies and the heat of him against her and the steady, patient pressure of his mouth saying something he'd never said with words.
He turned her. Gently. Her back against the tile, cool and wet, and he stood over her with the water hitting his shoulders and running down his chest, and he kissed her again.
Her throat. The hollow beneath her ear. The curve of her shoulder where the water pooled before it fell.
Each kiss was slow and complete, and he stayed in each place long enough for her to feel the warmth of his mouth and the softness of his lips and the scratch of his stubble before he moved on.
No urgency. For the first time since this started—since the night he'd blown out her office window and she'd opened a man's face with a keyring—there was no urgency at all.
His hands found her hips. Slid down her thighs. Back up, over her stomach, cupping her breasts, his thumbs circling until she arched into his palms and her breath fogged in the steam. He kissed the water off her collarbone and she put her hands on his shoulders and held on.
He lifted her against the tile.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, the same way she'd wrapped around him in her motel apartment that first night, but everything about it was different now.
He positioned himself and slid into her slow—so slow she felt every inch, every stretch, every pulse of him filling her—and then he held still.
Held completely still, inside her, against the wall, his forehead against hers, the water running over them both.
"Tamsin." His voice was quiet. Rough at the edges.
"I'm here."
He began to move.
Slow. Deep. Each stroke a complete thing, pulling almost out and pressing back in with a patience that undid her more than force ever had.
She held his shoulders and felt the muscles working under her hands, and the tile was cold against her back and his body was warm against her front and the water fell around them like rain.
Her legs started to shake. The slow rhythm built something in her that had no peak—just a rising, a continuous climb that wound tighter with every stroke.
She pressed her face into his neck and breathed him in—soap and skin and the last trace of cedar that the water hadn't taken—and he shifted his grip and angled deeper and she gasped against his throat.
"I've got you," he said.
Her legs gave. He held her whole weight—pinned against the tile by his body, supported entirely by his arms, her legs loose around his waist—and he kept the same slow rhythm.
Didn't speed up. Didn't change. Just held her and moved in her like they had all the time in the world and nothing outside this room could touch them.
The orgasm came like a tide—no crest, no break, just a slow flooding warmth that spread from where they were joined outward through her whole body.
She didn't cry out. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder and breathed through it, shaking, her fingers digging into his back, and he held her up and let her ride it out.
He carried her out of the shower.
Still wet. Didn't reach for a towel, didn't set her down. He walked out of the bathroom and across the cabin and laid her on the bed, and the sheets darkened under them with water and he came down over her and slid back inside her before the cold could reach her skin.
Face to face. His forearms braced on either side of her head. His forehead against hers, the way they'd been on their sides in this bed—eyes open, nowhere to hide.
He moved in her again. The same slow, devastating patience, his hips rolling against hers, his breath mixing with hers in the small space between their mouths.
She wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him closer—not to speed him up but to feel the weight of him, the solid reality of a man who'd walked into a tree line with a shotgun because someone had drawn a circle on her window.
She felt him building. The tension in his shoulders, the catch in his breathing, the way his rhythm started to break at the edges. She slid her hands down his back to his hips and pulled him deeper, and he groaned against her forehead.
"Buckshot," she said.
He came apart.
Slow, the way everything had been slow. A long, shuddering release that she felt in waves, his body pressing deep and holding, his arms shaking on either side of her head, his mouth finding hers and kissing her through it.
She held his face and kissed him back and felt the last tremor move through him and settle.
He didn't move off her. His weight settled—heavy, warm, grounding—and she took it willingly, wrapping her arms around him, her legs around him, holding him there with the wet sheets underneath them and the steam still drifting through the open bathroom door.
After a long time, he rolled to his side and pulled her with him. His hand found its place on her stomach, spread wide, and she laced her fingers through his and they lay in the dark with their legs tangled and the sheets damp and the ceiling fan turning slow overhead.
She traced the pockmarks on his shoulder in the dark.
One by one, the way she always did. Mapping them.
Counting them. Making sure they were all still there, the same number, the same pattern, because some part of her had spent four hours believing that new damage would be added to this body and she needed to confirm that it hadn't.
He let her count. His breathing was slow but his eyes were open—she could see the faint light from the window reflected in them, watching the ceiling, not sleeping.
Neither of them slept for a long while.
Neither of them said why.
But her hand stayed on his scars and his hand stayed on her stomach, and the cabin was quiet around them, and the sounds that came through the open window—the lake, the frogs, the distant rumble of a bike on the cove road—were the sounds of a world that was still there, still whole, still theirs.