Chapter 17 Johnny #2
The bathroom is small enough that the heat gathers fast, fogging the mirror and softening the light.
She stands just inside the door, soaked and shivering.
For one long second, she doesn’t move. Her fingers catch at the hem of her tank top, then still, like the reality of me seeing all of her has finally landed.
I stay where I am and let her have the space to decide.
Then she reaches for the hem of her tank top and pulls it over her head.
There’s nothing practiced about it. Nothing slow or seductive.
Her hands are shaking. The wet fabric clings stubbornly, catching at her wrists and elbows until she finally wrestles it free.
Her sports bra follows. Then she pushes her leggings down with quick, clumsy movements, still cold, still trembling.
She doesn’t look at me while she undresses.
I try not to stare. That lasts maybe half a second.
Heat climbs up the back of my neck so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
I’ve touched her before. I know how soft her skin is. I know the sounds she makes when I put my mouth on her, how she arches when I drag my hands over her body.
But I’ve never seen all of her.
And Christ.
The sight of her hits me so hard it strips every thought straight out of my head.
She glances up and catches me staring. Color rises to her cheeks, warm and pink and shy in a way that makes something in my chest pull tight.
“Are you just going to stand there?” she asks.
Her voice is soft, but there’s a challenge tucked into it, too. I strip out of my shorts so fast it’s almost embarrassing and step in after her.
The water borders on too hot after the ocean. It needles across my skin and pulls a rough gasp out of both of us. For a few seconds, that’s all it is.
Heat. Steam. Relief.
Two half-frozen bodies thawing out under the spray.
Her shoulders slowly loosen. Mine do too.
Water slides down her face and neck, tracing over skin I’m suddenly near enough to study. Freckles scatter across her collarbone, faint and delicate, like they were put there for me to discover. A drop catches at the curve of her breast and keeps going. My hands flex at my sides.
Her eyes are closed.
I tell myself not to touch her.
Then she opens them.
And just like that, the cold is the last thing either of us is thinking about.
I close the distance. My mouth finds hers, warm and wet and still a little salty from the ocean. She opens for me, and the sound she makes against my tongue sends a current straight down my spine and into my cock.
My hands find her waist. Her hips. The small of her back, pulling her flush against me so there’s nothing between us but steam and skin.
She gasps when she feels how hard I am against her stomach, and her fingers dig into my shoulders as I press her back against the tile. She arches off the cold surface and into me, and I trace a path down her throat, that spot below her ear that makes her breath stutter every single time.
“So,” I murmur against her skin, grinning because I can’t help it, because the image of her hand on my chest and that murderous look in her eyes is still running on a loop in my brain, “I’m taken, huh?” I press my lips to the hollow of her throat. “All yours?”
She makes a sound. Half laugh, half whimper.
“Then I guess that settles it.” I drag my mouth along her jaw, slow and deliberate. “If I’m yours, then you’re mine.”
Natalia goes still.
At first I think it’s because I finally said the thing out loud.
Not that I’ve been subtle up to this point, but there’s a difference between wanting her, touching her, kissing her like I’ve been starving since the day I washed up on her beach, and actually looking her in the eye and saying you’re mine like I have any right to.
Like it’s that simple. Like the two of us were always headed here and all I did was give it a name.
So for one stupid second, standing there under hot water with her body slick against mine, I think maybe she’s just feeling the weight of it. Maybe I finally pushed past the point where teasing turns into something else. Something bigger. Something neither of us gets to laugh off.
Then I feel her change.
Her fingers stop moving on my shoulders.
The muscles in her body go tight under my hands, not melting into me, but locking down so suddenly it’s like some invisible steel door just slammed shut between us.
I lift my head.
She won’t look at me.
A second ago she was soft under my hands, flushed and breathing hard, making those little helpless sounds against my mouth that scramble my brain.
Now her gaze is fixed somewhere over my shoulder, like if she looks at me for one more second this whole thing becomes something she can’t take back.
A cold, ugly feeling slithers through my gut.
“Nat?”
Nothing.
Just one sharp inhale, too quick, too shallow, and then her hands slipping off me like she can’t bear to keep them there another second.
I let mine fall away from her waist.
“Hey.” I ease back enough to see her properly. “Talk to me, Princess.”
For one second I catch her eyes, and what’s in them stops me cold. Not embarrassment. Not nerves in the fun way. Something heavier than that, and all at once I know I’m not going to like a single word that comes next.
“I need to tell you something,” she says.
Well. Fantastic.
There are phrases in this world that have never once improved a man’s evening, and that one’s got to be in the top three.
I try for light, because sometimes sarcasm is all I’ve got between me and a full nervous system collapse. “If this is where you tell me I’m a terrible kisser, I’d rather go back to having no memory.”
Nothing.
Not even the ghost of a smile.
I scrub a hand back through my wet hair and force myself not to crowd her, even though every instinct I have is pushing me forward. “Okay. No jokes. Just tell me.”
She folds her arms over herself, and I hate that immediately. Not because it hides anything from me, but because it feels like retreat. Like she suddenly remembered she’s naked and I’m a man and those two facts together are no longer simple.
For a second all she does is breathe. Shallow in, slower out, like she’s trying to get her body under control before she says whatever this is.
Then she says, “My father made an arrangement before I came here.”
I blink water out of my eyes.
An arrangement.
That is such a wildly unhelpful combination of words that for a moment, I honestly just stare at her and wait for the part where this starts making any kind of sense.
“What kind of arrangement?”
Her mouth presses into a thin line. She looks past me again at the tile wall, at the shampoo bottles over my shoulder, anywhere but my face.
“Natalia.”
“A marriage.”
The word doesn’t register at first. It lands somewhere near my ear, bounces off the inside of my skull, and disappears into the steam.
I actually laugh.
Not because it’s funny. Because my brain has apparently decided the best way to handle absolute bullshit is to reject it on impact.
“A what?”
This time she does look at me, and I almost wish she hadn’t. There’s nothing soft in her face now, nothing flushed or uncertain. Just a flat, terrible kind of resolve.
“An alliance,” she says. “Between my father’s organization and a cartel family in Colombia.”
My stomach drops.
“Nat—”
Her chin lifts.
“My father promised me to one of them. In two months I’ll be married.”
The water keeps running. Steam keeps rising. And something behind my ribs cracks clean in half.