Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
SHILOH
It’s hard to focus when so much of Ewan is on display.
He crawled out of bed, stretched like a cat, and didn’t make a single effort to put clothes on or cover himself up as we walked to the bathroom.
It makes sense, sure, since we’d be getting naked again to take a shower, but the complete lack of self-consciousness was a little surprising.
Ewan’s lost some of the easy confidence I’ve always remembered him having, replaced the indifference with a high level of anxiety and worry concerning how others see him.
The naked strut to the bathroom with not an ounce of shame is a surprise but a welcome one.
Of course, it helps that he’s beautiful.
Pale skin, dark hair, and the rangy limbs that remind me of a deer.
He’s graceful and lean and as eye-catching as one of his paintings.
When he turns and looks at me, my eyes immediately drop to his waist and the soft cock hanging between his legs.
He smirks when he catches me looking, and I search for something witty to say. Mostly, I just want to kneel.
“Shower?” he prompts, kindly helping me put my brain back online.
I step around him to turn the water on, and he leans back so we touch.
The force of the shower seems loud in the otherwise quiet room, the water cold where it sprays against my skin.
Ewan takes a step toward it as though preparing to climb in, but I stop him.
It needs to be warmer. He pauses next to me, standing in a way that puts us nearly flush together.
Every time I catch his eye, he’s grinning at me like he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Ewan sighs the moment he steps under the water, dropping his head forward and letting it soak his hair.
I keep staring at him. At some point, it’s going to become creepy, but it feels like I’m living in some alternate universe where Ewan Fate is standing naked in my shower after we had sex, and if I take my eyes off him, he’ll disappear.
I don’t think I could ever recover if I had to wake up from this dream.
“Get in here, Shi,” he murmurs, eyes closed as he rotates his head, stretching his neck and directing the water onto new places.
“You look nice,” I tell him, stepping in and trailing a knuckle down the center of his chest to his navel. He has no hair, unlike me. Opening his eyes, Ewan looks at me. There are water droplets clinging to the long, dark lashes framing those bright, stunning eyes.
“Mm.” He hums, low and sleepy, like the warm water is soothing him. I reach for the soap. He needs my help washing, obviously, and my own desire to explore has nothing to do with it.
When I slide my hands across the slope of his shoulders, he sighs again, breathy and low and similar enough to the sounds he was making in bed that my dick is going to take notice if he continues.
Digging my thumbs in a bit, I decide to go all in and add a massage to the washing.
He always seems so tense, poised to jump at the slightest provocation.
Relax, I say with my hands, spreading the soap down his arms. Relax.
I consider what sort of relationship this might be, unable to help but wonder if maybe I could ask Ewan for something I was never quite brave enough to request from Roy.
Not tonight, though. Maybe not anytime soon, since he and I are still testing the boundaries of this new bond.
I want it to be strong and not ask for too much too soon. I don’t want to scare him away.
“I’m going to fall asleep,” Ewan warns me, but his breath hitches when my hands start soaping further south. When I stop to lather up once more, he sighs and adds, “I suppose it’ll be my turn to do you in a minute.”
“Try to contain your excitement.”
“I may suffer, but I’ll do it admirably.”
I laugh, earning myself an endearingly crooked smile.
Kneeling down and swiping the water off my face, I cup the back of his knee and direct him to lift his foot.
He mutters something that I miss but puts a hand on my shoulder for balance and lets me do my thing.
On my way back to standing, I treat myself and kiss my way there.
A kiss to the inside of his thigh and one to his knee, lips grazed over both hips and an indulgent suck of his dick.
He puts a hand in my hair and groans when I don’t take that further, moving on and dipping my tongue into his belly button, scratching my teeth over a nipple.
“Shit,” he mumbles. “Who even are you?”
Finally having reached his mouth, I kiss that, too, water spraying into my face and happier than I’ve been in a long, long time.
“I’m Shiloh,” I answer. Ewan laughs before biting down gently on my lower lip.
“Smart-ass,” he scolds, steering me around with hands on my shoulders until our positions are flipped and my back is to the spray. The heat feels good on my shoulders, but not nearly as good as Ewan’s hands slipping down the wet skin of my chest.
He’s not looking at my eyes, but watching his hands.
Given how smooth he is, I’d say he partakes in quite a bit of personal grooming.
Certainly more than me, who only gets two haircuts in this bathroom a year and can’t be bothered to shave most days.
I’m more likely to get struck by lightning than I am to take up the habit of shaving my chest. Ewan doesn’t seem to have any complaints, though.
Not any he’s voiced, nor that I’ve seen by watching his expression as he mimics the way I washed him.
“I can shave,” I offer when his hands slide low enough to tease the delicate skin behind my balls. I think again of a fantasy I’ve always had, wondering about those questing fingers and whether or not I could convince him to give something else a try.
“Don’t joke,” he replies, other hand abandoning the lazy circles it was rubbing into my lower back and traveling down to circle my hole. I smile. “I like the hair.”
“Good. I like the naked-mole-rat thing you have going on.”
I get an offended huff and a hard pinch on the ass for that, but there appears to be no hard feelings as I also get the full washing experience.
Once we’re finished, the water turning cold from the amount of time we stood under the heat, we towel off and head back to the bedroom.
Almost as though the rumpled, slightly dirty sheets remind him of where he is, what he was doing, and who he was doing it with, Ewan’s mouth tightens.
The look he sends in my direction is unsure, a little bit sheepish, and a lot adorable with his dark hair plastered to his head and cheeks flushed from the shower.
Behind us, the steam from the bathroom dissipates into the room through the open door, bringing with it the minty smell of my soap.
“Staying?” I ask lightly, not wanting to put pressure on him, but also not wanting him to run for the door.
I’m becoming an expert in all things Ewan, slowly figuring out the ways he’s still the same and the ways he’s not.
This is one of the changes—the trepidation and anxiety—which means the best thing I can do for him is to keep him here.
Going back to his cottage and lying in bed, overthinking everything, won’t help.
Staying with me, warm in my bed, with the cool blowing in off the ocean outside, secure in his presence here and in my life—that’s where he belongs.
“Sure. If I can?” he asks, suddenly finding that insecurity I’d wondered about earlier and moving his hands in a way that tells me he wishes he could cover himself up.
In answer, I walk to my closet and pull out my oldest, softest pair of sweats and a similarly well-used T-shirt.
In truth, most of my clothing is old and worn.
I rarely buy new things if what I already have is still functional.
I’m glad of that right now, feeling oddly sentimental about seeing Ewan in clothing that’s been worn by me hundreds of times.
It’s also soft with age, which again makes me happy, especially as Ewan rubs his hands down his stomach once the shirt is in place, as though feeling it for himself.
He smiles at me, tugging the sweatpants up and cinching the waist a lot further than I ever have to. I grab my own clothes to wear.
“Sorry. A little big on you,” I apologize. He laughs. When I look over again, he’s once more stroking his palms down himself. Sighing, I finish getting dressed. I’m going to get hard again.
“Is that why you’re so obsessed with feeding me?” he asks, tone light as he tries to straighten the sheets before crawling into bed. He’s on the side I usually sleep on. I’ll have to evolve, though, and learn to sleep on the other side. I’ll never tell him to move.
“To fatten you up so you fit into my pants?” I clarify, snorting as I shut off the lights and plunge the room into darkness.
Not needing light to move around, I make it over to the bedside table without stubbing a toe on anything.
Clicking on the lamp, I look over and see Ewan trying to get comfortable in my bed, and a sense of unreality washes over me like a vertigo attack. I can’t believe he’s here.
“No,” I continue, sliding in beside him. “I keep trying to feed you because I haven’t seen you in seven years, and you look like you’ve spent half of those starving. I could see your ribs when we were standing in the shower.”
His face flushes a bright red, visible even in the dim light of the room.
“Maybe I was sucking in my stomach,” he mumbles.
“You weren’t.”
He turns his face away and makes a production of shifting to find a comfortable position. I wait, never one to become uncomfortable with silence and force conversation. If either of the two of us can’t be quiet, it’s Ewan. He’ll talk eventually.
And indeed, it’s only a minute later that he says, “When I get in a really good place with work, self-care stuff sort of falls by the wayside. Same as when I’m in a less-than-good place. I just…forget.”