6. The Shower
SIX
The Shower
Steam curls around me. The water drums against marble. Sebastian stands under the spray, naked and patient, waiting for me to make a choice.
"Get in."
The command echoes off the tile, and my feet don't move.
Not because I can't move them. The Protocol isn't holding me in place. I tested that in the kitchen, felt my body respond to his orders. But this is different. This feels different. He's standing there, water sluicing down his chest, and he's waiting.
Why is he waiting?
If the Protocol compelled me, I'd already be in the shower. My body would have carried me forward without my permission, the way it turned when he said turn, the way it walked when he said walk. But I'm still on the threshold. Still frozen by choice, not chemistry.
I could say no.
The realization hits me like ice water. I could refuse. I could turn around, walk back to my gilded cage of a bedroom, and?—
And what? He'd force me? Punish me?
Or would he just wait? The way he's waiting now?
"Chloe."
My name in his mouth. Low and patient and absolutely certain.
"The water's getting cold."
It's not. Steam is billowing around us, fogging the glass, turning him into something half-glimpsed and mythic. A god in his temple, waiting for his sacrifice to walk willingly to the altar.
Willingly.
That's the word that catches. That's the word that terrifies me.
I step into the shower.
The water hits my skin like a revelation. Hot, almost too hot, drumming against my shoulders and streaming down my back. I gasp at the sensation, the Protocol amplifying every droplet into something electric. My nerve endings are singing. My skin feels like it's been rewired.
Sebastian watches me adjust to the heat. Those ice-blue eyes track the water's path down my body. Over my breasts, my stomach, the curve of my hips. He's not touching me. Not yet. Just watching. Cataloging my responses the way he catalogs everything.
"Good girl."
The praise lands in my core. Warmth that has nothing to do with the water blooms between my thighs, and I hate him for it. Hate myself for responding. Hate the flush spreading across my chest, visible and undeniable.
"Turn around."
I turn. Face the tile wall, the spray hitting my back now, his presence a heat source behind me. Every muscle in my body is tense, waiting, bracing for?—
His hands.
On my shoulders. Just resting there, heavy and warm, and I jolt like I've been shocked.
"Easy." His voice is close to my ear. Low. Almost gentle. "I'm going to wash you."
Wash me. He's going to wash me, like I'm a child, like I'm a pet, like I'm?—
His hands start to move.
Slow, deliberate strokes across my shoulders. Down my arms. Back up again. He's not using soap yet. Just learning the shape of me, mapping the terrain of my body. I stand rigid under his touch, trying to hold onto some shred of dignity, some fragment of resistance.
But the Protocol won't let me lie.
Every stroke of his palms sends sparks cascading down my spine. My breath is coming faster than I want it to. My nipples have hardened into aching points, and I'm grateful he can't see my front, grateful for this one small mercy.
"You're trembling."
I am. I can't stop.
"Tell me why."
"I don't—" My voice cracks. I try again. "I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
His hands slide down my back. Tracing the line of my spine. Pausing at the small of my back before continuing lower, over the curve of my ass, and I make a sound I don't recognize. Something between a gasp and a moan.
"The Protocol doesn't create anything." His voice is conversational. Educational. Like he's giving a lecture while his hands map territory that no one has touched in years. "It only reveals."
"What—" I have to stop, breathe, try to think through the haze of sensation. "What does that mean?"
"It means everything you're feeling right now—" His hands slide around to my hips, grip firmly, and I shudder. "—was already inside you. The arousal. The want. The way your body responds to my touch."
No. That's not?—
"The Protocol strips away your defenses. Your walls. Your denial." His thumbs trace circles on my hipbones, maddeningly slow. "It doesn't make you feel things you don't feel. It just makes it impossible to hide from what you do."
The words land like stones. I try to reject them, try to cling to the narrative that's kept me sane. I'm here because I have to be, I'm responding because of the drug, none of this is real.
But if the Protocol only reveals...
If everything I'm feeling was already there...
Then I wanted this before I ever took the dose.
"No." The word comes out broken. "That's not—I don't?—"
"You don't what?" He turns me around, and suddenly I'm facing him, the water streaming over both of us, his hands on my shoulders holding me in place. Those frozen eyes bore into mine. "You don't want me? Your body says otherwise."
I look down without meaning to. See the evidence of my arousal. The flush across my chest, the pebbled hardness of my nipples, the way my thighs are pressed together trying to ease an ache I can't control.
He sees it too. He sees everything.
"I saw you that first night." His voice drops lower. Intimate. "At your table. Dealing cards, tired, beautiful, and completely unaware of what you looked like. I watched you for weeks before your brother ever said your name."
Weeks. He watched me for weeks.
"I saw the way you moved. The way you held yourself. The way you disappeared inside when things got hard." One hand comes up, cups my jaw, tilts my face to meet his gaze. "I saw a woman who'd been hiding her whole life. And I wanted to see what was underneath."
"You wanted to break me." My voice is barely a whisper.
"I wanted to reveal you." His thumb traces my lower lip. "To yourself. To me. That's what the Protocol does. It doesn't break—it unveils."
The shower pounds down around us. Steam rises. His hand is still on my jaw, his body inches from mine, and he's right there. His heat, his want, the hard length of him that tells me I'm not the only one affected by this proximity.
"You stepped into this shower yourself." His voice is almost hypnotic now. "I didn't compel you. I didn't force you. I gave you an order, and you obeyed because some part of you wanted to obey. Some part of you wanted to be here, naked, wet, and waiting for me to touch you."
"That's not?—"
"Don't lie." Sharp, suddenly. Commanding. "Not to me. Not to yourself. The Protocol won't let you hide, so don't waste both our time trying."
He releases my jaw. Steps back. Reaches for a bottle on the marble shelf, expensive, probably, everything here is expensive, and pours something into his palm. The scent of eucalyptus and something darker fills the steam.
"Turn around."
I turn. Because he told me to. Because I want to.
Because I can't tell the difference anymore.
His hands return to my shoulders, slick with soap now, and he begins to wash me in earnest.
It's methodical at first. Clinical. He starts at my neck, working the lather into my skin with firm, circular strokes. Down across my shoulders. Along my arms, lifting each one in turn, soaping from armpit to wrist to fingertip. Professional, almost. Like a nurse bathing a patient.
But the Protocol doesn't let me feel it as clinical.
Every touch is fire. Every stroke sends pleasure radiating outward from the point of contact, building and building in my core. I'm biting my lip to keep from making sounds. I'm digging my nails into my palms to keep from pressing back into him.
He washes my back. Long, firm strokes from shoulders to waist. His thumbs dig into the muscles along my spine, and I moan before I can stop myself. The pressure is exquisite, releasing tension I didn't know I was holding.
"Good." The word is barely audible over the water. "Don't hold back."
I don't know if I could hold back if I tried.
His hands slide lower. Over my hips. Around to my stomach, palms flat against my belly, and I suck in a breath. He's close behind me now. The heat of his chest against my back, the hard length of him brushing against my ass.
"Spread your legs."
I spread them. Wider than I need to. Offering him access I shouldn't want to give.
He washes my thighs. Kneeling behind me now, his hands working down one leg to my ankle, then up the other. He's thorough. He's patient. He touches everywhere except where I'm aching for him to touch.
"Sebastian—" His name escapes before I can stop it. Not sir. His name. A plea and a curse in one breath.
"Tell me what you want."
"I—" I can't say it. I won't say it.
"Your body's already telling me." His hands slide up the inside of my thighs, stopping inches from my center. "But I want to hear the words."
"I can't."
"You can." His breath is hot against the small of my back. "You just don't want to admit it."
He's right. God help me, he's right. I don't want to admit that I'm standing here, spread open and shaking, desperate for a man who bought me to put his hands where I need them most.
But I don't have to admit it.
Because he moves on.
He stands, turns me around again, and now he's washing my front.
My collarbones. My chest. His soapy hands slide over my breasts, and I gasp.
The sensation is overwhelming, his palms skating over my nipples, circling, teasing.
He watches my face while he touches me, cataloging every response, every shudder, every catch of breath.
"You're so responsive." There's something in his voice now. Something rougher than the clinical tone he's been using. "Every touch writes itself across your face."
I can't hide. He's right—I can't hide anything. My expression is telling him exactly what I'm feeling, and the Protocol won't let me mask it.
He spends an eternity on my breasts. Cupping them, shaping them, rolling my nipples between his fingers until I'm whimpering. Then he moves down. Over my ribs, my stomach, my hips. He kneels in front of me, eye level with my center, and I think—I think this is it, he's going to?—
He washes my legs. Front this time. Ankle to knee to thigh, avoiding the one place I'm burning for him.
"Please." The word escapes. I don't even know what I'm asking for.
He looks up at me. Steam swirling around us. Water streaming down his face, his chest, dripping from his golden hair. He looks like a god kneeling at a mortal's feet, except the power dynamic is all wrong. I'm the one who's supplicating here. I'm the one who's begging.
"Please what?"
I shake my head. I can't say it.
He stands. Reaches for another bottle. Shampoo this time.
"Tip your head back."
I tip my head back. His hands sink into my hair, working the shampoo into a lather, massaging my scalp with those long, clever fingers.
It feels incredible. It feels like too much.
My whole body is a live wire, every nerve ending oversensitized, and he's touching my hair and somehow that's enough to push me closer to an edge I didn't know I was approaching.
"You haven't been touched in a long time." It's not a question. "Have you?"
"No." The word escapes on a breath.
"How long?"
"I don't—" His fingers press into a spot behind my ear and I almost sob. "Years. I don't know. Years."
"Why?"
"I didn't have time. I was working. Taking care of Bennett. There wasn't—I couldn't?—"
"You put everyone else first." His hands are rinsing now, tilting my head back under the spray, fingers combing through my hair to remove the suds. "You gave and gave until there was nothing left. And no one ever thought to give back."
The words hit something raw. Something I've kept buried so deep I forgot it was there.
"I'm going to take from you." His voice is low, rough, intimate.
"I'm going to take everything you have. But I'm also going to give.
" His hands slide down from my hair to my shoulders, pulling me back against his chest. "Pleasure you've denied yourself.
Sensation you've been too busy to feel. Release you've earned but never allowed. "
One hand splays across my stomach. The other slides lower.
"I'm going to take care of you." His fingers brush the top of my pubic bone and I jerk, gasping. "Whether you like it or not."
His hand slides between my thighs.
The first touch of his fingers against my folds tears a sound from my throat that I've never made before. He's barely touching me. Just resting there, cupping me, letting me feel the pressure of his palm against my clit. And I'm already shaking.
"So wet." The words are almost a growl. "All from washing. All from me touching you places that shouldn't be sexual at all."
He starts to move. Slow, exploratory strokes. Learning the shape of me the way he learned every other part. His fingers slide through my arousal, spreading it, pressing and retreating, circling my clit without quite touching it.
"You can't hide this." His other arm wraps around my waist, holding me upright as my knees threaten to buckle. "You can't pretend you don't want it. Your body is telling me everything your mouth won't."
I'm beyond words. Beyond thought. There's only sensation. His fingers working me with devastating precision, his chest solid against my back, his hard length pressed against my ass. The Protocol has turned my entire body into an instrument and he's playing me like a virtuoso.
"Let go." His breath is hot against my ear. "Stop fighting. I can feel you holding back. Don't."
I’m holding back. Some last desperate fragment of pride, of resistance, of the woman I was before I walked into this shower. I'm clinging to it with everything I have, trying to keep myself from shattering completely.
His thumb presses directly on my clit.
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me without warning.
A wave of pleasure so intense it borders on pain.
I cry out, convulsing in his arms, my body clenching around nothing as he works me through it.
It goes on and on, crest after crest, the Protocol amplifying every pulse until I'm sobbing with the intensity.
"That's it." His voice is different now. Rougher. Hungrier. "There she is. There's my good girl."
I'm boneless in his arms. Destroyed. I couldn't stand on my own if my life depended on it. The water pounds down on us, washing away the evidence, but nothing can wash away what just happened.
I came in his arms. Not because the Protocol forced me. Because he touched me and my body wanted him and I couldn't hide from it.
Some part of me has always wanted this.
"Look at me."
I turn my head. Look up at him through wet lashes, still trembling with aftershocks.
His expression makes my stomach drop.
The clinical control is gone. In its place is something raw. Predatory. Hungry. His eyes have darkened to something almost feral, his jaw tight, his breathing harsh. He's not unaffected. He's not above this.
He wants me.
He wants me, and for the first time, he's letting me see it.
"Now," he says, and his voice is gravel and sin, "it's your turn to wash me."