Chapter 10
TEN
YOU SAW ME NAKED
James
For a while, I lay still, not allowing myself anything other than the pure pleasure of holding Beth in my arms. Contentment in something I’d never done before but instantly adored despite all my previous reservations.
She dozed on, warm to my now cool touch, my fever having broken at some point in the night.
If I didn’t move, I wouldn’t wake my brain enough to recall all the things I’d said and done. The memories came anyway.
I’d kissed her.
Dragged her onto my body.
My cock stirred as I recalled how soft her lips were.
How she’d appeared in my bedroom and tended to me wearing the skimpiest top and shorts.
Now, I had my thumb under the strap of her top, like we were lovers and this was something I could do.
Like I could slide my hand down to palm her breast. Explore her body.
Have her roam all over me. Be the first and only.
Hand over my virginity and not regret it for a second.
I crushed the instinct and tried to think of other things, but it didn’t help. My first kiss, and I’d been half mad with illness and half wild with her touch.
My erection jumped, hardening, and sweat broke out on my brow. Gently, I manoeuvred Beth off me, placing her down on the white sheets. Her dark curls spilled out in a fan. The chill of the room woke my senses, and I staggered to my feet.
Halfway across the room lit by pale dawn, I glanced back.
She’d curled into a ball, and I watched her, small pieces of me breaking apart.
Yesterday, I’d hurt her. She’d wanted to leave.
But now she slept in my bed and she’d seen my scars.
Heard me say the most words I’d uttered to a woman in years, and still, she’d stayed.
Beth burrowed her beautiful head in my pillow and moaned gently, maybe dreaming. I snapped out of my stare and rushed on.
In the bathroom, I brushed my teeth and then turned on the shower. The water came out lukewarm. Well, good. I needed cooling down.
The spray hit my skin in prickling needles, the sensation punishing, though it woke me fully. Beth, Beth, Beth, my mind chanted. Loud enough to permeate my last layers of resistance.
My erection faded as my headache came back with a vengeance. I twisted the controls to turn off the water.
The door burst open.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry.” Beth flew across the room. She reached the toilet and dropped to her knees. Then she retched.
“Beth!” Entirely naked, I leapt from the shower, snagging a towel and wrapping it around my waist. Reaching her, I squatted and took her hair into my hands.
“Jesus. I made you sick,” I murmured.
Beth made an unhappy sound then retched again. Water dripped from me onto her thin top, and I snatched another towel from the rack and draped it over her shoulders.
She sobbed, and it broke my heart.
“Hush, you’re okay. I’ve got you. I’m here.” I rubbed her back.
Another minute of retching, and she finally seemed done. “I told you it wasn’t you,” she said in a tiny voice, then she raised a shaking hand to flush the toilet.
“Let me.” I bundled her into the soft, blue towel. Then I pulled the flush and dropped the lid before sitting back.
Unceremoniously, Beth huddled onto me, shivering. I lifted her from the cold floor onto my lap and held her. Her breathing slowed.
“You really are a gentleman. Anyone else would’ve bawled me out for bursting in like that.”
I rested back against the bath tub. Her toes dug into my calf, and I shifted my legs to trap her feet, to keep them warm.
“This is weirdly nice. I don’t usually like being around people when I’m ill.”
“Why am I different?” I asked.
She paused, rolling her head to one side. “You’re sick, too, so you aren’t fussing over me. And you make me feel protected. All these muscles.”
My world spun. “On the day we met, you made me feel safe.”
“By nearly scaring the life out of you?”
The pressure to shut up, to not reveal too much, almost won. But it couldn’t hold. Being with Beth had changed something in me. Fixed a broken part, maybe. “By the hug after.”
She shivered again. I did, too.
Beth adjusted the towel over her. Now, in broad daylight, being together, and barely dressed, took on a whole new feel.
An awkward awareness fell over us.
“Thank you for coming to me in the night. For taking care of me. Do you want me to carry you back to your bedroom?” I muttered, wanting only the opposite. To talk more. Tell her more.
“We already spent the night together. We can continue doing this, right? Be ill together?” she said quietly. “This can be a Beth and James thing.”
With a sigh, I settled my face into her hair. “God, yes. Are you done in here? Let me take you back to bed.”
“Teeth first,” she said. “Gross.”
I got the point and stood, carefully drawing her up with me so I could get a spare toothbrush from the cabinet.
In the illuminated bathroom mirror, our reflections stared back at us.
Oh no.
In my haste to take care of her, like she’d done to me all night, I hadn’t covered my chest. From the centre of my torso, pale twists of ravaged skin warped around my side, distorting my muscle tone. Hideous even to my own eyes, and I saw it every day.
The constant reminder of my fault. My blame and guilt.
But Beth did something unexpected. Without speaking, she sidestepped from my right-hand side to my left. Now, in the mirror, her body hid the injury.
In doing so, in performing this minor miracle of understanding, she’d kept her gaze on mine.
“You’re okay,” she said.
“You have no idea.” My voice came out raw. I handed the toothbrush to her. In my head, I thanked her, and in her eyes, she told me to stop worrying so much.
We returned to my bed like it was the most natural act in the world. Beth mumbled something about feeling like a train had hit her—a sentiment I related to—so, after I dressed again in clean boxers and a t-shirt, we resumed our previous position.
She tucked her head on my shoulder, and I held her close, my arm around her. My free hand held hers, pressed to my chest. Right over my heart.
How did couples do this? How did they find the will to leave their bed when having someone with you felt so good? It could only get better, too, without aching limbs but with the ability to…enjoy one another fully.
We slept, maybe for a couple of hours. When I woke again, I sent a text to Callum so he and Mathilda knew where we were.
“Not that Mattie will come looking. She’ll assume we hooked up.” Beth stretched her arms then groaned and crumpled back onto me, oblivious to my thundering heart.
Callum replied after a minute. Stay in bed, both of you. Take care of each other. If you need anything, we can bring it up.
I read the message to Beth.
“We’re doing that,” she mumbled. “Welcome to the sick room.”
“Thank you again for last night.” As the words left my mouth, a call lit my phone, the brightness stinging my eyes. Richard, again.
“We’re friends, aren’t we? Now we’re talking. And after all this full-body cuddling and the naked shower show, we can’t go back.”
The call kept up its silent harangue, but the edge in Beth’s tone caught my attention. It forced its way through my headache. The way she’d said ‘friends’—that was it. Because I hadn’t acted like a friend.
Hadn’t wanted to be a friend.
The phone made a dull thud where I replaced it on the table, the call ignored.
“I forgot you saw me naked.”
“I’m not going to let that image go. I might feel like crap now but I’m holding on to that for when I’m better.”
“Liked what you saw?” A stranger’s words came from my mouth.
Flirtatious. Jokey. I knew nobody else cared about my broken body—the McRae brothers had asked casual questions when I’d once taken off my shirt in the great hall.
Gordain and I had caught a soaking on the way back from a run, and I’d copied his actions, shedding my t-shirt without thinking.
Until I’d seen the stares. I’d answered factually, and no one had brought it up again.
But I didn’t worry about what they thought.
I really cared about the opinion of the woman tracing lines on my shirt.
Beth placed a kiss on the centre of my torso. “Don’t fish. You know you’re hot. I’m just in no position to do anything about it right now.”
“You’d planned to do something?” I asked, but no response came. Soft breathing told me she slept.
So I did, too.
But not so peacefully.
My dreams filled with Richard’s rage. At the last board meeting of my trustees, the people responsible for Belvedere and my finances until I came of age, my uncle had become apoplectic.
I had requested occupational training for a minimum of six months, which meant leaving my uncle. Moving elsewhere.
My uncle refused, but the other two members of the board approved it without question. A blessing I could barely comprehend.
A month prior, I’d met Gordain in a gym.
He was of similar size and strength to me, and I’d watched his routine.
Copying him. He’d noticed and befriended me, talking about his brothers and the McRae estate and how they were trying to make a go of two new cattle farms. How it would provide work for their tenants.
Cattle. I had all the land in the world to farm cattle but I could barely name a breed. Hundreds of tenants in the villages on my estate, but I couldn’t remember their names. Had no idea if any of them worked for me.
A slow world-change had commenced. Every time I saw the chatty Highlander, I had more questions.
On tourism. On running a castle. He spotted me at the weights, and eventually our sessions became planned and filled with conversation.
Mostly on his side, but I learned more from him about the potential my estate had than in nine years with my uncle.
Richard had provided me with tutor after tutor, none staying long, covering Latin, history, political science. Useless subjects to me. He had his ideas for my future, but I’d woken up and started to have my own.
Then Gordain invited me to visit. I met Callum, his older brother. We talked for hours.