4. Reva
CHAPTER FOUR
REVA
Pleasure gathers low and mean. I try to keep the pace, but my thighs are shaking now. Shiloh knows it. The man probably reads muscle fatigue like poetry.
“Let me,” he says. The words brush my mouth. This time, I do.
His arm locks around my waist. He holds me close and thrusts up into me, keeping his thumb exactly where I need it, turning the rhythm into something rougher, deeper, better.
My hands clutch at him because there is nowhere else to put them.
His shoulder. His hair. The back of his neck.
I bite him when it gets too much. His whole body jerks.
“Jesus.”
“Sorry.”
“No, do it again.”
So I do. He groans, and that is it. That is the thing that tips me over.
Not the water. Not his hand. Not even the way he fills me.
It is that sound, torn out of him because I put my teeth in his skin and he liked it.
The orgasm hits hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
My body locks around him, pleasure clamping down so tightly I go silent for one stunned second.
Then it breaks through me, hot and shaking, dragging a cry out of my chest. I clutch him through it, hips jerking, forehead pressed to his as his whole man-luxe bathroom blurs around the edges.
Shiloh watches me like a man who has forgotten how blinking works. I jerk my gaze down and to the side. “Don’t,” I manage.
His brows pull together. “Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m precious.”
He lifts a finger and pushes my hair damp and stringy, behind my ear. “You are.”
My eyes sting immediately. Absolutely unacceptable. “I will bite you again.”
His mouth curves. “Threat or promise?”
I kiss him because he is still inside me and I am still shaking and if he keeps being sweet, I may have to fake my own death and move to Ohio.
He lasts another three seconds. Maybe four.
Then his control goes. His hands clamp on my hips, and he thrusts up into me with a sound that has no polish in it.
I feel the change in him, the snap, the hunger he has been swallowing since the second I turned around in his lap.
“Reva,” he says. My name is rough in his mouth. I hold his face between my hands. “Jesus H.”
His eyes stay on mine as he comes. That feels too intimate, which is stupid considering he is literally inside my body, but apparently I still have standards for emotional exposure.
His mouth parts. His brow tightens. His hips jerk up hard one last time, and then he drags me down against him, face buried between my breasts, body pulsing inside mine.
For once, Shiloh has no words. I run my fingers through his wet hair because I don’t know what else to do with tenderness when it lands in my lap breathing hard.
We stay that way until the water settles.
My knees ache. My hair sticks to my neck.
The tile floor is soaked. The air smells like steam, shampoo, sex, and the faint ghost of Noir Night still clinging to whatever the bath has not managed to strip off my skin.
Then a tiny mew comes from the bathroom doorway.
Shiloh’s head lifts. Homer sits there, tail curled neatly around his paws, watching us with the solemn judgment of a tiny orange priest. For three full seconds, no one moves. Then Shiloh exhales.
“Fucking hairy creeper.”
A laugh jumps out of me before I can stop it. It sounds terrible. Cracked and wet and too close to crying. But it is a laugh. A real one. Small, but mine. Shiloh stares at me. Then his face changes, and I immediately point at him. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to get soft.”
“I am never soft.”
I look pointedly down between us. His mouth opens. Then closes.
“Too easy?” I ask.
“Far too easy.”
Homer mews again, louder this time, either scandalized or hungry. “Get out,” Shiloh tells him. The kitten blinks. “Useless,” Shiloh mutters.
The laugh fades from my chest, but it leaves a little space behind. Not peace. No one is handing out inner peace in Shiloh Lafitte’s sex tub. But space. Enough for one breath that doesn’t scrape all the way down. Shiloh looks back at me. “Still here?”
I nod. Then, because I know him, because he will ask again if I don’t give him what he needs, I say, “I’m here.”
His hand slides up my back. “Good.”
This time, the word doesn’t hook into anything ugly.
A few minutes later, he helps me off him with more care than either of us probably deserves after flooding his bathroom.
My body is loose and tired now, my brain a little fuzzy around the edges in a way I would usually distrust. Tonight, I take it as a gift and try not to look directly at it.
He drains some of the water, then reaches for the shower attachment and rinses us both clean.
There is nothing smooth about it now. We are awkward and wet and trying not to slip on porcelain while Homer continues supervising from the doorway like a pervert with whiskers.
Shiloh washes my shoulders, my arms, my back.
His hands slow near my hips, asking without words.
I let him because the tenderness is easier after the sex, and because I am too tired to fight a kindness that has already proved it knows when to stop.
When he reaches for my hair again, I mutter, “If you try to condition my hair, I’m out. ”
He laughs then. Quiet. Real. It does something to me I don’t have the energy to examine.
Of course, the reprieve does not last. It never does.
As soon as Shiloh wraps me in a towel and lifts me out of the tub, the weight of the night starts pressing back in.
My knees wobble when my feet hit the floor.
He notices because Shiloh notices everything he can use and too many things he can’t.
“Easy,” he says.
“I can stand.”
“I can see that.”
“You’re holding me.”
“I’m admiring your standing from very close range.”
I should roll my eyes. I don’t have the energy.
He dries me off without making a production of it, then pulls one of his shirts over my head.
It falls to my thighs and smells like him, clean cotton and expensive cologne and the faint bite of smoke that seems to live in all of them no matter how often they wash it away.
He dries himself with another towel, pulls on a pair of black lounge pants, and steers me toward the bedroom.
The sheets are already turned down. I stop at the edge of the bed.
The room beyond the bathroom looks different now.
Dimmer. Quieter. His jacket still lies over the chair.
My ruined dress hangs half-off the bathroom counter.
Water glistens on the tile behind us. Evidence everywhere.
Proof that things happened in a sequence.
I need that. I need sequence because everything else keeps trying to fold in on itself.
I saw Delia. I panicked. They brought me here.
They told me about the assignment. I climbed onto Shiloh because I wanted something that belonged to me.
Now I am standing beside his bed in his shirt, trying to pretend my legs are completely functional.
Those are facts. They do not explain anything, but they hold still when I look at them.
Shiloh pulls back the covers. “In.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No. Children are generally less terrifying.”
My mouth twitches. He sees it and wisely does not celebrate.
I climb into the bed because the alternative is standing there until my legs give out on principle.
The mattress dips under my weight. Soft sheets slide over my skin.
My body recognizes the offer of sleep and almost betrays me immediately.
Shiloh tucks the blanket around me. Actually tucks it.
I stare at him. “Did you just tuck me in?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you looked like you might stab me if I tried to cuddle you without warning.”
“That is accurate.”
“I am a man of strategy.”
He sits on the edge of the mattress, one hand resting beside my hip, not touching. His hair is still damp. His face looks younger without the charm arranged over it. More tired. More dangerous, maybe, because sincerity on Shiloh has no practiced edges. I look toward the closed bedroom door.
“Nash?”
“Ever will come get me if he needs me.”
“And Deacon?”
His expression hardens. “Deacon is not coming through that door.”
The certainty in his voice settles something in me. I hate that too. I hate how many pieces of me have started responding to them without permission. “Delia knew me,” I say.
Shiloh’s hand flexes against the sheet. “Yes.”
“She knew me and walked away.”
“Yes.”
I turn my face toward the pillow. “I hate her.”
“No, you don’t.”
Anger flickers weakly. “Don’t tell me what I feel.”
“I’m not.” His voice stays quiet. “You hate that she walked away. You hate that she knew more than you. You hate that she looked at you like you were danger. That’s not the same thing as hating her.”
I want to argue. The words don’t come. He reaches up and brushes damp hair off my cheek. “You can hate her for tonight if you need to.”
My throat tightens. “That sounds like permission.”
“It’s company.”
I look at him then. He gives me a tired, crooked smile. “I can sit with ugly feelings, Yank. I’ve been keeping mine in good bourbon and bad decisions for years.”
That almost gets another laugh. Instead, my eyes burn. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and remember this.”
His face stills. “The sex?”
“No.” Heat touches my cheeks despite everything. “The rest of it.”
He nods once. “I know.”
“If I sleep, it’ll be morning.”
“That is usually how sleep works.”
“Shiloh.”
“I’m here. We're all here.”
The words are simple, and maybe that is why they get through.
He stands, crosses the room, and picks Homer up from where the kitten has now made himself comfortable on Shiloh’s discarded jacket.
“You little bastard,” he mutters. Homer purrs.
Shiloh brings him to the bed and sets him near my feet.
Homer immediately trots up the blanket and collapses against my stomach as if he has been summoned by grief itself.
I put one hand on his tiny back. His purr vibrates into my palm. Shiloh watches us for a second, then pulls the chair close to the bed and sits. “You’re not sleeping?” I ask.
“Eventually.”
“In the chair?”
“Unless you tell me otherwise.” He glances at the nightstand beside the bed. "I'll leave the lamp on."
I look at the space beside me, remembering another night, when a storm knocked the power out and Shiloh learned one of my deepest fears: the dark. The thought of being alone in this bed, even with the lamp casting its tiny glow, makes the room stretch too wide.
The thought of asking him to stay makes something proud and wounded in me bare its teeth. Shiloh waits me out.
I exhale, reaching to flip the covers back. “Get in the damn bed, loser.”
He doesn't laugh. That's how I know he understands how much it means for me to invite someone...
anyone...to share my bed. He stands, lowers the light just a bit, and slides into bed behind me.
After a minute, I reach back and drag his arm over my waist. His breath catches.
Then he settles against me, a bulwark between me and the door, Homer on my other side purring between my ribs and the mattress.
The house remains too quiet. Somewhere else, men are still awake.
Secrets are moving. Deacon is still breathing.
My sister is alive somewhere in the city, carrying answers she refused to give me.
Tomorrow, I will have to stand up inside all of it.
Tonight, I close my eyes. Shiloh’s hand rests flat over my stomach, heavy enough to anchor, light enough to let me leave.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
I almost tell him to stop asking. Instead, I cover his hand with mine. “Yes.”
He presses his mouth to the back of my head. “Then sleep.”
I don't think I can. But the bath has left my bones heavy.
The sex has wrung something violent out of my body.
Homer purrs against me with the steady arrogance of a creature who believes all pain can be solved by warmth and proximity.
For a few breaths, I let him be right. The last thing I feel before sleep takes me is Shiloh behind me, awake and watchful, holding the line between me and the door.