Chapter 7 #2
“Ashore.” He boosts my nude, flailing body into the boat and clambers in after me. “I’ve got a first-aid kit on the ship, but this is quicker and we’ll have more options.”
“Options like amputation?” I’m trying to joke, but this fucking hurts.
“Pretty sure you’ll live.” He throws me a towel as I cradle my thigh to my chest. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve been stung before.”
“Why would that make me feel better?” I spit out a salty hunk of hair. “Did you see sadism checked on my forms?”
“I did not.” Ash’s mouth quirks. “I merely meant that I’m familiar with treatment protocol.”
“You’re not going to pee on me, are you?”
“I beg your pardon?” He squints at the dock, angling the boat into place.
“Isn’t that what people do?”
“Far be it from me to kink shame, but this hardly seems like the time for a golden shower.”
“Ash!” The man is a pain in the ass. “Are you trying to distract me by pretending to be dense?”
“Is it working?” He ties off the boat and leaps out onto a small wooden platform.
“A little,” I admit, wincing as he bundles me into the fluffy red towel.
Gripping my hand, he hoists me out onto the dock. “Can you walk?”
“Yes, I— oh !” I clutch at his neck as he scoops into his arms. “What are you doing?”
“You took too long to answer.” Tucking me against his chest, he strides with purpose up a crushed-shell walkway. “This is quicker.”
“Okay.” I don’t think that’s true, but I’m not in a position to argue. I just hold on tight as he bangs through a gate and over a wide paver path to the house. Being pressed to his body has a placebo effect on the pain, and I notice my thigh isn’t throbbing anymore.
“Urinating on jellyfish stings is a common myth,” he explains as he reaches a side door to the mansion. Shifting me to one side, he presses his thumb to a scanner.
“Who the hell made up that myth?” I mutter.
“Evidently, someone who likes urinating on others.”
“Or being peed on.”
“There’s no kink shaming at Crystal Bliss Retreat.”
The door swings open and we stride through it with Ashton still talking. “Hot water is the best treatment. Anywhere from one-hundred-ten degrees to one-thirteen.”
My thigh throbs like someone’s still zapping me with a taser. “It’s annoying that you know the precise temperature.”
He ignores me and starts up a wide set of stairs, still clutching me tight to his chest. “There’s a bathwater thermometer in the primary suite, along with tweezers in case you have tentacles attached to the injury site.”
“I’m sleeping with a man who has a bathwater thermometer?”
Ash doesn’t reply as he thunders up steps made from some kind of colorful wood.
Glancing around, I admire the interior of his home.
It’s open and airy, like the place was designed to be part of nature.
The entire front is comprised of glass panels, each one framing up spellbinding views of the sea.
From the lip of a second-floor balcony, a waterfall tumbles to a shimmering pond trailing down to a gourmet kitchen.
Holy crap, that’s a huge kitchen.
“Do you cook for yourself, or does Lars do all your meals?”
“What?”
“Your personal chef.” I’m getting the sense he’s a bit too distracted for small talk about his eating habits. “Does Lars make everything you eat, or can you cook?”
Ash grumbles something as we turn to take the next flight of stairs. “Did we not make French toast and bacon together?”
“I meant at home.” I’m chalking his surliness up to concern, which is sweet in an unsettling way.
“I can cook,” mutters Grumpy McGrumpypants.
“That French toast was outstanding.” We’re at the top of the stairs now, where lush ferns and plants with orange-spotted leaves frame the top of the waterfall. “You like water features a lot, huh?”
“One would hope so,” he mutters, which isn’t an answer.
Ash pivots at the top of the stairs, striding into a room that’s the size of my house.
My house with Hayden, which won’t be my home for much longer. I wait for a sharp pang of sadness or loss, but it doesn’t come. Maybe I’m still in shock.
“This is your bedroom?”
“Indeed.”
The walls are stark white and a huge king-sized bed sits under a giant window. It’s draped in soft linen bedding, with pillows and sheets in five or six hues of blue. There’s an ivory coverlet I’d probably wreck within minutes by spilling nail polish or wine.
Ashton deposits me at the foot of the bed, then stalks to the en suite bathroom framed by double French doors. Water starts running, so I tuck the red towel tighter around me and wander his bedroom.
All the furniture is made from the same splotchy wood as the stairs.
I’m exploring his space, touching the dresser and picking up picture frames.
There’s a photo with Ash and two people I assume are his parents.
They have matching blue eyes and icy-stern expressions like his.
He’s wearing a cap and gown, and everyone’s stiff-armed and rigid.
In a blue and white frame right beside it, there’s a photo of a woman. A beautiful brunette with sun-streaked waves and an open smile. She’s barefoot and wearing a pale peach sundress, her pink-tipped toes curled in the sand.
On her lap sits a boy, maybe three or four years old. He has a gap-toothed smile and freckles like sunbursts on each of his cheeks. I squint at the photo, admiring the cool blue of eyes that remind me so much of?—
“Camille!”
“Yeah?”
“Come here.”
“Yes, sir.” I snap a salute and pad into the bathroom.
He looks up from running the water. “How’s the pain?”
“All right.” It’s faded enough that I almost forgot I got stung by a jellyfish. “I think maybe?—”
“Let me see.” He yanks the towel from my body and glares at my thigh like it offended him. “I don’t like how red that is.”
“It doesn’t like you much, either.”
Ignoring me, he plunges a hand in the bath. When he pulls it out, I notice he’s holding a thermometer. “One-ten,” he reports. “Get in.”
“Okay, bossy-boss man.” I slide into the tub, hissing and yelping a little. “Hot.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Know how I know you’re worried about me?” God, this is scorching.
“How?”
“Because you’re watching my face and not my tits.” I sink into the water, bending a little so my boobs tip toward him. “They’re right here , in your face, but you haven’t even noticed?—”
“Believe me, I’ve noticed.” His chiseled jaw clenches. “I can’t take care of you if I get distracted. Stop distracting me.”
“Fine.” I settle in the tub, my salty skin adjusting to the heat of the water. “Your bathtub could fit a car in it.”
“And infinitely more practical than a carwash. How’s the pain?”
“Fine.” I wince as water sloshes the tender bits between my legs.
“Something hurts?”
“Not from the sting. That’s feeling better.”
He inspects me for damage. “Why did you grimace?”
“Because your gigantic penis just left me a little bit raw, okay?”
“Not okay.” He glares. “You tell me , Camille, if I’m hurting you?—”
“You didn’t hurt me—I love that you fuck like a machine with that battering ram between your legs.”
Still muttering to himself, Ash maneuvers my body to the side and looks at my thigh. “I don’t see any tentacles?—”
“From your dick? Not really into tentacle kink, but I did see it on the Crystal Bliss menu. Very inclusive of you.”
“Stay right here.”He stomps from the room as I lie back in the tub, letting hot water surround me.
“Where else would I go, Ash Hole?” I grumble.
“I heard that!” Loud footsteps thunder and he returns to the bathroom, a yellow and white tube gripped in one hand.
“Is that Neosporin?”
“It should help with the sting. We’ll let the hot water work a little longer.”
I already feel almost normal. Dunking my head underwater, I rinse the salt from my hair. When I bob back to the surface, Ash is watching with a worried look.
“I’m okay,” I assure him. “Got any shampoo?”
“Later,” he says. “You want clear water for now.”
“Besides the sunscreen, you mean.”
Scowling, he hands me a washcloth. “Use this if you want.”
“Thanks.” I sponge off my body, working carefully around the site of the sting. The hot water must be working, since I’m barely in pain anymore.
Ash watches like a hawk, laser focused on me as I dunk my head underwater again.
It feels nice to rinse all the salt off my body.
To soak in this luxurious tub with an attentive man by my side.
I consider asking for a glass of champagne, but he’d probably take me seriously and order a servant to go get it.
“Where’s all the household staff?”
“Hmm?”
“You mentioned that Kora supervises your household staff. Surely, in a mansion, you’ve got maids and groundskeepers and?—”
“Everyone’s on vacation right now.”
“Except Lars, obviously.”
“At the market,” he grumbles.
Good to know, in case we wind up fucking each other’s brains out again. I tip my head back for one final rinse, then slick back my hair. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“You’re welcome.” He hands me a towel and I use it to pat my face dry.
“No, I mean it. I know I tease you for being bossy, but I appreciate you taking charge. That you knew what to do when something went wrong.”
A funny look crosses his face. “You’re welcome.”
We’re both quiet a moment, letting the hot water work its magic. I’m not used to an audience when I’m bathing, but it’s nice having Ash here. He leaves for a second and returns with a bottle of water.
“Drink this.”
“Yes, Daddy.” I love watching him wince when I say it. “You have a fridge in your bedroom?”
“Of course.”
“Obviously.” I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the water.”
“You need to stay hydrated.” He watches me gulp from the bottle, then takes it from my hand and sets it aside. “Let’s give it just another minute.”
“Okay.” I cast about for something to discuss. “Who’s the woman in the picture?”
“What picture?”
“On your dresser out there. Blue and white frame, little boy on her lap. He looks a little like?—”
“Get out.”
I blink. “Out of your house?”