5. Iris
IRIS
The shower in his bathroom is simple and functional—rough stone walls, a single wide shower head, no frills. Just like the man himself, I’m beginning to see.
The hot water hits my shoulders and I gasp—partly from the sting as it finds my scraped knee and elbow, the wounds pinching and burning under the pressure—and partly from something else entirely. Something that has nothing to do with pain.
My skin, my flesh, my entire being is alive in a way it's never been before. That of course could still be the adrenaline from the eventful day I have had. But it’s not.
It’s more.
It’s… him.
My mountain man and what he’s doing to me.
I stand under the spray and let it work through my hair, watch the day sluice off me in rivulets—the dust and the chaos and the dirty remnants of a wedding I never wanted—and try to think clearly.
It isn't working. Every nerve ending I own seems to have rerouted itself, converging somewhere low and insistent, throbbing with a pulse of its own.
I've been watched my whole life. Monitored, managed, traded like a chess piece my stepmother moved around a board I never got to see. Men had looked at me before—I wasn't blind to it—leaving me with an oily, sticky feeling. As if I was cattle they were cataloging.
Because not a single one of them actually saw me.
Me, Iris.
But the mountain man’s gaze on me is something else entirely. It makes my skin too tight for my body, sends my pulse haywire and makes me feel more alive than I have ever felt before.
When his breath had danced over the nape of my neck, when he drew that knife up the back of my dress, I felt it everywhere.
When he knelt in front of me and tended to my wounds—those large scarred hands impossibly gentle—something cracked open in my chest that I don't think I can close again.
When his woodsmoke scent filled my lungs it had done two things at once that shouldn't go together—aroused me and made me feel safe.
I press my face into the spray and let it run hot over my cheeks.
The steam is thick around me as I reach for his soap—plain, no nonsense, smells exactly like him—and work it over my skin. My fingers graze the dip of my waist and I shiver. Suddenly, my own body feels different, new, like it has power I never discovered before.
I think of his hands. Those broad, tanned, scarred hands that dwarfed mine. The way his grip tightened on my shoulders before he released me, like he caught himself doing something he didn’t mean to do.
The way those green eyes darkened when he knelt in front of me.
Had that been hunger? Desire for me? Had he wanted to touch more of me, all of me even?
The thought sends a fresh rush of heat between my thighs and I press them together under the spray with a gasp and a moan.
I turn the water off.
The silence of the cabin wraps around me immediately, broken only by the drip of water and the distant pop and settle of the wood stove.
I step out into the steam and reach for the thick towel on the rail.
It's enormous—of course it is, everything in here is scaled to him—and as I drag it over my skin I can't stop the image that surfaces unbidden.
Him using it. On that hard, scarred body. Those broad shoulders. Whatever lies beneath that shirt. Lower on that hard abdomen and those tree-trunk thighs.
The rough nap of the towel catches my nipple and another soft gasp escapes me before I can stop it. My core clenches, releasing dampness, with a deep slow throb that makes my knees quake. That place feels empty, aching.
Oh.
I press my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and breathe.
After a moment I lift my head and look.
Steam clings to the edges of the mirror, my reflection emerging through it slowly.
Wet hair dark against my shoulders. Flushed skin.
Eyes that look different than they did this morning—less careful, less braced.
For the first time in my life, I like what I see.
I’m not too fat, too cheerful, too naive.
I’m Iris and I feel desire for a man. I feel like I know what it means to be a woman, with her own needs.
Free too, for the first time, to reach for something she actually wants. To be just herself.
I hold my gaze for one long beat before reaching for his clothes.
The white cotton undershirt he gave me is enormous, falling to mid-thigh. I hold up the sweatpants, consider them, and set them back down. The shirt is more than enough.
I look down at myself.
The esthetician had waxed me completely bare as per my groom's tastes, and a shudder moves through me at the memory—the clinical efficiency of it, the ownership implied. Done for Vitale. For someone who had looked at me like I was a doll he would play with.
But the shudder passes soon, thank God.
Without underwear, the cotton shirt grazes sensitive skin with every small movement and my core feels it immediately—warm and bare and already wet and I haven't even opened the bathroom door yet.
I find myself wondering what my mountain man would think. Whether he'd prefer me natural. Not stripped and polished as if I were a bloody mannequin. The way he lives here, all alone in this rusty cabin, tells me he likes all things natural and raw.
Not that I mind the state of me now. I need all the weapons in my arsenal to catch his attention right now, and that’s what this bare look is—a weapon.
And I want his attention.
I want his touch, rough or tender.
I want to taste his desire and sate it.
I want to live my entire life in the next few days, taste my own desire and learn how to fulfill it at the hands of a man who will be good to me. Who wants me.
I want to steal this time away for myself before I’m returned to my horrible life.
All I have to do is convince him it's a transaction. Give him something he needs in exchange for what I need. He understands transactions—I saw it in his face when I suggested it downstairs. It's the language he speaks.
Look at me, strategizing like a proper seductress. If only my stepsisters and my stepmother could see me now.
And maybe—just maybe—I could be what he needs for a day or two.
The memory of his question surfaces — aren't you scared of me?
— and what it cost him to ask it. The shadows living in those green eyes.
The way his jaw had gone tight when I told him I could see how much he hated what he was capable of.
He'd looked away like a man who hadn't been seen clearly in a very long time and didn't know what to do with it.
He didn't want to need anyone. I understood that in my bones.
But those shadows had called to something in me, tugged at a place behind my sternum that I hadn't known was reachable. Even a grumpy, scarred mountain man who lives alone in the wilderness deserves someone to hold him for a little while. Even if he'd never ask for it. Even if he'd never admit it.
I push my wet hair back from my face, square my shoulders, and open the door.