Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rue
Do I want Hugo’s help undressing?
Yes, obviously.
“No,” I say.
“No?” he repeats dubiously, eyeing my vertical lean against the wall.
“It’s not you.” God, brain, please get back in the game so I can explain this properly.
“It’s just… I don’t want this to be how we get naked together for the first time.
” I gesture down my body, regretting it when my right shoulder complains yet again.
“Me covered in someone else’s DNA, and you treating me like an invalid. ”
“But you’re saying there’ll be another first time?” Pink touches his cheeks. This man I’ve watched kill for me blushes when he talks about getting me naked.
“Yes, neighbor guy. I am.” Then I force myself to sit upright. “But I actually do need your help. Please don’t enjoy it.”
“Right. Don’t enjoy it,” he mutters, keeping his eyes locked on the wall above my head as I lift my arms so he can ease the shirt over my head.
The motion hurts every injured part of me from the waist up, but I bite back my hiss of pain and bend forward so he can reach my bra hook.
He unclasps it and immediately spins away, his back rigid.
“Let me know if you need help with anything else.”
I slide my bra the rest of the way off and shimmy my pants and underwear down my legs, all the while groping for the urge to be snide about him giving me my privacy now.
But it’s not there anymore. None of this feels performative.
It feels like care and concern and… more.
Something I can’t let myself name just yet.
Something I want more of, if I can just let myself have it.
I stand and hobble toward the clear glass door so I can step under the multiheaded adjustable shower spray. The water hits me like a warm caress, and I groan.
Hugo whips around, his eyes landing below my chin this time. “Are you oka—”
His mouth slams shut as he takes in my body through the glass, which is fogged from the shower steam but in no way opaque. He swallows hard and turns back around, but slowly this time.
“Are you okay?” he asks the wall.
“No.”
My voice has him whipping around again, his eyes going even wilder on his second viewing.
“Why do you have this fancy shower setup when I had the contractor special?” I ask peevishly, and his alertness dissolves into a smirk. The man’s standing there fully dressed while I’m wet and naked, and he’s smirking at me through clear glass.
“All part of my plan to lure you into my clutches,” he says, and I realize I actually like the way he’s joking about it. He wanted me from the beginning, and now that want is out in the open. He’s owning it, sharing it with me.
Not only that, but I’m about to enjoy the unexpected benefits of his surveillance, or I would if I could reach the shampoo on an eye-level shelf without whimpering from the reach.
I sigh. “Hugo, I need more help.” My hands fall by my sides. “No funny business, I promise.”
“Of course.” He sighs too, his chest expanding with the effort. “No funny business.”
He walks toward the shower like he’s planning to get in fully dressed, and I cross my arms and say, “Nuh-uh. If I’m naked, you’re naked.”
His eyes slam shut, and his lips move like he’s counting to ten. “Are you sure the business can’t get a little funny?” he mutters as he strips and opens the door to join me. My eyes bounce from his defined arms to his strong legs to his muscular chest… Oh my god, his chest has so many muscles.
“Maybe a little funny,” I murmur when he comes to a stop directly in front of me and my eyes fall to his cock. “Like a semi-clever pun.”
His jaw flexes. “Clean first. Anything else later.” He reaches for the body wash—my body wash, the one that smells like bergamot and berries, this romantic lunatic—and pours it into his hands.
“No loofah?” I ask as he rubs the fragrant pink gel between his palms.
“Nope. And just so you know, this is going to give me notions.”
“Notions?”
He glances down, and I follow his gaze to his cock, which is hard as steel and pointed directly at me.
“Oh,” I say quietly, and then, “Ohhh.” The second utterance is embarrassingly reverent, because holy shit, I want to worship that perfect penis.
I already know it’s long enough to hit everything inside me that matters and thick enough that I’ll feel it the next day.
But I’ve never seen it straining toward me, and I’ve definitely never gotten to explore that vein along the underside.
I want to touch it, trace it with my fingertip, taste it with my tongue.
“Sweetheart, you’ve got to stop looking at me like that,” he says gruffly.
“Right.” I swallow, clearing my throat. “No funny, no business.”
He gives a strained laugh and starts to spread the gel gently over my collarbones and the top of my chest, then down my breasts, gliding his palms across my stiff nipples.
He’s not lingering. He’s not trying to turn me on.
But it feels so good that my breath starts to come in pants.
He laughs and drops a kiss against the side of my neck.
His movements still when he hits my left arm.
“You told me all of that blood was his,” he says accusingly, holding it up so he can study the three-inch gash on my inner forearm.
“I said most of it was,” I correct him. “And it hurts a hell of a lot less than the bottom half of me.” I shrug. “Can’t say I recommend a two-story patio escape.”
He says nothing as he turns and flings the shower door open to retrieve the little stool from against the wall. I don’t love the cold air it lets in, but I do love the eyeful I get of his muscular ass and thighs as he stalks around the bathroom. And then there’s that dick…
“Sit,” he commands once he’s set the stool in the center of the shower.
I sit, and I’m rewarded when he fills his palm with more bergamot-and-berry gel that he spreads over the backs of my hands and between my fingers, massaging each individual joint until I’m almost purring—and that’s before he drops to his knees to rub gentle circles over my thighs, taking care with my sore knees before he moves on to my shins, my calves.
I wince when he hits my left ankle, and he winces too, at causing me pain with even his most gentle touch.
His fingers reach my feet and dance across my ticklish instep before working the gel between each toe. I shiver and sigh despite the ache in my bones and oh my god, do I have a foot thing now?
“Feels good, baby?” His smirk turns wicked.
My eyes flutter shut. “It feels wonderful.”
Being here with him, warm and cared for. Being alive. It’s all wonderful. And he’s so tender with the sore, aching parts of my body, which outnumber the nonsore parts at this point, that tears sting the backs of my eyes.
He works his way back up my legs and mutters, “No fucking funny business.” His eyes close like he’s in pain as his fingers ghost across my mound, and when he grips my hips and breathes like he’s been running uphill, it’s all I can do not to arch my back and tell him to do something useful with the hard cock.
Then his eyes open, and he gives me a crooked grin.
“Okay, I’m good. Ready for your back?”
I exhale and nod, and he walks behind me, brushing my hair forward over my shoulders as he reaches for the shower gel again. But when several heartbeats pass without the touch of his fingers, I brave the pain of turning my head and glance back to find him frozen with the bottle in his hands.
“Hugo?”
He’s staring at the scars on my right shoulder.
When he realizes I’m watching him, he immediately replaces his shock with a neutral resting therapy face.
“Sorry,” he murmurs. “Still good?”
I pivot on the bench to face him fully.
“Hugo,” I ask slowly, “is this the first time you’re seeing my skin grafts?”
He hesitates before his head moves in a small nod. The water cascades around us as his unguarded response clicks into place.
“You were telling me the truth,” I whisper.
I avoid tank tops and sleeveless dresses, even at home, so the only time my scars are visible is when I’m not wearing anything at all. If he’s never seen them, that means…
“I watched you so often, sweetheart.” He swallows hard. “I know it doesn’t make it okay. I know there isn’t a difference in how it feels for you. But I was telling the truth about never seeing you naked.”
Water drips from the tips of his hair to roll down his face, and the last of my resistance washes away with those droplets. Because there is a difference. What Greg did, what Hugo did. I know how they both felt, and there’s a difference.
Greg made me find out. Hugo’s been telling me all night.
The body wash. The water heater. He hands them over before I can go looking.
And before that, the mailbox conversations and cups of tea.
The concussion confessions and the things he told me in the dark.
Even with all that evidence, my body knew before my brain did.
That’s why it carried me to Ray Overton’s house tonight.
That’s why it took me to Hugo’s bed afterward.
There’s a difference, and I don’t object when he walks behind me and kneels so he can press his lips against the center of the scars.
“From the fire?” he asks over the pattering of the water.
I nod, and he sets the bottle down and pulls me into his arms, pressing his cheek against the strange, taut skin that’s been part of me for eighteen years. “My brave girl.”
His words aren’t anything I haven’t heard before. The doctors and nurses said it over and over. So did the therapists and the kindest of the foster mothers. But his voice is matter-of-fact and possessive in a way that loosens everything inside me while drawing me tight at the same time.
I’m brave, and I’m his. I like being both of those things very much.
“Right. Okay.” I clear my throat. “We should finish this up because I need to have sex with you as soon as possible.”
I feel his groan as much as I hear it.
“Are you sure? Tonight’s been—”
“I’m sure.” I press back against his chest. “I’m sure, Hugo.”
His head falls onto my shoulder. “Fuck. Okay.”
Then this aggravating man frustrates the hell out of me by refusing to rush.
First, he takes his time on my back, and his hands don’t change when they cross the grafts.
No pause at the seam. No extra gentleness.
He washes the burned parts of me exactly the way he washed the rest. When he moves on to my hair, his beautiful cock prodding me as he works the honeysuckle-scented shampoo through my blood-stained strands, massaging my scalp with his strong fingers, rinsing it, and repeating the steps with conditioner.
By then, I’m boneless and relaxed and so turned on that I barely notice when he wraps me in a towel and carries me from the shower to deposit me on the vanity countertop.
The three-way mirror at my back lets me observe his care from so many angles that I grow lightheaded from being surrounded by multiple Hugos.
He catches the droplets of water on my skin and presses the moisture from my hair, his gaze roving from my mouth to my eyes to the line of my neck to the tops of my breasts as he works.
When I’m clean, dry, and rosy, I look up at him through my lashes. “Is it time for the post-kill sex?”
I expect him to sling me over his shoulder and carry me to his bed like a caveman, but instead he steps back and studies me in silence, the heat in his eyes cooling to a carefully neutral expression.
“How do you want me?” he finally asks. Then in an infinitesimally smaller voice, “Do you want me like Gomez?”
At first, I’m not sure what he’s asking, but understanding rushes in when I see him tense like he’s expecting a blow.
“Of course I want Gomez,” I say, reaching for the knot in the towel at his waist to pull him close. “But I also want Dr. Bore.”
His jaw hardens as he looks at me, so I wrap my legs around him, ignoring the ache in my knees as I tighten my thigh muscles and press a soft kiss to the hard edge below his ear.
“They’re both you, Hugo.” The next stop for my lips is the corner of his frown.
“I thought I spent all those months at the mailbox being annoyed with the guy in the cardigan and glasses, but that was a lie.” I kiss the other side of his mouth.
“Hell, Fi recognized it before I admitted it to myself.”
His teeth unclench enough to say, “Recognized what, exactly?”
I bend my knees past their limits to haul him so tight against me that he can’t escape when I guide his hand under the split in my towel.
“They’re all you. They’re all Hugo. And I want all of you.”
I’ve never seen a man grin while groaning before, but Hugo-Gomez-Dr. Bore pulls it off as he slides his fingers through my slick pussy.
I lean back to catch every possible angle of his almost pained expression in the mirrors.
All of these men layered on top of each other inside the one person I can’t live without.
The fire’s back in his eyes when they lock on mine and he brushes the tips of his fingers over my clit, sending a jolt through me. Then he yanks his fingers away, and I follow his concerned gaze to the cut on my arm, which is bleeding again.
Before I can react, he slides open a drawer in the vanity and pulls out Steri-Strips, followed by a familiar package.
“You kept it?” I ask hoarsely, blinking down at the pink and yellow and green conversation hearts on the wrapper.
He deftly applies the Steri-Strips, then covers them with my bandage.
“I thought Morticia might need patching up someday,” he says, tossing the wrappers into the trash can next to the sink.
My finger’s tracing the printed messages—BE MINE, SOUL MATE, LOVE ME—when he swings me into his arms.
“Okay. Let’s get you that post-kill sex you’re begging for.”