I didn’t move.
Not when his fingers slid the zipper down my side. Not when the fabric slipped over my hips and fell to the floor with a whisper.
I stood there in my bra and underwear, suddenly hyperaware of every scar and stretch mark, every place my body no longer felt like the one I’d lived in before becoming someone’s mother.
I crossed my arms over my stomach, a flicker of apology already forming on my lips.
He stopped me with a look. “Selene.”
Just my name, but it settled something restless inside me.
His eyes didn’t drift. They didn’t assess or compare or calculate. They devoured—hungry and awed and unashamed.
“You are incredibly beautiful,” he said, like it was the most obvious truth in the world. “I wish you could see what I see.”
Heat bloomed under my skin. Austin stepped in closer, fingers ghosting along the straps of my bra, easing them down with a reverence that made me want to cry.
He wasn’t trying to get me naked.
He was giving me back to myself.
Once I was bare, he stepped back—not to admire, but to give me space to choose.
I climbed into the bath, easing down inch by inch, my whole body sighing as the hot water wrapped around me like a second skin. The bubbles hissed as I sank up to my collarbone, letting my head tip back against the porcelain.
It felt indulgent.
It felt earned.
Austin reached for my phone from the counter. “What do you want to listen to?”
He held the phone out to me so I could unlock it.
“Dean Martin,” I murmured, closing my eyes again.
He paused, then laughed under his breath. “So you did hear.”
A smirk formed on my lips. “I might have.”
He scrolled through something, and a moment later the opening notes of “I Don’t Know Why” drifted through the steam.
I let out a long breath, feeling the music bloom around me.
He lingered near the edge of the tub, fingers drumming against the side.
“Good night, Selene,” he said.
When I opened my eyes and saw him turning to go, I reached for him without thinking. “Hey ...” I blinked, gathering my courage. “Stay.” The word was quiet. Uncertain. Hopeful.
He stilled.
When he turned back around, his expression was unreadable, but his hands went to the hem of his shirt and he started to undress.
This time, I watched.
The muscles in his shoulders flexed as he tugged his shirt over his head. The hard lines of his abdomen, the trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans. His hands were confident, unhurried, as he unbuttoned his jeans and stepped out of them.
He wasn’t posing and wasn’t trying to impress me, but god help me, I was thoroughly impressed. He was thick and muscular, rough around the edges in all the ways that made my skin tingle. A man who used his body. Austin was a man who didn’t just take up space—he filled it.
