I breathed a giant sigh of relief when I pushed open a door and found a sleek bathroom on the other side. I should've drawn some inferences about Ash or his apartment from the elegant fixtures and wallpaper that looked like real grass cloth but my bladder was too full for that kind of thinking.
Once I was finished, I washed my hands under the motion-activated faucet. Now, that required no inference. I was drying my hands on a dark green towel when the door burst open and Ash stumbled in, his feet bare.
"Do I want to know what happened to your shoes and socks?" I asked.
"Zelda, when did you get here?"
"You've been alone less than two minutes. How did you forget everything and lose your shoes in that time?" With his only free hand, he wrestled his belt open, worked his zipper down, reached into his trousers. "What—what are you doing?" I whirled around before seeing anything but I couldn't help but overhear what came next. "I don't know what you're paying me but I'd like a raise."
The toilet flushed behind me and the faucet switched on. "Name your price, Zelda. Whatever it is, I'll double it."
I peeked over my shoulder, found his trousers gaping open but the essentials stowed away. "That seems fair," I said. "Let's get you into bed, okay? You should sleep while you can't feel anything."
Ash reached for my hand, his still dripping wet, and brought it to his jaw. He was scruffy, the day's stubble thicker and darker than it was when I first sat down beside him.
"I can feel this." He dragged my palm up the carved granite of his jaw, rasping over his whiskers. He was rough and hard, and watching me. I held my breath, watched him watching me. He lifted his other hand to my face, cupped my jaw. "I can feel this too." His gaze dropped to my lips and lingered there. When he blinked up at me, he sifted his fingers through my hair. "I can feel you."
This wasn't on my list either.
"Yeah, it seems like you can but you'll be feeling something different in the morning. Something in your shoulder, that is. Not—not anywhere else." I pivoted out of this near embrace and herded him out of the bathroom, into the hall. "Where's your bedroom?"
He paused, flattened his hand on the wall, glanced around. "It's in my apartment."
"Yeah, that's a big help." As we shuffled down the hall, I spotted his shoes and socks, one of each abandoned every few steps. I almost laughed but shouldering the weight of a two-hundred-and-something-pound man required all my energy. "Here's the deal, Ashville. When we find your bed, you're going to snuggle up and go to sleep. Agreed?"
"Have you met Kirby yet? He's my pet."
"You…what?" I glanced around, half expecting to be attacked by a creature befitting my new boss. Something like a tarantula or, I didn't know, a ferret. "You have a pet?"
"Yeah. Kirby. He's my three-headed cactus. He stands guard and keeps watch over the kingdom." Ash pointed to the kitchen and yeah, a round cactus with three 'heads' extending from the body sat in a ceramic pot on the countertop. "Do we have any ice cream?"
We crossed a living room straight out of a home décor magazine and traveled down another hallway. "Not sure, sweetie. I can't imagine you keeping ice cream in the freezer. Seems about as off-vibe as you eating cookies for breakfast," I replied, kicking open a door. "Oh, thank god, it's a bedroom."
Ash leaned into me for a long, heavy moment where I let myself welcome that contact. It was new and foreign and amazing. And it'd been so long. Years and years without a touch like this had been almost enough to convince me I didn't need it the way I needed light and air. I needed it more than anything.
Then, he rasped, "I have missed my bed so much." He stumbled away from me, his limbs slow and uncoordinated as he weaved toward the bed. Before I could stop him, he flopped onto his back and promptly shouted, "Fuuuuuucking ouch."
"Okay, okay. Easy there," I whispered, rushing to his side. "Let's get you situated."
Putting a grown man to bed was about as simple as swaddling a bullfrog. He wiggled and rolled, and struggled to find a comfortable position. I almost had him there when he said, "Can you take my pants off?"
A shocked laugh burst out of me because yes, a portion of me was extremely interested in more information on that topic but also no, not today, Satan.
He pushed to his feet, wobbled, plopped back on the bed like a baby fawn learning its legs. "Have I mentioned auditing is highly varied work?"
"I don't even know what to say to that, sweetie." I stood between his legs, beckoned him toward me. "Stand up, hold on to me, and then you'll step out. Got it?"
"I need you to get my shirt off too," he said as he followed my orders. His trousers dropped, the belt clattering as it hit the floor. That left him in boxers—or briefs. I wasn't about to look. A thin bit of fabric separated me from confirming the big feet hypothesis and that knowledge was more responsibility than I could manage tonight. "It's strangling me."
"Do you know how dramatic you are when you're drugged?"
"My mother says I'm moody," he said with a perfectly adorable pout. Yes, he was moody.
Before I could get him out of the shirt, I had to free him from the sling and the straps crossing his chest and circling his torso. That meant navigating tender, swollen skin and proceeding despite his groans and grimaces. It hurt my heart to put him through this. "Are you sure you can't deal with the shirt for one night?"
"I don't know how to sleep with clothes on."
"Mmhmm." I nodded, murmured to myself again. "Mmhmm. This is perfectly reasonable information. Nothing about this is unusual, not when compared with the rest of this day."
