He laughed softly, his hand warm against my back. “Well, you have to scrub away the dirt. The water doesn’t automatically do that for you. I mean I guess it could, if you stayed in long enough, but then you’d turn into a raisin.”
A raisin? “What’s a raisin?”
“It’s a dried-up grape.”
“What’s a grape?”
“It’s a fruit.”
“Oh. Like apples?”
“Yeah. Like apples.”
The sound of the waterfall was almost as relaxing as his voice, and when he spoke again, I slid my palm down to his chest to feel it.
“So how are you gonna clean yourself?”
“You do it.”
He choked, and I glanced up at his face. He was staring at me with wide eyes. “What?”
“You did it before. Teach me how to do it.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, and I felt something hard brush against my ass. “You’re killing me.”
A horrible feeling churned in my stomach. Those words were awful, bringing a flood of images to my mind that I didn’t want to see.
All of them involved me standing over a bloody, lifeless Cain, a crazed look in my eyes.
I felt sick.
I tucked my face into his neck and whispered, “I don’t want to kill you. Please don’t let me kill you.”
“What? Oh…oh, fuck, no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just a—shit, are you crying? Please don’t cry, Bowen. I’ll clean you, okay? It’s no big deal. I can do it.”
I didn’t know why I was getting so upset.
“It’s just a saying, like…what I meant was, I’m having a hard time being around you naked.”
I was even more confused now. “Why?”
“Because…because I’m attracted to you,” he rushed out, the words said so quickly I almost didn’t understand them.
Attracted to me? Like he wanted to fuck me? Like what the hounds did when we were all in one big cage? I hadn’t done that before, hadn’t wanted to, not with them, but…
“You can fuck me,” I said, hoping that would make him feel better.
I just wanted him to be happy. To see that smile, feel his skin against mine and share our warmth.
I just wantedhim.
Chapter 10
Cain
“You can fuck me.”
Oh my god.
