She was okay now that they were safe. She really was. When the rage and anger had revealed itself as terror in disguise, Dree had fallen apart, and she hated that.
So, she was okay. Because they were safe now.
Somehow, she had to get some antibiotic ointment on Maxence’s shoulders, though. She hadn’t meant to get that rough with him. Maybe she could make the excuse that she’d been clinging to his shoulders for dear life, but that was too stupid even to rationalize it in her own brain.
Safe now.
Maxence kept saying they were safe, and Dree needed to believe it.
Safe now.
She would keep repeating that over and over until it got through.
Safe now.
The tone of the water spraying from the shower changed as the glass door opened and Maxence stepped into the shower behind her. As he turned to close the shower door, the enormous tattoo on his back of a fallen angel’s broken wings flashed into view, the splintered feathers dripping down his triceps and past the dimples below his muscular back.
Inking a demon’s wings on his own skin seemed like an act of self-punishment like she’d never seen before, and she hated that he’d been driven to do that by his own broken heart.
Dree dropped the washrag onto the shower stall floor with a soggy plop and rushed into his arms, pressing her face against his heavy pectorals.
Maxence’s arms closed around her.
One of his hands calmed her head and pressed her cheek more firmly against his muscled chest, and he bent to wrap his other arm around her waist. He rocked gently from side to side, not saying anything, and not telling her to stop being upset.
If anyone understood being upset after being kidnapped, it was Maxence.
The light, masculine hair sprinkled on his chest was rough under her cheek, but his tight waist and narrow hips were smooth under her arms where she clung to him. As usual, a scent wafted from his skin like he’d been baking an orange and citrus tart with cinnamon in a kitchen filled with freshly chopped oak wood.
Dree leaned backward. “When did you have time to shower?”
Maxence gestured to the showerhead that was streaming steaming hot water over her back. “I’m showering right now.”
“No, seriously. I’d been kidnapped and maybe being killed or tortured or something, and you smell great. There is no way that you haven’t showered since yesterday afternoon, especially if you were kidnapped and were beating people up this morning.”
Maxence shrugged, his slippery skin shifting under her arms. “After Arthur and Casimir picked me up in a helicopter from the ship, we were figuring out how to find you. While Arthur and Twist—”
“He was the middle guy on the helicopter, right?”
“Yes. They used Twist’s computer equipment to do something that had to do with my phone. We were hoping you still had it or at least that it was still in the same building as you were.”
Dree pointed at her destroyed dress and underwear laying on the bathroom floor outside of the shower. “Oh, yeah. And I’ve got—”
“I had a few minutes while those two were hashing out the details, and we were near the Monaco Yacht Club. I got some clothes from the palace and availed myself of the club’s guest suite because I would not want tooffend.If they’d found you in the three minutes I was in the shower, they would’ve had to come back to the yacht club to get on the helicopter, so I still would’ve been right there.”
Dree nodded. “You are scrupulous about being clean, aren’t you?”
He went rock-still for an instant and then curved around her again. “No one’s ever complained about it before.”
Dree chuckled at that. “I’d better soap up, too. I also would not want tooffend.”
Instead, Maxence soaped a washcloth and stroked it over her arms and torso, and then he bent to wash her legs as if he were cleaning his personal plaything that had gone missing and been found in a mud puddle, which was as good an analogy as Dree was going to come up with that afternoon.
She did feel like a lost toy that had been found in a mud puddle.
Her skin was gross and grimy, and she would be sneezing foul slop out of her sinuses for a week. When she’d been imprisoned and tied up in the closet, she’d felt abandoned and lost, like no one cared that she’d been carried off.
But Maxence had come looking for her.
