Those could have been spread over two months.
If I’d dated someone for two months, if I’d helped them and they’d helped me with problems, if we’d talked so much, if they’d met my friends and I’d made their ex jealous just for the chaos of it, feeling the gentle descent from living in my head to reaching for her would be believable.
Why not this?
Those thoughts drifted in my head as the water pattered and splashed and steam collected near the starlight fixtures in the ceiling, roiling.
I’d made her ex-fiancé jealous.
For the chaos of it.
John was right. I was not myself.
Maybe I was slowly going insane.
Or had been possessed.
Or maybe it was her.
She’d met my only close living relative, Kostya, and helped me deal with his tantrum.
EvenClemmyliked her and was willing to help her. Considering Clem’s observation about our wedding rings, herloaning Lexi the earrings that obviously were a set with the butterfly necklace she’d been wearing, and then texting me to expect her for coffee and strategy this afternoon, Clemmy must be infatuated with my Lexi.
Clemmy didn’t help people like that. She let them flounder and then turned away because she couldn’t be expected to save all the socially awkward little starfish of our sad, alienated generation.
There were a lot of those awkward downward-drifting starfish in our circle of friends. Clemmy had been more approachable when we were younger, but she’d burned out like a star.
My friends liked Lexi. They’d been fine with Hannelore, even though she hadn’t been to school in Switzerland because the British generally educate their children at English boarding schools. No one had warned me off her, and the class-conscious ones had approved of the match.
But they’dlikedLexi. Magnus had been pissed at me for not preparing her enough. Ryan was too wasted and burnt out to have a decent opinion of anyone lately.
Even though John Borbón had been worried that I might have been honeypotted by Russian intelligence, he’d been easily convinced that Lexi was a decent human being because he’d seen the evidence with his own eyes every time she spoke.
My hands on her skin and her taste in my mouth made me fucking feral for her. I wanted to drag her by her heels to the bed, drive her wild again with my mouth until she was writhing and begging for me, and then bury myself in her until she screamed my name.
I wanted to take her until her body and her love were mine.
Yeah, I was already fuckinggone.
I wanted to be in the shower with her, washing her with a soapy washcloth, making her clean and relaxed.
Bathing my women after sex had started in college because I liked the surprise in their eyes and then the way their bodies luxuriated under my touch.
The way their skin turned steamy and flushed in a shower was beautiful to behold, even when it didn’t culminate in round two.
Maybe especially when it didn’t culminate in round two.
When instead, they were warm and sleepy, sultry humidity rising from their damp skin. When they melted when I wrapped them in my arms, and theystayed.
No one stayed anymore.
But I didn’t get to do that today. Lexi was beyond innocent. She’d been brainwashed to be afraid. If I weren’t careful, I might shock my little ingénue too much. When I’d held her arm above her head minutes ago, she nearly slid down the wall to get away from me, cowed by my proximity.
So instead of joining her in the shower and running a washcloth over her silky body, I shucked my sticky, stiffening underwear and pants and tossed them in the laundry, grabbing a towel to tuck around my hips until Lexi was done showering.
Might as well brush my teeth.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bare arm cram the white hotel towel around the towel bar at the back of the shower.
