Her fingers curved, poking the thick terrycloth behind the bar, the rest of her luscious body just out of sight behind the marble wall around the stall.
I worked very hard not to peep at the rest of her.
It was difficult to refrain. All I’d have to do was lean. I nearly sprained my eyeballs, keeping them on my own face in the mirror above the sink, which grew more haggard as I clutched the edge of the counter to keep myself there while I shoved that whirring toothbrush around my mouth, trying to keep my attention on it.
I wanted my eyes on her curvaceous body, my hands on her skin, my mouth on her secret parts.
My body wanted more, and my stupid dick stiffened, nudging the towel tucked around my waist like it was seeking the overlap to peer out and have a look around.
I thought about empty waving wheat fields for a moment, and Stoic books about the dampening of desire, and then the business contract concerning the New Jersey properties that John and I really needed to go over tomorrow.
The PDF had arrived earlier in my email, and I’d noted how damn long it was, pages and pages of exclusions and for-absence-of-doubts and loopholes and clauses to close loopholes and yet somehow made more loopholes.
My dick deflated until it was hanging sadly limp.
Except that Lexi was splashing around in there, water ricocheting off her skin and slapping against the walls, the water trickling over her like my fingers craved, my tongue craved.
I thought about the New Jersey paperwork again.
Longer, this time.
I started planning my own “for the absence of doubt” clauses in the real estate contract while I brushed my teeth, grinding the rotating brush head into my gums.
Good God, my body was behaving like a randy teenager sniffing outside the girls’ dormitory at boarding school, hoping to catch a whiff of perfume.
I smiled around the toothbrush whirring around my molars. I guessed I’d asked for this.
I had asked for my heart to be open, to find someone with whom I felt new and clean, not guarded and hopeless.
Damn, what a wish.
As I brushed my teeth, I found myself humming a tune that I hadn’t thought of since high school, about bursting with joy.
It was a cute song.
It reminded me of Lexi when she smiled.
So I spat toothpaste foam in the sink and rinsed it down, and then I wiped the remnants off the corners of my mouth and waited while the shower splashed, while the notes of the water rose and fell as she turned in the stall, while her soft feet padded on the stone floor, while the liquid soap dispenser or shampoo lever pumped, while the scent of roses perfumed the steaming air.
CHAPTER 27
not your secretary
LEXI
When the shower was running and steaming, Nicolai stepped through the shower stall’s glass doors and walked inside to splash the water, then came back and handed me into the warm enclosure.
A towel bar was screwed into the back wall. I tucked the fluffy towel into the bar where it would stay dry because the danged shower stall was that freakin’ big.
The stone walls were warm to my fingertips and radiated heat as my hand moved by.
My bare feet walked six long steps through the shower stall, over the rough tile under my soles and toes, to where the wall jets sprayed and a flat faucet poured a steaming waterfall that flowed into the floor drain.
Oh, I could get used to this.
The steaming deluge sluiced everything off my skin—sweat, dust, the whole crazy day and all the insanity, some sticky stuff—and the tension in my muscles dissolved.
I was glad Nicolai knew how to set the dials on the screen. I would’ve probably ended up taking an icy shower out ofsheer technical ignorance about how to work the computerized bathroom.
