When she hesitates, I step closer, close enough that the steam carries my scent to her. “That wasn’t a request. Your job is to take care of me. All of me. Every inch.”
The color in her cheeks deepens, but she doesn’t resist as I help her out of her clothes, as gentle with her as she’s been with my injuries. When we’re both naked, when there’snothing between us but heated air and possibility, I guide her into the shower.
“Wash me,” I say simply.
She reaches for the soap with trembling hands, working up a lather before pressing her palms against my chest. Her touch is reverent, careful, tracing the edges of waterproof bandages before exploring unmarked skin.
“You have so many scars,” she whispers, fingers finding old wounds from operations I’d rather forget.
Her hands map the history written in my skin—a puckered line across my left shoulder from shrapnel in Afghanistan, the jagged mark on my forearm from a knife fight in Syria, smaller nicks and cuts that tell stories I’ve never shared with anyone.
“This one?” Her finger traces a thin white line along my collarbone.
“Training accident. Rookie mistake.” The memory surfaces unbidden—overconfidence and poor timing that nearly cost me my career before it started.
She moves to the next scar, a deeper gouge across my ribs. “And this?”
“Somalia. Knife.” Two words that encompass three days of hell and a teammate who didn’t make it home.
Her lips press against the old wound, soft and warm against skin that hasn’t known gentleness in years. The kiss sends electricity straight through my chest, heat that has nothing to do with the shower and everything to do with the way she touches me like I’m something precious instead of just functional.
My cock stirs, blood flowing south as her mouth continues its exploration. She finds another scar, this one along my hipbone, and her tongue traces the raised tissue with deliberate care.
“Jesus, Eliza.”
“Everywhere,” she murmurs against my skin. “I want to know all of them.”
Her hands slide lower, soap-slick fingers exploring the new terrain of fresh bandages covering my latest injuries. She’s careful around the medical tape, but her touch becomes bolder as she maps the boundaries of what’s healing and what remains unmarked.
“How do these feel?” she asks, fingertips ghosting along the edge of the abdominal wound’s dressing.
“Tight. Itchy. But healing.”
“Good.” She leans forward, pressing the softest kiss just above the bandage. “I was so scared when I saw how much blood …”
The admission hangs between us, vulnerability mixing with steam and heat. When she looks up at me, water streaming through her auburn hair, her eyes hold a heat that makes my chest tighten and my cock grow harder.
“You kept me alive,” I tell her, reaching out to cup her chin. “Your field medicine, your courage. You saved my life.”
Understanding blooms in her expression—not just intellectual comprehension, but something deeper. The recognition that we belong to each other now, that what happened forged an unbreakable bond between us.
Her gaze drops to my growing erection, then back to my face. The shift from tender caretaker to something hungrier is subtle but unmistakable.
“I want to take care of you,” she says, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “All of you.”
My pulse spikes. “How?”
“However you need.”
The submission in her voice, the way she’s looking at me like I’m the center of her universe, sends blood rushing through my system. My cock hardens completely, demanding attention she’s clearly willing to give.
“On your knees.”
The command sends visible tremors through herbody, but she doesn’t resist. She sinks gracefully to the shower floor, water cascading around us, looking up at me with eyes that hold trust and hunger in equal measure.
“Good girl.” The praise makes her breath catch. “Now show me how much you want to take care of me.”
When her mouth finds me, when she demonstrates exactly how thoroughly she wants to serve, rational thought becomes impossible. She’s careful of my injuries but thorough in her attention, using everything she learned about my responses during our time in the safe house.
