“Do you remember when you asked me if I had a valet?”
She smiled as she approached him, picking up the cloth and soap, rubbing them together, and peeking at the shadowed water under the towel.
“I do.”
“I don't know if I have anyone to help me dress, but after last night, I certainly enjoy having someone to wash my back.”
“Just as I suspected, you're every inch the spoiled aristocrat.”
He snorted. “I'm not so high in the instep, am I?”
He dropped his head forward, and she ran the cloth up the back of his neck, her fingers reaching his hair under the helmet. She drew the strands down, lightly scoring his skin, and he moaned softly.
“You have brown hair,” she said.
“I could've told you that. I can see below my waist.”
She gasped. “Well I can't, now can I?”
He turned his head as if he could look at her over his shoulder. “Minx.”
“I knew the hair on your chest was brown, but not the hair on your head.”
“Can they be different?”
She shrugged but then realized he wouldn't be able to see the movement. “I don't know. You're the first bare chest I've seen.”
He chuckled. “Then I've already compromised you. You'll forever compare every man you meet to me.”
She knew he was jesting, but the word compromise meant marriage, something she'd never thought she wanted until now. She made swirls over his back with the cloth, watching the bubbles slide down his skin. She went up under the helmet again just to feel his hair, to be that much closer to him.
“That feels nice,” he said.
Indeed, it did. Her body hummed with awareness of his and she wanted to be closer, as close as her dreams had allowed, as close as husband and wife, but what would tomorrow bring? Pain and sorrow or revelation. Willa hated guessing. She liked facts. She liked to know what to do and when to do it.
It was why her sisters had always told her she was older than her years. She wasn't a defiant, fanciful child. She drew, made dolls from scraps of fabric, but never imagined much, never daydreamed that she was a princess or that monsters lurked in shadows. Now the monster was the future, and it might gobble up her hopes and dreams. Would she regret this moment, would she regret the mistake of traveling alone? Or only the pain it might bring at the end if they couldn't be together. If he didn't want to be with her.
Her breath caught in her throat. What if nothing was keeping them apart but his lack of interest? He'd kissed her. But a kissed didn't mean everlasting love. But now every kiss, every touch meant more to her than she could say. Each was laced with meaning, growing deeper and deeper until her heart was an ocean.
She blinked, realizing she'd stopped washing him some moments ago and was playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.
She had a sudden idea.
Willa came around the side of the tub, ignoring the invitation of the towel that could easily be pulled off the top. “Can I touch your face?” she asked.
“What?”
“Is there enough room under the helmet that I could feel your face?”
He shook his head slightly. “Why do you want to touch my face?”
“Because it's the only way I can see you right now.”
He was silent for a moment. “If you truly wish to.”
She did, but she didn't reach for his face. She touched his shoulders, tracing the indentations of his muscles, sliding her fingertips up his neck and over the stubble of his four-day-old beard. Then over the ridge of his jawline and up under the metal that kept them apart. His lips were her first revelation, soft and a little damp, as if he’d just licked them.
He kissed her fingertips and she smiled.
