The last thing I wanted to do was interrupt him. Of all the people in this house, Teo Vitali deserved a long hot bath and some time to himself. But then I began to worry that something had happened to him, so I went up to the bathroom door again and put my ear to it.
I could hear nothing, not even splashing noises.
I gave up and knocked gently. “Teo?”
There was no reply.
“Teo?” I knocked a little louder. Still nothing. I’d have to go in, I realized. I tried the handle, and it gave way easily; at least he hadn’t locked it. I cracked it open and called out his name again, but then peered around the door when there was, again, no reply.
He was there in the bathtub, eyes closed. “Teo?” I was half-worried as I stepped into the room, still trying to keep my eyes averted, but then I heard his breathing. Slow, deep, regular. I glanced over. He was half-sitting, half-floating, a white cushion wrapped around his neck.
He’d fallen asleep in the tub.
I tried not to smile—it was very dangerous, after all, to sleep in a deep vat of water—but for the first time Teo appeared to me as something more than just an uber-competent bodyguard with great driving skills.
He was also just a man. A man who needed more rest and care than he was evidently getting.
I called his name again, softly, so that he wouldn’t startle awake, but he slept on. I’d have to wake him. It was certainly too dangerous not to. But as I went closer to him, I found my eyes straying lower. To his body, half-submerged there in the water.
He was olive skinned, deeply tan, though his nipples were a deep pink rather than brown. And he had tattoos, more than one, in seemingly haphazard placements—a long vine twining around his ribcage, a skull, beautifully drawn, planted just under his left nipple, and a blurry daisy chain running down his forearm.
But then I realized what the placement of each tattoo meant. He wasscarred, I saw with sadness. Scarred more than any man his age should ever be, and those tattoos covered up the worst of them. But here and there were scars that were not yet covered. A large, raised streak of still-pink scar tissue on his shoulder. Another, long and thin and pale like a falling star, stretched under his collarbone.
I was standing right next to him by now, mesmerized by the mix of beauty and ugliness in his body. For hewasbeautiful, and the scars and tattoos made him more so. And his blond hair, which he kept unfailingly in a neat, sleek ponytail whenever I saw him, was free and damp, half soaked, some tendrils curling around his face in ringlets.
I’d never seen a naked man before. Not in the flesh. Not like this.
But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to look lower, to take in his full nudity. I took a step back, turned around and said, loudly, firmly, “Teo.”
There was a splashing and cursing, and a not-insignificant splat of water hit my back, wetting my shirt.
“Aidan?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, staring at myself in the partly-steamed-over mirror. My cheeks were red. The heat in the room was making me flush. “I was worried about you—it’s almost five. We should really—”
“Shit. Yeah. I—I think I fell asleep or something.”
“It’s fine. I just…wanted to check on you. I’ll leave you to it.”
But he was already rising up from the bath, and in the mirror I could see the water sluicing off him in sparkling sheets, his wet and gleaming torso as he stretched, the shift of his glistening muscles… And from this angle I could also see a large black and purple contusion along his side. It was from the airbag in the car, I realized. He met my eyes as they widened.
“Pass the towel?” he asked, slicking back his wet hair. I felt for the towel rather than saw it, trying to find a way to pass it to him without looking him in the face, but it would seem even stranger if I didnotsimply turn around and hand it over.
So that’s what I did, although I kept my eyes resolutely averted, looking up and to the side.
“You’re hurt,” I said stupidly, motioning at my own side.
“It’s fine. Better bruised than broken, right?”
I made a noise in the back of my throat.
“You okay?” he asked, as he mopped his face and chest. He was forever asking that, I wanted to point out, but the truth was, I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay at all.
I was hard in my dress pants and I was terrified he was going to notice.
Why was he not wrapping the towel around his waist? Hiding himself from view? He was acting as though it wereperfectly naturalto stand there buck naked in front of someone else—
Well, I reminded myself, hehadbeen in the bathtub. I’d been the one to interrupt.
