“Hm?” he hummed upon exhaling, his nose tracing my jawline. But I couldn’t speak. Amused, he cupped the back of my knee and lifted my leg out of the water, guiding it to hang from the edge of the tub. Bathwater slid down my sole and dripped from my heel.
“Stone,” a whisper, my head falling back on his hand.
Stone’s mouth floated up the length of my neck and behind my ear. My body shuddered under the warm leather when it came down on my thigh again, and I imagined what it would feel like without the glove again. With his bare hand touching me. Skin to skin. The things I’d see.
“Why do you wear gloves?” I asked in almost a plea.
“If I removed them, I’d see all your secrets,” he said. “Who touched you last, who you touched last, how you felt in those moments, the most poignant memories stamped into your skin. It’s all too intruding.”
This explained the memory I had seen of us. “Would I be able to see too?”
Stone shook his head. “That’s not how it works.”
He has no idea, I thought. And I wondered what it would be like to let him touch me, to let him in that deeply, and how would he think of me then? Would Stone change his mind about us, and would all of this end?
I took his hand into mine, unsure of where my bravery had come from. I pulled the glove from each finger one by one, my heart pounding, before tossing it to the side.
Stone froze with a defiant look in his eyes as if he would bolt from the bathroom or strangle me for putting him in such a position.
“Wasn’t that what we agreed upon?” I asked him, looking at the scar slashed across his palm from when he took the knife from me in the cave. “I give myself to you, as you give yourself to me.”
I brought his fingertips to my lips and kissed them.
Stone’s eyes closed briefly, and I watched his stoic expression melt as I released his hand, letting it fall between my breasts. Stone’s chair screeched when he almost fell forward into me.
“Why don’t you lose the chair and come closer?” I suggested.
“Have you not been listening?” His wandering palm was surprisingly warm when it smoothed down my throat to my collarbone. “I don’t get on my knees for anyone. Not even you.”
His words were like moonshine, sweet on his tongue and burned going down. But his touch distracted the sting, and I did my best to remain still as his warm fingertips brushed the soft side of my breast.
Stone no longer felt as if he’d been born from snowfall. Each day he was getting warmer, like the cells in his body were colliding with mine. Blood thrashing, the soil of his soul disheveled and yanked to the surface by my undoing. Perhaps all this time it was me who was slowly bringing him back to life.
My eyes found his. “What do you see when you touch me?”
“Us,” he said with relief. “I see us.”
I smiled. “Have you ever touched anyone without gloves?”
“Do I seem like the kind of monster who has ever touched a woman at all before you?” he asked with a gentle, grounded voice that always made my heart leap. His scarred palm smoothed down my heaving stomach, a warm buzz darting in my lower belly like embers. Then his fingernails scraped the crease inside my thigh where my panty line would be, should I be wearing any. “What about you, Circe? Who is touching you after you leave this island?”
I dropped my head to the side with a hardly-there smile. “See for yourself,” I challenged. “If your hand is talented as you say, you’ll be able to see the truth.” Though there was still a tightness in my throat at the thought of this backfiring and him pulling away altogether.
He watched my face, eyes setting off a dubious flare as he grabbed the back of my thigh, kneading it in a slow massage. I could tell he was nervous about what he’d find, considering whether to move forward.
Then his hand moved to my other leg. I let it fall to the side when he smoothed his palm down my inner thigh. His fingertips grazed my pussy, and I sucked in a breath.
“I’m the one you think of when you touch yourself.” His tone was not playful but drunk off this moment and held weight. He leaned closer, brushing his knuckles across my clit as he kissed my lips softly.
“It’s only fair that I confess that you’ve done something to me no one has ever done,” he whispered. “You make me feel wanted.”
I lightly stroked my mouth across his. “If I’m honest, I wish we could have more than six hours a day together. Or stop time from passing and trap it inside a glass bottle.”
“Time is not something we catch but something we create.” His fingertips trembled when they brushed my clit again.
A sigh escaped me.
My following words came out shredded. “Like one of your drawings?”
