I hear Kolt enter, and crack open my eyes, seeing the two glasses of fresh juice he has in his hands. I sit up to accept the one he holds out to me, taking a healthy sip, suddenly parched.
“Do you feel okay?” He asks me, sitting on the edge of the tub.
“Tired,” I admit, “sore!”
“I did tell you,” He gives me a feline grin, “Sit up for me.”
I place my glass down and sit up, watching as he drops the sheet he had tucked around his waist and comes to climb in behind me. The water rises dangerously to the rim now that two people are in the tub, but it doesn’t spill over and then he’s pulling me back against his chest as I lay between his muscular thighs.
No words are spoken between us as his hands brush my hair from my shoulders and he trails his fingers, featherlight, over my skin.
“Never did I think we would end up here,” I admit quietly.
“It was always my goal to make my way back to you,” He says, voice a rasp at my ear, “Whether it be now or in a couple more years, I would have made my way back.”
“What if I had moved on?” I ask, semi-joking but curious to know what he would say.
“Then I’d accept I’d lost my chance and hope you were happy. That I would have been happy just being in your life, even if it meant it would kill me to see another man love you the way I do.”
“You wouldn’t have tried to take me for yourself?” I jest.
“Oh, I would have,” He rumbles, “I would have just changed tactics. Made you fall in love with me more than you loved him.”
I shake my head, “I never found anyone who could compare.”
“I never even looked,” He replies.
“Not even once?” I ask, trying to figure out exactly what life was like for him in the years we were apart.
“No. Every face I saw, all I could see was you. You haunted me every minute we were apart.”
“That sounds unpleasant,” I try to lighten the mood and his arm bands tighter around me, the movement splashing water over the rim of the tub and onto the tiled floor. I’ll worry about that later.
“Painful,” He admits, “Because I’d stopped myself from checking on you and looking for you. You were a drug that I couldn’t get enough of, and every time I saw you, I just wanted more. I knew it wouldn’t stop, so I forced myself to stop.”
“What do you mean you checked on me?” I turn my head to look up at him.
For once, it’s his cheeks that burn, “I may have come to your college a few times.”
My mouth drops open, “That’s why you were therethatnight.”
A flash of anger crosses his face, but he pushes it down, “I’m not sorry for that.”
After it had happened, Patrick disappeared, I never did find out why. Realization dawns and a gasp leaves me, “Did you kill him!?”
But he just chuckles, this deep rumble of a laugh that vibrates through my spine, “No, trouble. I gave incentive for him to leave.”
“So youthreatenedto kill him?”
“No, trouble,” He looks at me seriously, “Ipromised.”
His fingers twirl a damp piece of my hair, “There wasn’t and never will be a length I will not go to, to protect you, trouble. No person I will not destroy to ensure you are safe. The only reason Patrick didn’t end up dead is because of the trouble it would have caused you, and every day since, I have fought that decision not to end him, and even now, sat here, being reminded of what he tried to do to you, makes me want to go find the little piece of shit and rip his head from his neck.”
My heart thumps inside my chest and his words hammer home just how dangerous this man really is. To me, he isn’t in the slightest bit dangerous, but to the rest of the world, he’d kill them all.
Should I be concerned at how much that warms me?
Probably.
