What I don’t tell him is that I kept spinning out of my pirouettes for the first thirty minutes of rehearsal because I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I don’t tell him that when Jean and I practice our press lift, I have to stop the image of his hands against my skin from flashing through my mind.
“Get aroom,” Sloane croons from the couch. “And hey babe.”
I press a quick kiss to Grant’s lips and he smiles in resignation as I throw myself next to Sloane.
“Don’t worry—I missed you, too,” I tell her, meaning it. When I’m not with Grant, or rehearsing, or at class—which admittedly is less and less these days—, I’m usually with Sloane. I haven’t had a friend like her in a long time. I rest my head against her shoulder.
“You always smell so good,” I say.
“Juliette Has a Gun,” she tells me, her shrug causing me to slide off. “You smell like a locker room. And I already showered. So…” Her laugh is part grimace as I hop off the sofa.
“Weren’t you going somewhere?” Grant’s cuts in, clearly wanting her to go.
“You know, when I moved in here, you didn’t have agirlfriend, and I don’t know if I’m okay with this.” She looks between us with false disgust, smirking. “I’m leaving,” she sing-songs.
I mouth the word “sorry” as she escapes out the door, my blush subsiding once the door shuts. “You didn’t have to kick her out,” I chastise him, picking up my bag before walking it down to his bedroom.
When I turn to see him standing in the door frame, his gaze is heated.
“I was just giving her a warning.” Heat coils lower in my belly just from the way he’s looking at me. “Get undressed,” he tells me before slipping into the bathroom, turning on the shower.
“So bossy,” I tease, pulling off my sweatshirt and leggings.
“Your live reunion starts in an hour,” he says when he returns, his hands sliding across my shoulders, and pushing down the straps of leotard. “And I have plans for you.” It’s a whisper against my ear, and I shiver, feeling myself involuntarily clenching around nothing, suddenly not caring if I miss the entire show.
Steam greets me as soon as we’re in the bathroom, the suffocating heat around us heating more than just my skin. I watch him get undressed and my adrenaline kicks up at the sight of him. The broad expanse of his chest, the muscles that ripple there, the ones that twine down his arms, twine down everywhere—I see it and where he’s usually a safe place to land, like this he’s an escape I never knew I could want so badly.
When he guides me into the shower, I expect him to kiss me, am dying for him to touch me, but he doesn’t. He takes the shower head and drenches my hair with water, then lathers the shampoo I left here in his hands. Ifeel their strength as they sink into my hair and move against my scalp with expert care, and I moan in pleasure.
“I love your hair like this.” He wrings the suds out of my hair, taking the shower head again to rinse it out before going in with my conditioner.
“Dirty?” I laugh, relaxing into the steady stream of wet heat pouring across me.
“Curly,” he says distantly, like he’s deep in thought. He spins me around, leaving the conditioner in my hair as he squirts my body wash in his hands. He scrubs my body in sensual circles, and when he dips between my legs it takes everything in me not to buckle.
“You don’t like when it’s straight?” I try to focus on the words, the conversation, and not the way he’s toying with every sensitive spot on my body as he washes away my exertion.
“No—I love that, too.” He grabs the shower head again, rinsing me off, the pressure spraying against my clit making me writhe where I stand. He slides the shower head back into place and kneels, his palms spread wide across my hips, then my ass. “But those curls,” he says, looking up at me, “they’re my favorite.”
He kisses the skin stretched taut over my hip bone on one side, then the other, kissing down until he’s where I want him. His hand slips under my legs and hooks it over his shoulder, giving him better access as his tongue dips into me.
I shudder on the exhale, the pressure already climbing as my slippery hands try to find purchase in his hair. Hot water drips down me, heightens every feeling, drenches him as he plucks at the strings of my desire.
“So fucking perfect,” he says, his gaze briefly lockingwith mine before sliding two fingers inside me, his touch feather light as he guides me into my climax.
“Grant,” I moan as it crashes over me, the pleasure coursing through me amplified by the fact that he knows my body well enough to do this to me.
He gets up, a satisfied gleam in his eyes, sliding his hands up my body and turns me around with a gentle ease that makes something ache inside me. I feel the spray of water against my head, hear the water rinsing the conditioner away, register the way his fingers comb through my curls.
“How’d you know to let the conditioner sit?” I manage to say, still breathless.
“It’s on the bottle,” he chuckles. “But I might’ve done some research.”
When I turn to face him, he’s got a towel ready to wrap around me, and I wonder if he can hear how harshly my heart is beating inside my chest.
“On my hair?”
“On lots of things since it’s been like this between us.” He brushes a wet curl off my face, his gaze still heated.
