Aidan draws the curtain back. I take his outstretched hand and step into the shower. Hot spray hits my skin. “You like scalding showers too?”
“Uh-huh.” Aidan keeps his gaze on mine for a moment, but then it travels lower, roaming my torso. He drags his thumb along the vertical scar on my abdomen. “Spleen?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your ankles?”
“I broke them.”
“How?”
“I fell.”
“On purpose?”
“Maybe.”
From the jagged white line on my jaw to the neat surgical scars on my ankles, I see him putting together every mark on my body, adding them into a sum I’ve never attempted. I wonder what answer he’s looking for and if... when he finds it, the way he looks at me will change.
Faith tells me it won’t.
Fear tells me it surely will.
“Hey.” Aidan returns his wandering hands to my face, tilting my chin, forcing me to look at him as water plasters my hair to my cheeks. “We don’t have to do anything freaky. It’s nice to just... see you.”
“Nice?”
“Yeah, nice. Don’t say it like it’s a nasty word.”
Nice isn’t a term I’ve ever associated with Aidan, but I try it out for size, absorb how it feels to have his bare skin against mine, his hard length digging into my belly. It’s hot but sweet, so... yeah, maybe it is nice.
I kiss his chest, then lean back to do my own inventory of scars.
He has more than I thought he would—both angry and neat. I drop to my knees and touch a small gouge mark on his inner thigh. “What happened here?”
“The bone came through.”
“Ouch.”
“Yep.”
“How far did you fall?”
“Far enough to die, but I hit Bernard’s van on the way down. Fucked my lung, but I’m still here.”
Imagining a world without him is frightening enough to call off my game of chicken with his scars. I don’t need to document them to know he’s suffered every ounce of pain that I have. More. Because Aidan didn’t try to fly, he didn’t want to fall, and right now, he wants... me.
His cock is inches from my mouth. I should warn him that I’m going to swallow him whole, but I don’t, and a shudder—the good kind—runs through me as he staggers back against the tiled wall.
“Fuck.” His hands tangle in my sopping wet hair, and he thrusts forward the tiniest amount before he catches himself. “Sorry.”
I’m not down with him being sorry for taking the pleasure I want to give him. I work him hard and fast so there can be no doubt of how ready I am to take him apart.
He gasps, quietly at first, as though the turn of events has shocked him, but as I dig blunt nails into his strong legs and scrape my teeth along his dick, gravelly moans fall from him, louder and louder.
“Ludo, I—”
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence for me to know he’s close to the edge. His legs are trembling, every muscle strained tight, and his breath is short, sharp pants.
