“Yeah.”
“Sure? I can chuck a bucket of water over my head in the garden?—”
I kiss him. Just once, and just enough to remind myself he’s real. That he’s the solid flesh and bone who cared that I didn’t come home and came looking for me. That he says he loves me, and I think he might mean it. “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t. Come on.”
He leads me upstairs and helps me out of my wet clothes.
I return the favour and we stare at each other in the glow of the candles he brought with us. “You love me?”
Tam frowns. “It kills me that you find it so hard to believe.”
“I—”
“Bhodi, it’s okay. Let’s get warm, all right? Everything else can wait.”
He twists the shower dial and steam fills the room as delayed shock works its way through my system. I’m a critical care nurse. I’ve seen my fair share of horrific things. But I’m human too, and I’m not as jaded as I used be. What I saw tonight, it hurts, and I know it’s not going anywhere for a while.
Tam knows it too. I feel it in the quiet way he eases meunder the hot spray and washes blood and grime from my skin while somehow keeping his cast dry. In the intensity of his stare as he watches me shiver. “We don’t have long.” The water is already cooling as he nuzzles my cheek. “Tell me what you need.”
I think about it for less than a second. “I just need you.”
Twenty-Two
TAM
The water cools fast, but I’m faster.
I get Bhodi out of the shower, dry him with a towel, and take him to my room.
To my bed.
Because I know what he means when he says he needs me, and that he trusts me enough to give it to him is the greatest gift in the fucking world.
It makes it easier to handle the subtle tremble still simmering beneath his skin. That he’s shaking for a reason that might give him nightmares. Bhodi doesn’t deserve bad dreams. He deserves to smile and laugh, and to believe the love I’ve felt for him over the past few weeks is real.
I leave the towels on the floor and drop my face to Bhodi’s neck, breathing him in. He tilts his head, giving me better access, and I weave my hand into his thick, damp hair.
God, he smells good. He always has, and it has nothing to do with outside elements or the soap I washed him with in theshower. It’shim, and a primal need to claim him for myself, once and for all, washes over me.
River always said I was wolfish. That one day, I’d find my person and basically piss on them. This isn’t quite that, but I get the sentiment. Ifeelit, and I sink my teeth into the juncture of Bhodi’s throat as candlelight flickers around us.
Bhodi’s tough. He doesn’t flinch away from the pain. If anything, he leans into it, and I bite harder, embedding a mark that I ghost with the barest brush of my lips, teasing him as a frustrated whoosh of air leaves his lungs.
“Tam, I need you to kiss me.”
His voice scrapes over the plea, compelling me to comply, as if I could ever refuse him. I bring our mouths together, slipping my tongue between his lips, owning him with it,givingmyself to it as my head spins with the heat of it.
Sensual and raw, it’s every shade of perfect, and I can’t get enough. I can’t breathe and I don’t want to. Not if it means stopping this for the sake of a little oxygen.
Nice sentiment, but I’m human. The tightness in my lungs gets the better of me, and I pull back, getting my reward in his wide eyes and flushed face. In the slow smirk that’s starting to chip away at the trauma he’s brought home.
I love you.
With that on my mind as I kiss him again, I push him onto the bed, feeling him already hard against my leg, while I’ve been a rod of pent-up arousal since we stepped into the shower. My dickaches—I need this as much as he does. I needhimand he knows it, sitting up to reach for me.
“No,” I whisper. “Let me love you. Please?”
