His brow furrows, confused by my nonchalance. “Okay. You’re all right with me…washing you?” He grimaces at the question.
“Ideally, none of this would be happening.” My voice is flat. “However, if this is the way it has to be, don’t linger on anything you don’t need to be lingering on.”
“Okay,” he says, eyes downcast. Then says more to himself than me, “I am the king of restraint.” He piles my hair into a bun atop my head so it won’t get wet.
Once the water in the shower is running, he whips off the T-shirt I’m wearing so that I’m standing before the mirror in a black, lacy bra.Asshole. He gives a sly grin and a wink then flips off the light, sending us into complete darkness. He continues to undress and then gets under the warm water.
“Lacy, I’m seeing one flaw in our plan of privacy.”
I click my tongue. “What would that be?”
“I can’t see the soap.”
A logical complaint, sure. I may as well help him out. “I know what all of my products look like. You can find them by touch. They’re in a basket on the wall opposite the water.”
“Got it.”
“Like I said, you don’t need to washmy hair so we can ignore the shampoo and conditioner. Find my body wash. It’s a cylinder shape. It’s the only bottle shaped like that.”
I hear Kit start to rustle around with my bottles. “Ah,” he says. “Here we go.”
“Good. Now find my loofa. It’s hanging from the basket. Squeeze the body wash on there.”
“Thank you for your guidance in that aspect, but I actually do know how to use soap.”
Even though I can’t see or feel it, I sense as he runs the loofa over my skin. I try not to think about him touching me. Or the fact that it doesn’t bother me as much as it should.
“This smells good. Vanilla?”
I gulp. “Yep.”
He lifts his arm and sniffs it. “Really good.” He continues to wash, scrubbing hard on a paint spot on my arm. “You have a beautiful body,” he murmurs.
“Kit…” I warn.
“Just an observation, babe. I promise I’m not lingering on anything I shouldn’t be lingering on…unless you’ve changed your mind?” He chuckles as he hangs the loofa back on its hook. “Done.”
My face is burning so hot Kit can probably feel the heat in his cheeks. I clear my throat. “Okay. Now face wash. It’s in the tube thingy. It’s sharp on top and comes down in like an upside-down triangle.”
Kit finds the bottle and squeezes it into the palm of his hand, rubbing both hands together before scrubbing my face. “This does not smell good.”
“Benzoyl peroxide wash. It’s for acne.”
“Ah.”
He reaches his hands back into the basket of products and pulls up something else. “What’s this? It’s in a jar.” He unscrews the lid, giving it a sniff. I know the answer by the scraping sound of the lid before he sticks a hand in to touch it. “It’s bumpy.”
“It’s body scrub. I use it to exfoliate my legs before I shave them.”
“Ah.” He dips his hand in and takes out a dollop of the scrub before carefully lifting my leg to the corner footrest in the shower. He scrubs up and down my leg, making me fully aware of the fingers I can’t feel that are running over my skin. While I want to tell him he does not need to do that, I refrain. If I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, I can almost smell the floral scent and experience the satisfying scrub. It’s calming. He switches to the other leg and repeats the process. “Shaving cream?” he asks.
“Square bottle. Ridged top.”
“Cool.” He finds the bottle, squeezes out some shaving cream, then smooths it onto one leg. He locates my razor from where it lives attached to my shower wall by a magnet and drags the blade up both of my legs.
As he’s guiding the razor up one leg, a sudden sharp pain sparks in my knee.
“Ow,” I snip, hand going to my knee, half-expecting to find it gushing with blood.
