“You’ll come in with me?”
My heart squeezes as I nod, pain and fierce, protective satisfaction warring in me at his request.
I can’t stop myself from checking over Tris’s body as he strips out of his clothes in the bathroom, but there aren’t any marks on him other than on his wrist and hip and cheek. Even though he’d told me that Josh hadn’t hurt him anywhere else, seeing the proof makes one of the knots of worry still tangled in my stomach slip a little looser.
My hands twitch with the instinct to pull Tris close again the moment I step into the shower, but I make myself scootback into the corner instead, leaving him the space under the hot spray of water, trying not to crowd him.
I hadn’t hesitated to hold him and touch him before, when he’d thrown himself into my arms. Now though, I want to be sure not to make him feel like I want anything other than to just be here for him.
He’s still shivering slightly, and when he reaches for his bodywash, he knocks it to the shower floor. Before he can duck down to retrieve it, I’m already scooping it up, flipping open the lid.
“Here,” I hold the bottle out to him so I can squeeze some into his hand, but he shakes his head.
“Will you?”
A lump forms in my throat at the first touch of my palms over his shoulders. I can’t help pulling him closer to press a kiss to his temple, breathing him in as I remind myself that this is real. That he’s safe.
That he loves me.
As I work over Tris’s shoulders in slow, careful circles, suds form under my hands, and the smell of his bodywash fills the steamy air; the peachy-vanilla scent that always clings to his skin. With a sigh, he melts into me, resting his uninjured cheek against my chest as my hands move lower down his back. “This is alright?”
“Yeah,” he tips his chin up so he can meet my eyes. He’s stopped shivering, and beneath my hands, his body feels warm and relaxed. “Always.”
“I just wasn’t sure. I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to make this sexual. Like I had expectations—”
“Shh,” he cuts me off, pressing up on his toes to capture my lips in a kiss that, for all that it’s sweet and soft, quickly has mybody threatening to contradict what I’ve just told him.
I try to pull back in an attempt to hide the way my traitorous dick is now hanging half hard between my thighs, but he shakes his head.
“Don’t.” His hands close tighter around my waist, and with a quick step forward, he brings his water-slicked body flush with mine. A low groan tears from my chest when I feel the hard press of his erection.
“Iwantyou to touch me,” he whispers, and my breath hitches in my throat at the hungry look in his eyes. “Sunshine, I fuckingneedyou to.”
His voice is suddenly fierce as his hands leave my waist to grab hold of my arms, holding them tight against his body. “Everywhere. I need you to erase that anyone else ever has. I need you to erasehim.”
A stab of fear that I’ve somehow misunderstood or that he’s held something back slices through me. “He didn’t—”
Tris shakes his head, eyes blazing as he grips me tighter. “No. But,” his voice shakes, threatening to break as his chest heaves with rapid, gasping breaths. “I thought he was going to. And before—all those times before when I thought I didn’t mind. Fuck, when I thought Iwantedit. Please, Jesse. I only want to rememberyou.Please, touch me—”
52
Tristan
“I’ve got you, Tris.”
The breathless pant of Jesse’s words over my lips is the only warning I get before his mouth is on mine, hot and insistent and so fucking sweet as he swallows the begging I just can’t seem to switch off now that I’ve let it out. He backs me up against the shower wall, and Imelt, going all totally boneless and whimpering as he grinds against me.If he wasn’t holding me up and that wall wasn’t there, I swear I’d be nothing more than a puddle on the shower floor.
Fuck, but this is what I need. His hands, his lips, his body.
I need tofeelhow much he loves me.
However he wants to show me.
This is so different from the sex-for-deflection shit I’ve pulled in the past. A couple times before, with Jesse, that line’s felt blurry. Like yeah, Ialwayswant him, but maybe I’ve wanted the distraction too.
Not now though.
Now it’s like the taste of him as he licks into me and the sweep of his warm, soft hands working over my skin really is doing exactly what I asked him to do. Along with the disgusting, crawly-sick itch of fear and the smell of Josh’sfucking horrible cologne, Jesse’s hands are washing away all the memories I never thought I’d be able to strip from my skin.
