His fingers pause just for a fraction of a second, the air shifting as he inhales, sharper than before.
He feels it. The tiny shiver that has nothing to do with cold.
I wait for the taunt. The smirk. The smug acknowledgment that my body has turned traitor in the worst possible way.
It doesn’t come.
He just resumes washing. Slower now. More focused. His fingers working through the tangles carefully, and the silence is so much worse than mockery would be.
If he taunted me, I could hate him cleanly.
His nails scratch lightly against my scalp, and my bodyloosens. Muscles going slack against the tile and his leg, tension draining out of me like water down the drain.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. Until I taste copper, metallic and grounding. Pain instead of whatever this warmth is, curling through my belly.
He rinses the shampoo, then works conditioner through the worst of the tangles. Careful not to tug. Patient with every knot.
“I’ve wanted to touch your hair since I saw your picture.”
His voice is quiet. Almost reverent.
My stomach tightens again. That same hot pull low in my belly that has nothing to do with hunger.
I hate myself for noticing how genuine he sounds.
“You’re insane,” I mutter. It lands thin. Weak. Not the venom I intended.
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps working through my hair, strand by strand, like he has all the time in the world.
When the conditioner is rinsed, he presses a soaped washcloth into my hand.
“The front.”
I take it. My arm shakes as I drag the cloth over my chest, my stomach, my thighs. Every movement is slow, deliberate, exhausting. I’m washing myself in front of my captor and somehow this is my life now.
When I can’t reach my back, he takes the cloth without asking.
The first pass across my shoulders makes me stiffen. The second, along my spine, raises goosebumps that have nothing to do with temperature.
I’m starving. I’m touch-starved. This is biology, not attraction.
I repeat it like a prayer.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
But my traitorous body tracks every place his fingers brush. The warmth of his palm through the thin cloth. The careful way he moves, methodical, thorough, never lingering but never rushed.
The water starts to cool.
He shuts it off and stands, then offers his hands. “Come.”
I let him pull me up because I literally cannot stand otherwise.
He wraps a thick towel around me, tucking it in at my chest. His knuckles ghost over damp skin, barely there, and my breath stutters.
He hears it. Another subtle inhale. His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
No comment.
