He’s standing under the spray, water sliding down broad shoulders, dark hair slicked back. Completely unbothered by the fact that he looks like my own personal fantasy–created only for me.
His vision glides down my bare body–painfully slowly and completely unhurried. Then reaches out his hand and I take it as he helps me into the shower so that I don’t slip.
The water is hot when he pulls me under with him, my breath catching as it hits my skin. He doesn’t rush. He just looks at me. Like everything in this moment is deliberate… like it matters.
His fingers slide up my arms first, pushing my hair back from my shoulders so it won’t cling. Then his hands trace down my sides, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
"You trust me?" he asks quietly over the sound of water.
The question feels bigger than a shower.
"Yes."
His eyes soften at that, and then he reaches for the soap.
There's something almost disarming about the way he does it. There’s no urgency, just intention. Something that I’m learning is how Luka does everything.
He starts at my shoulders, working the soap in with both hands, thumbs pressing into muscle. The water streams downmy back. He watches his own hands like the task requires his full attention.
He rinses my shoulders with the showerhead, slow and deliberate, then he follows the water with his mouth.
A kiss pressed to the curve of my shoulder.
Another at the base of my neck.
Lips dragging along my skin like he's tasting something he intends to memorize.
I make a sound I didn't plan to make.
His hands move lower, down my spine, spreading soap in long, careful strokes, following each section with a rinse and then his mouth. The curve of my back. My shoulder blade. The dip above my hips. He’s patient and thorough, like he told me he would be and meant it.
I grip the tile in front of me.
He crouches behind me, washing down the backs of my thighs with both hands, slow enough that my breath starts coming in pants. Behind my knees…down my calves. He works with the same focus he probably brings to everything, and I am coming completely undone from the careful attention of it. I don't know what to do with tenderness from him.
My legs are trembling. Not from the cold–but from him.
He stands, turns me gently to face him, and I see his face for the first time since he started—eyes dark, a muscle working in his jaw. He is not unaffected. He's choosing this pace, and that’s the difference.
He washes my chest slowly, his hands cup my breasts and I stop pretending this is just bathing. His thumbs drag over my nipples and I inhale sharply and something almost like a smile crosses his mouth.
"You're trying to kill me," I manage.
"I'm washing you," he says.
"Luka."
"Natalia."
He rinses me, following the water down with his mouth again. Open-mouthed against my collarbone, slow and warm against my breast, tongue tracing where the water runs, and I press the back of my hand to my mouth to keep whatever sound that is from leaving my body. He takes his time. He always takes his time, and I thought I understood what that meant until right now, in this shower, with his mouth on my skin.
He kisses down my stomach.
The curve of my hip.
And then he sinks to his knees.
I look down at him and something cracks open in my chest. This enormous, controlled, careful man, on his knees in front of me looking up at me once before he pressed my back gently against the tile.
