"I'm just pointing out that the timing is convenient."
"Your hand?—"
"My hand is attached to my body, not the other way around. We've been over this." She pressed closer, and the thin fabric of the T-shirt she was wearing wasn't much of a barrier. "I've been patient, Dimitri. Very patient. But patience is not my strong suit."
He wanted to. God, how he wanted to.
The kiss had triggered the same cascade of heat that their shower encounters kept building, and the way she was looking at him right now made every rational objection seem irrelevant.
But her hand was still held together by splints and willpower, and the memory of her wincing in the shower when she'd bumped it against his arm was enough to cool his blood by a few crucial degrees.
"Tonight, we'll figure out the logistics. I promise."
She pouted. "You've been promising to figure it out since the attack, and you haven't come up with a solution yet. I'm at the end of my rope, Dimitri."
He snorted. "You're a fiend. I'm the one who is supposed to be the immortal with the uncontrollable urges."
"But you are vying for sainthood. I'm not." She pressed herself against him again. "You are sin personified when you are standing here like that without a shirt, and I'm a sinner."
She was killing him.
He would rather fight those immortals again than spar with Mattie when she was bent on ignoring her injured hand and risking making it much worse for a delight that could wait.
Was he the only one who understood why it was crucial for her hand to heal properly, fully? Or perhaps she understood it as well, but she was not thinking straight because he was tempting her with his partial nudity.
Talk about an ego boost.
But he couldn't succumb to temptation, especially since the shower routine was still ahead of them, and with both of them naked in the cramped shower stall, things were about to get much more difficult.
He took a step back. "We need to get ready for the day. Let me check if Petrov delivered the breakfast trays yet."
Mattie let out a long-suffering sigh. "Go. I need to pee anyway."
The breakfast trays were on the dresser in the hallway as he'd expected, and when he returned with the clingy plastic, Mattie was ready for the shower.
They followed the established routine, wrapping the plastic film around her bandaged hand, adjusting the temperature and letting the shower stall fill up with steam, removing her T-shirt with the careful choreography of two people navigating injury in a space built for one.
Dimitri tried to approach it clinically, but he was failing miserably.
It was not possible when the woman he loved was pressed against him under warm water, her head tilted back, her eyes half-closed, her skin flushed from the heat. Every morning, the gap between clinical and not clinical, between restraint and letting instinct take over, narrowed, and this morning, with the adrenaline of the tooth falling out still in his blood and the kiss still on his lips, the gap shrank dangerously.
She felt him respond. The shower stall was barely big enough for one person, and two bodies pressed together left no room for secrets.
"Dimitri." She turned in his arms, her good hand bracing against his chest. Water ran down her face, darkening her lashes, and the look in her eyes was not a question. It was a statement of intent.
"Mattie, I?—"
She put her finger on his lips. "Don't say no."
"I wasn't going to say no. I was going to say that your hand?—"
"Doesn't need to be involved."
Before he could formulate a response to that, she slid down, her knees touched the tile floor of the shower, and his mind went blank.
The water hit his chest and shoulders and cascaded down, and Mattie looked up at him with an expression that didn't leave much room for argument.
Not that he had any resistance left in him to argue.
