“So,” I murmur against her skin, grinning because I can’t help it, because the image of her hand on my chest and that murderous look in her eyes is still running on a loop in my brain, “I’mtaken, huh?” I press my lips to the hollow of her throat. “All yours?”
She makes a sound. Half laugh, half whimper.
“Then I guess that settles it.” I drag my mouth along her jaw, slow and deliberate. “If I’m yours, then you’re mine.”
Natalia goes still.
At first I think it’s because I finally said the thing out loud.
Not that I’ve been subtle up to this point, but there’s a difference between wanting her, touching her, kissing her like I’ve been starving since the day I washed up on her beach, and actually looking her in the eye and sayingyou’re minelike I have any right to. Like it’s that simple. Like the two of us were always headed here and all I did was give it a name.
So for one stupid second, standing there under hot water with her body slick against mine, I think maybe she’s just feeling the weight of it. Maybe I finally pushed past the point where teasing turns into something else. Something bigger. Something neither of us gets to laugh off.
Then I feel her change.
Her fingers stop moving on my shoulders.
The muscles in her body go tight under my hands, not melting into me, but locking down so suddenly it’s like some invisible steel door just slammed shut between us.
I lift my head.
She won’t look at me.
A second ago she was soft under my hands, flushed and breathing hard, making those little helpless sounds against my mouth that scramble my brain.
Now her gaze is fixed somewhere over my shoulder, like if she looks at me for one more second this whole thing becomes something she can’t take back.
A cold, ugly feeling slithers through my gut.
“Nat?”
Nothing.
Just one sharp inhale, too quick, too shallow, and then her hands slipping off me like she can’t bear to keep them there another second.
I let mine fall away from her waist.
“Hey.” I ease back enough to see her properly. “Talk to me, Princess.”
For one second I catch her eyes, and what’s in them stops me cold. Not embarrassment. Not nerves in the fun way. Somethingheavier than that, and all at once I know I’m not going to like a single word that comes next.
“I need to tell you something,” she says.
Well. Fantastic.
There are phrases in this world that have never once improved a man’s evening, and that one’s got to be in the top three.
I try for light, because sometimes sarcasm is all I’ve got between me and a full nervous system collapse. “If this is where you tell me I’m a terrible kisser, I’d rather go back to having no memory.”
Nothing.
Not even the ghost of a smile.
I scrub a hand back through my wet hair and force myself not to crowd her, even though every instinct I have is pushing me forward. “Okay. No jokes. Just tell me.”
She folds her arms over herself, and I hate that immediately. Not because it hides anything from me, but because it feels like retreat. Like she suddenly remembered she’s naked and I’m a man and those two facts together are no longer simple.
For a second all she does is breathe. Shallow in, slower out, like she’s trying to get her body under control before she says whatever this is.
