He turns me to face him.
"Stay still."
He squeezes shampoo into his palm and works it into my hair.
His fingers are slow, careful at my scalp the way they are with a colt's mane, the same calluses on the same hands, except this time the hands are mine.
I close my eyes.
Nobody has washed my hair since I was nine years old.
"Spur."
"Yeah."
"I forgot what this felt like."
"What what felt like?"
"Being taken care of."
His hands stop in my hair for a second, then they keep moving. "Get used to it, Dakota."
He rinses my hair under the water, his hand at the back of my neck holding me steady, his other thumb wiping the suds away from my temple before they hit my eyes.
He kisses my forehead under the water.
Then his eyes drop and he sees the marks.
The bruise on my collarbone. The bite at my hip.
The redder mark high on my throat where he held me last night.
He touches each one with his thumb like he's checking they're real.
"I marked you up."
"I noticed."
"You sore?"
"A little."
"Good."
I laugh—small, real—and he kisses my mouth under the water. His hand stays at my throat, gentle now, tracking the mark he left there.
We don't say anything else. He washes me. I wash him. The water goes cold before either of us is ready to get out.
But we have to.
"Spur. It's ten in the morning. We've been in this cabin since last night. Pops is going to find out from the prospects before we even get coffee."
He looks at me with the calm of a man who has already done this math. "Yeah, baby."
"You're not panicking?"
"I'm not."
