How much I wanted to hide from it.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I said.
Vigo didn’t let go of my face, and I knew he was still staring down at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I should have gone home with Bram.”
At least Bram was my family, my blood. We had a duty to take care of each other.
I didn’t want to be a duty for the Hawks.
“Don’t say that.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him angry, but I heard the anger in his voice now. “We want you here. Now lift your arms, mouse.”
I hesitated, then followed his instructions, and he pulled my T-shirt over my head.
“Jesus fuck,” he breathed. “I forgot how fucking perfect your tits are. Shit… am I allowed to say that when you can’t see?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Just a week earlier, the compliment would have made me flush with pleasure. Now my body seemed apart from me somehow, something that existed in the seeing world while I lived in the darkness.
He knelt at my feet and took my hands, then placed them on his shoulders. “Hold on to me while I get your shorts off.”
I hated this — hated being so helpless, so dependent — but I held on anyway, because the only thing worse than having Vigo undress me like a child would be falling on my ass in front of him.
He slid my shorts and underwear off my hips and stood in front of me, then guided my hand to the shower bar. “Hang tight.”
“Where are you going?” I hated the panic in my voice.
I heard him rummaging under the bathroom vanity followed by the crinkle of plastic.
“Getting a trash bag for your arm.” He maneuvered my cast into the trash bag, then reached for my ponytail. “I’m going to use this hair tie if that’s okay.”
He pulled it from my hair and did something to secure it to the trash bag. “That should do the trick.”
I heard the rustle of his clothes and realized he was undressing.
“Are you… are you showering with me?”
“Obviously. I’m not going to send my mouse into the wet slippery shower alone.” He opened the shower door and took my hand, then pulled me gently forward. “Three steps.”
My bare feet hit the tile in the shower on the third step. Hot water sprayed over my right side and I felt the brush of Vigo’s arm as he closed the shower door.
We were naked in the shower together, but instead of feeling turned on, I was terrified.
The water came from my right, and I knew Vigo stood in front of me, but other than that I was completely disoriented, floating in the abyss of my blindness.
“It’s okay,” Vigo soothed. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
He was a liar. He might be able to keep me from falling in the shower, but there were a million other ways in which I wasn’t at all safe.
“I’m going to put your back to the shower so we can wash your hair.”
He held on to my waist and turned me around until I felt the shower beating onto my neck and back.
“Tip your head back, mouse.”
I followed his instructions: let him help me get my hair wet, lather it with shampoo, steady me while I rinsed it out.
He put conditioner in my hair, combing it through my long strands with his fingers, and helped me rinse that out too. Then he lathered my body with soap, his palms smooth and confidentas they mapped my skin, dipping under my arms, into the crack of my ass, between my thighs.
