It didn’t.
I pulled my T-shirt off and sank into the hot bubbles with a yawn. I was tired. My muscles strangely taxed considering a vibrating flower had done ninety per cent of the work. With Alistair gone and the scent of jasmine filling my nose, the last thirty minutes felt like a dream.
Laying my head back against the porcelain lip, I slipped my hand between my legs, not quite as afraid of my own body as before. My fingers brushed my swollen clit, and I bit back a moan at the little aftershocks lighting up my body.
It had definitely happened.
Just like that, we’d blown up the rules we’d laid out. Or we hadn’t. Because while I felt like my entire world had been rearranged in a few heartbeats, we hadn’t actually kissed.
He’d barely even touched me.
And now the question was . . . did I want him to?
Alistair had laid a fluffy towel out for me, and I wrapped it around my body with a mission: to discover how he kept them so soft between washes.
I’d been a stay-at-home mum for seven years; it annoyed me that he was so much better at it than I was.
The connecting door stood wide open, and I smiled at the sight. It felt like an appropriate metaphor for how thoroughly things had changed between us over the past few weeks.
I found Alistair bent over, his head in my dishwasher.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He jerked. A loudthunk– his head hitting the upper rack – had me rushing to his side. “Shit!” he hissed.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said as he dried his hands on a tea towel then rubbed the back of his head. “You okay?”
“Yeah, the new part for your dishwasher arrived yesterday. I was just replacing it.” His phone was on my counter, a YouTube video paused partway through.
“What new part?” I hadn’t had any deliveries.
“The central filter.” He pointed. I glanced inside, seeing nothing if I was honest.
“Did the landlord order it?”
“No.” He wiped his hands on the towel again. Just to have something to do, I think. “You said it wasn’t running properly.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why, out of everything that had happened tonight, that detail left me speechless. He was taking care of me in ways he didn’t have to. “Let me pay you back.” I grabbed my purse from the counter, glad to have a way to get us back on more even footing.
He stopped me, a gentle hand on my wrist. “Isla, I don’t want your money.” The statement felt loaded. Like he’d scribbled something in the margins of a moment I was incapable of reading.
“Okay.” I nodded. Holding in my manic scream ofWhat do you want?
With a sigh, he cupped my cheek. “Are you feeling okay? I kind of blacked out a little at the end. I’m worried I lost my head back there and pushed you too far.”
“You definitely didn’t.”
“Good.” He nodded, jaw tight. “I meant what I said: I don’t want this to ruin anything—”
“Then it won’t,” I assured him. “We won’t let it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I said with a smile. I glanced around my kitchen, taking in the gleaming counters. “Did you clean up in here?”
One side of his mouth quirked up. I wanted to press my thumb to the crease of it. “Couldn’t resist,” he said.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
