I wonder how many pages. How many thoughts. How many truths written in ink. A thrill rushes through me, thinking about it, thinking of how many pieces of her I’ll get to learn with every word.
But I don’t touch it. Not tonight.
Tonight I want the living, breathing version of her.
11
RETH
The shower glass is fogged, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
She’s under the spray, head tilted back, water sluicing over her bare shoulders, down the elegant line of her spine, over the perfect curve of her ass. Droplets cling to her like they’re as obsessed as I am.
My cock throbs at the sight—thick, heavy, already leaking for her.
I slide the door open. Sophia startles, turning, eyes wide for half a second before recognition melts into something darker. Need. Relief. That hungry little spark I’ve come to crave.
I step in, crowding her against the warm tile, her lips already parted, cheeks flushed. The water hits my back, hot and relentless, but it’s nothing compared to the heat rolling off her skin.
“I hate missing you.” I lean down close. “Missing you is a different kind of hell for me,” I rasp against her mouth then takeit—deep, claiming, tongues sliding like we’re still on that rooftop and the rest of the world can burn.
The way she moans into my mouth, the way her hands rake down my chest—it’s too much and nowhere near enough. I break the kiss, my fingers threading through her hair, tilting her head back to expose her throat. I trace my tongue along the sensitive skin there, earning another desperate sound from her.
When I pull back, her breathing’s ragged, and I reach for the soap, lathering it slowly between my palms until the steam carries it—fig and iris, warm and green and the scent of the city layered over the woman she already was. Sweet at the edges, cool at the center. Something that takes a moment to fully open.
Paris on her skin. Her underneath it.
Both at once.
“Turn around.”
Slowly, she does, and my gaze roves over her, my cock impossibly hard.
I start at her neck, thumbs pressing into the tight muscles there, then drag my soapy hands down her shoulders, over her arms, along the sides of her breasts without quite touching where she wants me. Down the dip of her waist—that beautiful curve I’ve memorized from years of distance and weeks of proximity and every point between—her skin indescribably soft beneath the lather, warm from the water, warm from her. Over the flare of her hips.
“You said you’ve fallen in love with me.” I almost choke on the words. “It would be so much easier if you hadn’t.”
She glances over her shoulder. “I don’t want love that’s easy. I want love that consumes.”
“Until it hurts?”
“Even after that.”
I drop to my knees behind her, water pounding across my shoulders like a benediction, and my hands glide over the backs of her thighs, then up again, spreading her just enough.
I wash her slowly, reverently—fingers slick with suds tracing the crease where thigh meets ass, then lower, between her legs. There's an automatic roll of her hips, her ass pressing out toward me, and on my knees behind her, I go completely still.
God.
She does it without thinking. That's the part that destroys me—not the movement itself but the absence of decision in it. The way her body just knows, just reaches like it’s pure instinct.
I run my palms up the backs of her thighs again. Slowly. Deliberately. Then over the curve of her ass, spreading the lather, fingers pressing in just enough to feel the give of her, and she does it again—that small, helpless roll, chasing the pressure, her hands finding the tile wall in front of her like she needs something to hold on to.
I press my mouth to the small of her back.
“Again,” I say against her skin.
She makes a sound that isn't quite a word, and her hips roll back again, more deliberate this time, and I slip one hand between her legs, gliding against her pussy, letting the lather slide over her swollen lips. There’s a quiver in her thighs when I touch herclit with the pad of my thumb—once, twice, just enough to make her whimper and push back against my hand.
