“What it was was that you trusted me with something real, and the sounds you made have been living in my head ever since.” I let my hand settle against the side of her neck, my thumb resting along her jaw. “I went back to my cabin that night and got in my own shower and couldn’t think about anything except you.”
She blinked. “You’re telling me you?—”
“Yeah. I did.” I was getting hard again just thinking about it. Hell, everything about this woman made me hard.
The flush spread down her neck. Her mouth opened, and nothing came out for two full seconds, which might have been a first for Lark Monroe.
“I’m standing in my own shower for the first time in six weeks,” she said, “and you just told me you thought about me in yours, and I—” She pressed her lips together. “I have too many feelings happening right now and not a single joke for any of them.”
“That’s probably the hot water. Twenty-three fifty is a life-changing investment.”
She laughed, bright and real, and her forehead tipped against my chest. I felt the vibration of it against my skin. When she lifted her head, the tension I’d grown used to seeing behind her expression was gone, and what was there instead was warm and unhurried and open.
Her hand found my hip, fingers tracing along the ridge of bone.
“May I?”
Her hand moved lower. She wrapped her fingers around my cock, and my breath left my chest in a way I hadn’t planned for.
May she?I might die if she didn’t.
“Yeah.” The word came out rough.
She watched my face while her hand moved, slow at first. She was figuring me out, reading every shift in my expression and adjusting her grip when my breathing changed. Her thumb traced the underside of the head, and my hand went to the tile wall because my knees were making their position clear.
“There,” I said when she found the rhythm that made my vision go soft while everything else in me got harder. “Fuck yeah.”
She stayed. Her free hand came to my chest, palm flat over my heartbeat, and I wondered if she could feel how fast it was beating because I could sure as hell feel it behind my eyes.
The water ran down my back, and I stopped being able to think in complete sentences. My forehead dropped against hers and my breathing fractured, and I could feel it building at the base of my spine, tightening through my thighs, my balls. My bracing hand pressing into tile hard enough to ache.
“Lark—”
“I’ve got you.”
Three words. Quiet and certain, and they undid me more than her hand did. I came hard, my body locking against hers, my hands gripping her hips tight as I pulled her to me. The sound I made lost in her wet hair because my face had found her neck somewhere in the last few seconds.
She held on until my breathing slowed. Her hand gentled. Her lips pressed against my shoulder, once, twice, and stayed.
I lifted my head and looked at her. She was smiling with nothing held in reserve.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t thank me. It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird.”
“It’s a little weird. You don’t thank someone for—” She gestured vaguely with her free hand. “That.”
“I just did.”
She laughed and pressed her forehead into my chest, and the sound vibrated against my ribs. I put my arms around her, and we stood under the water until it started to cool. She kicked us both out, threatening bodily harm if that was the last of the hot water for good.
I left her house half an hour later. She had fundraising calls to make, and I headed down to the barn to start morning rounds.
Tova was on her feet the second I crouched at the kennel door, her whole body swaying with the force of her tail. She nudged her head under my hand when I got the latch open and leaned into my leg hard enough that I had to brace against the frame.
“All right, all right. Yeah, I missed you too. Come on.”
