Page 136 of Wicked Brutal

“Come upstairs.”

He takes my hand and leads me up the steps to his bedroom, then into the bathroom. He turns the knob and the water starts.

The shower runs hot enough to steam the glass within minutes. I step beneath the water first. Ryan follows. He doesn’t touch me. He waits.

Water runs through my hair and over my face, down my shoulders and across every place Victor touched today. I close my eyes. Ryan is right there.

I hold out the soap. “Wash him off me, please."

He starts with my hair. He works shampoo through it slowly, fingers careful at my scalp, like he’s afraid of pulling even a little. Suds slide down my back. I keep my eyes closed and let him do it. His hands are bigger than Victor’s. Warmer. They don’t take. They wait for permission even after I’ve already given it.

“Tilt your head back for me, baby."

He rinses until the water runs clear, then does conditioner the same way — methodical, quiet, one section at a time. When he finishes he presses a kiss to my wet shoulder.

Then he lathers the soap between his hands and starts on my body. My throat first. Gentle. His thumbs stroke along the sides of my neck where Victor’s mouth never quite reached but still felt too close. He washes my shoulders next, then down my arms.

He finds the bruises immediately. His hands go still for half a second. Then they change. The pressure disappears. He washes around the fingerprints instead of over them, soap sliding past the dark marks Roman left when he decided I know wasn’t enough.

He washes the rest of my arm like I’m made of something that can break. Then the other one. Same care. Same attention. When he reaches my wrists he turns my hands over in his and washes my palms, my knuckles, the places Victor kept kissing like they already belonged to him.

I swallow.

He moves to my chest next, soaping over my collarbones, down between my breasts, careful and unhurried. Just thorough. Like he’s erasing a map someone else tried to draw on me. When his hands reach my waist they pause again, then settle over the small, barely-there swell of our baby. He washes there last. Soft circles. Both palms. Water and soap and the heat of him standing behind me while steam fills the glass.

“Him too,” he says against my wet hair. “He doesn’t get near either of you.”

I nod, because if I speak I might cry, and I don’t want to cry in here.

Ryan keeps going — hips, the outsides of my thighs, down to my knees where Victor’s hand sat through half of lunch. He washes those twice. Then he stops, soap still in his hands, and waits.

I stay quiet for a long time. Water drums against the tile. Steam thickens until the glass is nothing but blur. Ryan doesn’t move. He just stands behind me with soap still on his hands and waits like he always does — like rushing me would be the same as taking something I didn’t offer.

My voice comes out small. “Please, Ryan.” His breath changes against my wet hair. “Touch me.”

He sets the soap down. Then his hands find my waist, and he turns me under the spray until I’m facing him. Water sheets down both of us. His hair is darker like this.

His eyes are darker too. “Okay,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”

He starts at my face. Both hands cup my jaw, thumbs brushing water off my cheekbones, careful of the side Roman hit. He kisses my forehead first. Then the place between my brows. Then each closed eyelid. Then the corner of my mouth that isn’t quite a kiss yet.

“You’re so pretty like this,” he murmurs. “All mine. No one else in here. Just you.”

His mouth finds mine. Slow. Wet. The kind of kiss that doesn’t ask for more than this second. I open for him and he takes it gently, one hand sliding back into my soaked hair, the other staying light at my waist so he doesn’t crowd the bruises.

When he pulls away he kisses down my throat. “I love this spot.” A kiss just under my ear. “I love how you tip your head when I do that.” Another, lower. “I love that you asked me. That you wanted me to touch you after today.”

His hands skim down my arms, avoiding the fingerprints, and he lifts one of my hands to his mouth. Kisses my palm. My wrist. The inside of my elbow.

“These hands,” he says against my skin. “Writing hands. Tobias hands. My hands. Not his.”

I shiver even under the hot water.

He drops to his knees on the tile. Water hits his shoulders and runs down his back. He looks up at me first — checking — then leans in and kisses the small curve of my stomach. Once. Twice. Soft, open-mouthed, like he’s greeting both of us.

He kisses lower. My hip bone. The soft inside of my thigh. Then back up, mapping me with his mouth while the shower beats around us.

“I love your body,” he says between kisses. “I love how it’s changing. I love that you’re letting me see it. I love that you still want me after a day like that.” His hands stroke up the backs of my thighs, careful, unhurried. He kisses the underside of one breast, then the other, then the center of my chest over my heart. “I love you,” he says there, simple and wrecked. “Mind. Body. This stubborn, brave, exhausted heart. All of it. You’re it for me, Ally. You have been.”