Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I try to remember all my early-in-life jujitsu training, my karate lessons, the boxing class my parents put me in, and even earlier, gymnastics. I have a personal trainer I train with at least four times a week, but lately, I’ve been far more into calisthenics than anything else. Oh, and yoga, but I save that for when I’m at home. Breathing exercises, I tell you. They’ll change your life.
I could use a few now.
I try and get upright, only to slip and fall on my back again. My tailbone is smarting, and my shins ache, but at least nothing’s broken. I didn’t land backward on my wrists as I tried to catch myself in the worst way. The water spray is practically drowning me though.
And…that’s how Amalphia finds me.
In my dude-in-distress era.
While I was thrashing around, trying to stay alive, I didn’t hear her thunder up the stairs. I left my bedroom door open a crack and the bathroom door is thrown wide open.
My eyes lock with hers. They’re wide and terrified. Her mouth opens in a horrified O. “Oh my god, are you okay?” she yelps.
I must look like a drowned, sputtering rat or turtle or alien in there. I slip around, trying to cover myself up because I’m well aware she can see everything through the shower glass. It’s not like the windows in the house. It’s not tinted in any way.
“Did you happen to clean the shower?” I groan, groping my way around to the back so I can try and grasp the wall to get the spray turned off. It comes out more like Glib yoush thappen to bwean bwe showwber? There’s a cough, snort, and a wet blubbery noise as the water continues to cascade straight onto my face.
“Ahh! You’re drowning! Holy fuckshit, did you break anything? Hold on!”
The shower door flings wide open, a towel is thrust on top of me, and then Amalphia steps onto the edge of it. The tiles are so slick that the terrycloth can’t even get traction, but she maneuvers herself carefully toward the controls on the far side and just about manages to get the water turned off.
We both pause. The silence is real. The only sound in the bathroom is her panting and my slightly waterlogged sighs.
“I…I might have cleaned the shower…yes, I…uh, I did,” she admits, biting down on her bottom lip, but then she realizes she’s literally standing with her legs spread, and my face is pretty much right between them. She’s fully clothed, but still.
She gasps and scrambles back, keeping the towel under her so she can get good traction. Her hands claw behind her, reaching for the shower’s glass, and then she swings her leg over and out. As soon as she’s on safe ground, she covers her mouth with both hands.
“Did you, by chance, clean it with bacon grease?”
Under other circumstances, she might find that funny. She might even shoot something snarky back about it not smelling like breakfast in here, so clearly, she didn’t use anything related to food.
Instead, her face does a crumpling on top of a crumpling thing where her eyes squish together, and her lips tremble. “Oh. Oh my god. I…I must have used the wrong…the wrong cleaner. I didn’t realize it was going to be slippery.” She forces her eyes open, though they’re filled with tears. I realize she’s looking down her nose, making herself cross-eyed in order to give me some privacy. “Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?”
I want to ask her how much of my au naturel state she just saw, but instead, I draw the towel up closer around me to hide my bits from the waist down.
Her gaze slams straight to my tattooed chest and continues lower, lingering on my cut abs that happen to be a huge bonus of working out for stress relief. When I’m in the gym or even doing yoga or stretching at home, the hours melt away, and so does everything else. I can forget about all the work and family bullshit.
“I don’t need an ambulance. Maybe just an extra towel so I can get out of here safely.”
Her face goes from pink to scarlet, her eyes jerking back up. “Right. I’m so, so sorry about this, Warrick.”
Okayyyyy, it’s a bad time to start getting excited about the way my name rolls off her tongue. She draws out the syllables like rich, black velvet shimmering in candlelight. Shit, if I’m waxing poetic, waxier than these shower tiles, it’s a slippery slope. No pun intended. I don’t need this towel, which is barely covering my waist as it is, to turn into a tent.
Amalphia rushes out so fast that she almost slips on the floor.
Note to self: Watch your ass out there too.
She’s back with an armload of towels in under a minute, and she practically tosses them all on top of me. If I was near frantic about the boner being a visible thing, I don’t have to worry anymore. Amalphia is at exactly the right angle to my ass, which is splayed out on the floor, that my eyes shoot directly to her chest, where her long-sleeved flowy shirt is now no longer so flowy and more stuck to her body because it’s soaked from the shower.