Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
For Sam, however, she sensed that half of him wanted to escape. This shower. This moment. And she’d let him go if he decided it was too much. But she desperately hoped he wouldn’t.
“Can I touch you, Sam?”
He made a grunting noise that sounded pained, and she saw his body tense, but again he nodded. Autumn soaped up a washcloth hanging on the bar behind her and brought it to his skin. He let out another soft moan—a sound that was both pleasure and pain—as she ran it over his scarred back. They were more surgical scars, and she wondered what metal had been inserted beneath this skin. It made her want to weep to know not just the depth of pain he’d experienced but the scope. How many years did he spend recovering from one surgery or another? She’d been sick for fourteen years of her life, but she hadn’t been sliced into repeatedly. What had he done to survive? In what ways had he disassociated from his own skin? Because he’d have to, right? Tenderness engulfed her as thoroughly as the steam swirling around her limbs and penetrating her pores. She wanted to make things better for him in any way she could.
She cupped her hand and filled it with water and then trickled that over his back, rinsing the soap. “Okay?” she asked softly.
“Yes, okay,” he said, the tortured tone receding slightly.
Her lips tipped. She’d take it.
“I’m going to touch your backside now, Sam,” she said, and even she could hear the throaty desire in her voice. She found his form, his size, incredibly sexy. And his ass. Jeez. She’d thought it was nice clothed. But naked…it was a work of art. If she were a sculptor, she’d have sculpted his ass and taken it everywhere she went.
Which would be very odd and creepy, but she might not care.
She pressed her lips together to stifle her own nervous laughter.
She brought the soapy cloth to the muscled globes. He let out a small gasp, lowering his head farther. He was still hard, she was sure of it, though she couldn’t see from where she stood. She imagined it though, and a surge of moisture pooled between her thighs.
“Is that okay?” she asked again.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, please don’t…don’t stop.”
There we go. She felt a sense of deep compassion but also one of victory. He was letting his guard down, and she understood his struggle. She did not take it for granted. She dropped the cloth, using her hands this time to soap up his skin, her fingers feathering over his back, down over that beautiful backside again, and then again, her index finger running along the puckered surgical lines. Whoever had stitched him up hadn’t cared that he would scar. No plastic surgeon had tended to these wounds. It was as though he’d been to war and been operated on in some foreign battlefield.
Yet she knew that wasn’t the case.
“Dr. Heathrow said anything more than temporary desire was weakness,” Sam said, the string of words surprising her.
Dr. Heathrow. She’d only had brief interactions with the man. He preferred to be in his lab. In the building where Sam lived. But to this day, when she thought of Dr. Heathrow, she got a bad taste in her mouth.
“Desire isn’t weakness, Sam,” she said, leaning forward and kissing his skin. He shuddered, and it ended in a sigh. “Yearning is human. And you’re human.”
He paused for a moment as she splayed her hands over his skin, moving up, down, up, down. He seemed to have relaxed, the tension from his muscles drained. He seemed to have become used to her hands on his skin. He was trusting her.
“I still don’t know if that’s true,” he said.
Oh, Sam. It hurt her to know he struggled so profoundly with his own humanity. He’d mentioned it more than once, and it brought her such deep sadness.
“I know it’s true, Sam. And I also know that you, as much as anyone, deserve what every human wants: love. You want to be loved, don’t you, Sam?”
He was quiet for several minutes as she soaped his shoulders and his arms. She liked that he was obviously thinking while her hands were on him. It meant that he had let down his guard enough not to be hyperfocused on the sensations she was causing. It meant he might actually enjoy it one of these days. “I don’t know,” he finally said.
“Why don’t you know?”
“I don’t think there’s anything about me that’s lovable.”
Her hands stilled. Her heart cracked. And though they were both naked, in what felt like a warm, intimate cocoon, the tenderness she felt for this terribly wounded man suddenly eclipsed her desire. “Does that feel true, Sam?” she said, leaning forward and kissing his back.
“I don’t know. All I know is that if desire is weakness, then I’m weak. My desire for you goes on and on. It has no end,” he finished quietly.