“What happened? What did I do?” Her heart leaped to her throat.
“Nothing.” His tight voice shook.
“Spencer, don’t lie. Did I hurt you?”
He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “That was...by
far
the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt.” He took a shuddering breath as her heartbeat slowed. “Your hair floating all around my cock—
Christ.
”
She licked her lips, her body suddenly feeling better than it had all week. “You want me to do it again?”
“No.” Poor man sounded like someone had slugged him. “I told you—not that kind of bath. You’re recovering, need your rest.” He scrubbed a tense hand over his face and spoke through his fingers. “I can control it.”
She grinned at his tortured expression.
“It’s not funny.” He hadn’t even glanced at her yet somehow knew she’d be amused.
“Maybe not funny,” she said. “But it still makes me feel good.”
He grunted and reached for a bottle of man shampoo, squeezing a dollop into the palm of his hand. “I need something to concentrate on. I’m afraid you’re going to smell a bit like me. I didn’t see any shampoo in your shower.”
“Emma and I share and she’s probably taken it with her, the selfish witch.” She sniffed the air. “Mmm, musky.”
“If the shampoo ads are to be believed, you’ll be beating the women off you with a stick.”
“I guess I’ll just have to hide out here for a while then, huh?” She turned her back toward him and took a deep breath full of contentment as his hands slid into her hair, his fingertips working in small circles against her taut scalp and temples. “Oh, wow. That feels...” She didn’t even have the strength to finish. The rhythmic motion had her mesmerized, her head swaying gently with the pressure, her eyes flickering closed.
He kept it up for several long minutes, one hand massaging her scalp while the other rubbed shampoo through her curls. She was barely aware of him tilting her head back into his hand so he could scoop up water and rinse the shampoo out. When that worked just as well as earlier—not at all—he nudged her hips forward and supported her until she lay back in the water, her head floating just above his lap. His hands combed through her curls, and he let out a groan of pure sexual need so loud she could hear it even with her ears underwater. Her laughter shook her breasts, making her so self-conscious that she covered them.
He pulled her out of the water and back against his chest. Threading his fingers through hers, he pulled them away from her breasts until they rested on his hard thighs, which straddled her hips. Nipping her earlobe, his voice deep and full of promise, he rumbled, “One day you won’t hide yourself anymore.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean you’ll understand how perfect you are.”
Heat spread through her cheeks. She snorted to cover up her embarrassment. “You said yourself I’m grubby.”
“Trust a woman not to understand when she’s being complimented.” He lathered his strong hands with soap, slipped them down her neck and shoulders, and rubbed the tension right out of them. Only when those muscles became like putty in his hands did he let them glide down her arms, massaging away her aches to her moaning delight.
Barely able to form words, she groaned, “Explain it to me.”
He stayed silent for a while, concentrating on soothing the parts of her that hurt from her fever shakes, and paying scant attention to the parts she would have guessed he’d be most interested in lathering up.
She was as boneless as Gumby, so he took her completely unawares when he said, “You’re not afraid to be yourself. To get dirty. To look silly sometimes.” His hands moved to her lower back, and she leaned forward, crossing her arms atop her knees so he could rub her pains away. “You don’t camouflage yourself in so much makeup that it’s all over my pillow in the morning. Or shrink-wrap yourself in sexy clothes because you think that’s what turns me on. You’re obviously comfortable being you, and you’ve never set out to impress me. That’s why I hate it when you cover yourself in front of me.” He squeezed her closer. “That and I just love your breasts. They’re amazing.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” He reached around and cupped them, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples until she squirmed on his lap. She felt his lips smile against her neck. “I love that they’re real. Your whole body—whenever I see it, I think
Fuck yeah
,
it’s playtime.
”
His words hit something inside her, a memory buried so deep it seemed to seep into her DNA, poisoning her, and she waited for him to start laughing. To say
Yeah
,
right!
or
Psych!
Gotcha.
Instead, his hands stopped playing and sank to her waist so he could turn her toward him. “Hey. Was that too much? You went all stiff.”
“I’m waiting—” She shook her head.
“For what?”
“Never mind.”
One corner of his lips tilted up. “You want me to say more? There’s plenty—” His eyes narrowed as he regarded her. Feeling them boring into places she’d rather keep hidden, she tried to turn away but he wouldn’t let her. He swept an arm under her knees and the other under her butt, twisting until she straddled his lap. Completely off balance, she braced her hands on his slick chest. The position had her rubbing intimately against his erection, but other than briefly closing his eyes and letting out a low growl, he seemed to ignore that.
“Tell me what’s going on, Caitlyn. You just did that thing again, and I want to know why.”
“What thing?”
“Shying away from me. Shaking when I touch you.”
“Water’s cold.”
“I may’ve taken a lot of knocks to the head, but my brain’s still intact.” Still, he twisted the hot water tap and let it run for a few seconds, allowing the tub’s temperature to rise before shutting it off. “Do you know how it makes me feel when you do that?”
She shook her head, her stomach knotting as if she might lose all that water she’d drunk.
“Like I’m pushing something on you that you don’t want.”
The disgust on his face had her trying to scoot off his lap. He held her tight, so she muttered, “I’m sorry. That must be awful.”
He palmed her hips, his thumbs making circles in the hollows in front of her hip bones. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
Tell him? How much exactly? Not everything. She’d never told anyone everything. But he did deserve to know some of the reason why she reacted so strongly to things most women wouldn’t even notice. Plus, he’d always been honest with her. He’d listened without judgment and coaxed her along until she could sit in a bathtub and bare herself to him in every way. She took a steadying breath and braced herself to give him a piece of herself.
Chapter Eighteen
“Once upon a time, I thought I was in love.”
Spencer didn’t know what he’d expected, but hell if it was that. “In love? But...I thought...”
She put a soapy hand over his mouth, bubbles tickling the tip of his nose, making him itch to sneeze. She looked like a mermaid—her long red curls hanging heavy over her breasts, pink nipples peeking through—but her very human, very womanly legs kneeled on either side of him and he gave in to the urge to stroke the tops of her silky thighs.
He’d had a semi since he’d curled around her in bed. Undressing and washing her had brought him to the edge. But when she’d shied away from him again, it’d shifted his attention away from his aching bollocks and toward his twisting gut. The look on her face—pained, vulnerable—nearly sliced him in half.
“Can you just let me tell the story? I’m not sure I can get through it otherwise.”
He nodded, her hand still forcing him to be silent. He pulled it away, wiped his mouth against his shoulder to get rid of the tickling bubbles, and wrapped his fingers around hers, resting them on his chest above his racing heart. He wasn’t going to like this story. Not at all.
She licked her lips and swallowed. “I met him at the lowest point in my life.”
When could that have been? When her father broke her nose, or had something else happened? Once again, frustration bubbled up that he knew almost nothing about her life before him. It would take a lot to bring this woman low if surviving a bomb blast in Afghanistan hadn’t.
“We were freshmen in college, living in the same dorm, and he seemed like a miracle to me. Exactly what I needed.”
“How?”
She tilted her head and squeezed her eyes closed, as if giving it deep thought. “He...listened. He spent hours encouraging me to talk to him about the problems I was having. And he gave me good advice when I asked for it.” She opened her eyes with a wry smile. “And he was hot. At least, for a teenager.”
He tried to return her smile, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Anyway, he became my best friend, the only one I felt I could trust. And of course I was attracted to him, so...” She sighed. “I thought he was the one for me.”
He raised her fist to his lips. Kissed it. “But he hurt you.”
“Not at first. At first he showered me with praise. No one made him laugh the way I did. He’d never met someone so intelligent, someone who
got
him like I did. But occasionally he’d say strange things. Really, horribly hurtful things.”
“Like?” He didn’t want to know. Already his muscles were tensing, the way they did when he mentally prepared for a game, ready to demolish anyone stupid enough to play on a different team.
“Like...” She stared down into the water, where their groins met beneath the bubbles, but the faraway look in her eyes told him she was about ten years away from this tub. “Like that he could fall in love with me, if only I were prettier.”
Every molecule that made up Spencer’s body froze. Every piece of him gathered itself to rip this boy apart. And that was before she’d even finished.
“Like that he should probably kiss me because he’d be doing other men a favor, saving them from having to teach a sloppy virgin how to kiss. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it because I’d probably drool all over him. That no one would ever want to fuck me because I’d probably just lay there, completely useless.”
“Jesus Christ.” He grasped for control, shutting his eyes and clamping his lips together to keep inside all the violence that fought for release. “Where is he now?”
“Don’t know. I got a wedding invitation from him about five years ago. I burned it.”
So he wasn’t the prison pen pal—another mystery he would have to coax out of her. Clearly not today. Maybe on a game day, when he could channel all the rage into a career-saving win. “Why did you give that prick the time of day?”
She cringed and he immediately regretted his words, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d said wrong. “I—desperately needed a friend. Someone I could lean on a little. And he encouraged me to lean...a lot. I didn’t realize he was weaving a spell on me, trying to become the only person I’d need. In the beginning, he would laugh away his insults. Say he was just kidding, and I never knew what to believe. It took me years to figure out the insults came from the same place as the praise—he needed me to need him,
only
him. And after two years of this emotional yo-yo—”
“Two
years?
”
“It wasn’t bad at first. He seemed like a god, and I fell deeper and deeper. He dated other girls, but he’d always break up with them and say they didn’t listen to him like I did.” She sighed, a ragged sound that tore at his heart. “He was my only close friend my freshman year. I had...other things going on, and it wasn’t the right time in my life for college parties or gossiping with girls.”
He hadn’t gone to university himself, but from what he understood it was
exactly
the time of life for parties and friendships.
“Whenever he insulted me, I told him it hurt. I told him to stop being a jackass. I hung up on him, walked out on him. And he’d apologize. Write me these long letters telling me how amazing I was, and that he didn’t deserve my friendship. That he sometimes felt like less of a man around me because I was so smart, et cetera, et cetera.” Her hand flexed in his, and he absentmindedly rubbed his fingers over her fist to soothe her. “That’s what made him so insidious. He apologized beautifully.”
The need to apologize—on behalf of all men everywhere—hit Spencer hard. But he bit back the words. In light of what she’d just revealed,
sorry
didn’t seem appropriate. The pain etched on her face stabbed at him until he couldn’t bear looking at her anymore—not when he was helpless to erase it. He wrapped his arms around her and tugged until she lay against his chest, her head tucked under his chin, her arms crossed between them, her legs sandwiched by his. He pressed his mouth against her temple and murmured soothing noises between small kisses.
“I started making other friends my second year. Real friends. I don’t know if it was because my life had sort of stabilized by then or because the people in my classes had settled down and become more mature. Either way, things got much worse when I started hanging out with other people. He was so jealous. He stopped laughing off his insults, and they became hateful. But this horrible, needy voice inside me craved his approval. He’d crawled under my skin and burrowed into my brain. I only saw myself the way
he
saw me. He’d...he’d groomed me, and I always thought I was too smart to fall for that. To be a victim.”
“Did he ever hit you?” If so, he was a dead man.
She shuddered. “He tried to kiss me once. And I kept telling myself not to drool, not to be nervous, but the closer he got the harder I shook. He ended up telling me I was a fucking useless disappointment and shoved me into a wall. I was so humiliated, all I could do was ask him to try again.” Her voice choked. “So pathetic. That’s what he called me, and that’s how I felt. He started to leave. I grabbed his arm and he spun around and backhanded me. That was the first time I recognized what was going on. I still can’t believe it took me that long, but it did.”
His body shook now, and he squeezed her tighter, trying to rub comfort into her clammy skin. Trying to convince all his nerves not to leap from the tub and cross the Atlantic to rip the boy apart.
Her voice dropped to a whisper against his collarbone, the vibrations making the hair of his chest stand at attention. “That was the last time I saw him. He wrote me a long letter, apologizing and telling me for the first time that he loved me, that he didn’t know why he did these things when he really wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. He knew I was the only woman he could ever love.
“I burned that too, signed up to spend a semester volunteering in Thailand, and then transferred to another school when I got back.”
“Why did you transfer?”
“I couldn’t trust myself not to go back to him. I needed him too much.”
Spencer fought the sickness creeping up his gullet.
“I know it doesn’t make sense. You probably think less of me for putting up with it so long. And I’m not sure it’s something you could ever understand. But Seth made me realize how women end up in abusive relationships. They’re lulled into thinking they’ve met the best man in the world, and they don’t know their defenses have been stripped away until they’re all gone. Abusers don’t tend to hit you on the first date. They work up to it because it’s their ultimate show of their power over you. Why waste that kind of spectacle on a woman who’s not fully committed to you?”
Spencer needed air. Air and warmth and space outside this claustrophobic tub. But first he had to make her a promise because it beat at the inside of his rib cage and wouldn’t let him move without saying it. “I don’t think less of you, Caitlyn. Not for any of it. I’m astounded by you.”
And he kept the rest inside, only allowing himself to kiss her temple again. Because the rest scared him shitless, and after what she’d just said it would surely send her fleeing.
* * *
He helped her out of the bath and folded her into a fluffy towel, rubbing it over her dripping skin. She stood, head bowed, bedraggled and bruised. Her mind had clearly transported her thousands of miles away, and Spencer burned with the need to bring her back. He hadn’t intended the bath to end this way—hadn’t meant to drag so many excruciating memories from the recesses of her mind, but now that he had, he was grateful for it.
Many of the inconsistencies and mysteries that had bothered him suddenly cleared up. She’d spent years giving too much of herself to an arsehole who systematically shredded her confidence. The fact she’d managed to tear herself away from the prick spoke volumes about her strength.
Spencer didn’t have years to prove how wrong Seth was. He had months. And with that in mind, he set out to provide some medicine of his own.
He bundled her in the soft terry bathrobe Granddad had given him several Christmases ago. Keeping an arm firmly around her shoulder, he led her to the bed and sat next to her as she relaxed against the pillows. “Thirsty?”
She nodded, so he went to the kitchen to pour a glass of water. When he returned, she was nibbling on one of the crackers he’d left by her side earlier. “Getting your appetite back?”
“Yeah.” Her smile was tinged with sadness, until her gaze flicked down at his lap. “You’re naked.”
“Yep.”
“And—” She glanced again, cheeks turning a brighter red than they had from the bath’s steam.
“And interested,” he finished. He had better words than that, but after hearing how crudely that arse had spoken to her, he wasn’t in the mood to use them.
“But—” Confusion clouded her face, and she forced herself up straighter in bed. “Did what I tell you turn you on?”
“Fuck no!” Shock forced the words out harder than he would’ve intended. He softened his tone and reached out to stroke her calf, her snakebite scar, making her muscle twitch. “No, love. Just the opposite.”
“Then why?”
He smiled, hoping it came across as reassuring but fearing he projected all the terror he felt for wanting her so much. “Because you’re sitting on my bed nearly naked, and you’re stunning. You’re cute when you’re wearing clothes, but like this—” his palm swept over her calf, “—like this you’re irresistible.”
Her smile began to turn, by painful increments, from patent disbelief to curiosity. Still not where he wanted her to be—all-out lust—but getting there. She took another bite of the cracker, her eyes never leaving his as she slowly chewed. After washing the crumbs down with a sip of water, she asked, “Really?”
He shifted to kneel on the bed in front of her. Her knees immediately locked together, hiding secrets he’d already seen, touched, tasted, but wanted more of. He turned his attention to those gatekeepers, running his fingertips round the caps and dipping below to tickle the soft skin behind them. “Really. Need more proof?”
She checked out his cock again, bolder this time. “That’s a lot of proof right there.”
“I don’t want to leave you with any doubts.” He kissed one knee, then the other. “You should know exactly what you do to me.”
Except lately, most of the changes she’d wrought in him happened behind his ribs, inside his gut, places she couldn’t see. Places he couldn’t share with her—not yet. Not until he figured out what the hell was going on.
Her knees relaxed slightly and he pressed his advantage, sliding between them as he knelt over her. The robe parted at her waist, revealing the pink of her, and he momentarily debated how blatantly he should look.
Fuck it.
He couldn’t stop looking any more than he could keep himself from running for a try on a wide-open pitch.
His palms stroked the insides of her thighs, encouraging them to open wider for him, staring down at his now-throbbing cock only centimeters from her heat. She gripped the duvet next to her hips, and he glanced up to catch her hesitant expression. Pressing a tender kiss to her knee, he murmured, “Love, you’re just as pretty here as everywhere else. Seeing you like this—” Damn, there just weren’t words. Not in English. Or not in his vocabulary.
He’d never liked words as much as action anyway.
So he prepared the way with his hands, fingers spread wide, grip firm. Long, smooth strokes down the most sensitive parts of her thighs, then back up again. She bit down on her lower lip. Her body sank into the pillows as she let out a sighing moan. His mouth followed the path of his hands, marking her with openmouthed kisses, never once tearing his gaze from hers. She blinked first, her eyelids fluttering closed as he came closer to her most vulnerable spot. When his fingers stroked her lips, she jerked and wrenched his hair. The pain mingled with all his body’s other aches—bruises from last night’s brutal match, injuries never given adequate time to heal, but most of all the deep, throbbing ache in his bollocks screaming that it was go time.
He ignored them all, pouring every ounce of his attention into the place where his lips met her body. The place where she grew wet from his tongue, his fingers, and her own body’s knowledge of how to prepare for him. He lapped and sucked and pumped into her for several long minutes as she came apart, her fingers threatening to rip his hair out by the roots. He watched her back arch, the robe slipping off her shoulders and catching on the tips of her breasts, held together now by only the thin tie around her quivering waist. Her legs spread wider for him, and he rewarded her trust with more, more everything.