“Mary?” Emory’s voice had her lurching upright, wrapping her arms over her breasts.
“Yeah?” Excited tingles spread through her tummy down to her sex. He sounded so gruff—so incredibly sexy—when he said her name like that.
“Doc said I should help you wash your hair. He doesn’t want to risk any bleeding.”
“Oh.” The doctor hadn’t said anything to her about it. Likely he’d known she’d argue.
“I won’t take advantage.” He chuckled. “Difficult as it might be, I can be a gentleman.”
She lifted her legs to her chest and slid her arms around her knees. Emory didn’t have to tell her he was capable of being a gentleman. She already knew he was. Still, it didn’t stop the wisps of electricity that traveled through her body. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as her nipples hardened into points and her pussy became wet. They’d started something they hadn’t been able to finish earlier, something she knew Emory had every intention of seeing through to the end. Glancing down, she figured she was covered well enough. The water came to her chest and her knees prevented him from seeing her breasts.
“Okay.” She managed to force the word out, although her voice sounded strained.
He laughed again and the sound made her heart race and her pulse quicken. His footsteps sounded like drums as he walked toward the bathroom, warning her he was almost there, nearly at the finish line. When the bathroom door swung inward she held her breath and stared ahead, unable to look in his direction.
Damn her self-awareness. She wasn’t brave enough to glance at Emory when he strode by the tub, walked to a shelf and retrieved shampoo. She buried her nails in her hands, trying to stop the fuzzy feeling coming over her, mortified at how erect her nipples were and how much they ached. Then of course there was the throbbing coming from down below, beating like a hammer.
She jerked as though she’d been hit when he touched her shoulder. Instantly she felt like a ninny. “I’m sorry,” she blurted and started babbling. “I didn’t mean to jump. I knew you were there. I’m just nervous and—”
“Mary.” Emory moved from the back of the tub, kneeling beside it, and placed a finger over her lips. “It’s okay. No need to apologize.” When she met his eyes and nodded, he lowered his hand. “Just sit back and relax. This isn’t torture.”
Then he smiled.
The effect it had on her was mind-blowing, breaking down the walls she tried to erect around herself. A wrecking ball would have been weak in comparison, hitting the surface but unable to crack the barriers existing on the inside. Seeing his gorgeous eyes shining, the color glorious amber, combined with his stunning face…
I’m a goner.
“I’m going to grab a few things to make this easier,” he murmured, as though he could read her thoughts.
Although he was gone in a flash, she still felt him in the room, could actually sense him in a weird way. The fire in her bloodstream only burned hotter, making the steaming water more of an annoyance now than a luxury. Once he had everything he needed Emory instructed her to lean back. She did and he carefully lifted her hair off her back and shoulders, keeping it from touching the water. When she was settled he started carefully combing through the strands, the sensation finally allowing her to sag against the back of the tub and close her eyes.
“I’ve always loved your hair. It’s so soft and long.”
She didn’t respond, relaxing as he continued brushing the tangles away. After several minutes he helped her recline in the bathtub to wet the strands, avoiding the stitched area on her temple. She’d considered his view, knew he could see all of her, but she felt so good she didn’t care.
He helped her sit upright when the strands were wet, then he leaned her back in the tub. The he started shampooing her scalp, working his way through the long locks. Who knew it would feel so good to have someone else clean your hair? This was nothing like visits to the local beauty shop where the woman scrubbed her head roughly, patted it dry and threw a towel over the mess she’d created.
This was… It was…
Seduction.
“Now we need to rinse this out.” Emory’s voice was gravelly, a heavy whisper near her head. “Sit up and lean back.”
He held her head when she did as he asked, keeping her injury above water. She heard an odd scrape and realized Emory had brought a glass with him to help rinse out the shampoo. Over and over he dipped the glass into the water and poured the contents over her hair. In the area near her stitches he used a cloth, cleaning away any bubbles, a look of absolute concentration on his face.
“There you go.” He grinned again and swept his lips over her nose. “All better?”
“Oh yeah.” She sighed and lifted her head, grasping the sides of the bathtub.
Thankfully her modesty wasn’t put into question. Emory started cleaning up the clutter around him, returning things to their proper places. She wondered if he’d considered doing something more, thought about him lowering his mouth to hers and kissing her like he had before. The idea was one of which her body approved. The hovering flush spread over her, heating her from the inside out.
Trying to keep her thoughts away from sex, she sat up and reached for her hair. Squeezing the strands, she tried to get out as much water as possible. Her hair was slow to dry so it was important to wring it out several times if she didn’t want to spend thirty minutes with a blow dryer.
A low, horrifying growl rent the air and Mary froze. Her heart went from racing to pounding, fear kicking in, taking her back to a time when the slightest misstep could bring hell raining down upon her. Unable to prevent herself, she peered over her shoulder. Emory was studying her back and his eyes—oh dear God, his eyes—were the brightest shade of yellow she’d ever seen.
“Emory?”
“Who?” The word was more of a sound—a snarl.
“Calm down, please.” She kept her voice smooth and calm, motions slow and nonthreatening. “What do you mean, who?”
His unexpected movement had her crying out, fear impossible to beat back. He was gentle when he grasped her shoulder and faced her forward so that she had to look straight ahead. The lightest whisper of a fingertip over her back revealed the source of his fury and she closed her eyes.
Sometimes—during moments like these when she let the world around her fall away—she forgot they were there.
“You undressed me,” she whispered, ashamed of the crisscrossed scars on her skin. She hated how ugly they looked, how they would always serve as a reminder of what she’d endured. “You had to have seen them.”
“Ava took care of you.” The deep, terrifying rasp when he spoke was gone. Now he sounded almost sad. “I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation. I wanted to respect your privacy.” He stopped over one of the worst scars—the one that had bled through the stitching and ruined so many of her shirts. “She should have told me. She should have warned me.”
“She probably felt it was my story to tell.” And it was not a story she wanted to revisit, even if she knew she had to. “Elijah punished me shortly after I freed a group of shifters from the storage building behind his house. He felt a cane would make the best impression.”
Emory’s finger stopped moving. “You did what?”
She turned so that she could see his face. He looked so furious, as though he wanted to knock the hell out of something.
“It didn’t take me long to put two and two together. I knew what my uncle was doing and I refused to be a part of it. I snuck down to the building one day and released the shifters he had caged.”