by Chelsea Fine
For a moment, I’m too stunned to speak and incredibly moved by the fact that he listened last night when I spoke about my appearance. His words are more than just a response, they’re a gesture, and aside from throwing myself into his arms, I don’t know what to do with them.
So I just nod and clear my throat. “I’m sorry I was judgmental of you. I made assumptions about your wealth and character, and that was unfair of me. I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t any better,” he says. “I thought you were some spoiled princess, living off your daddy’s trust fund money all these years. That was lame.” He hangs his head a little. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
I smile. “We’re cool.”
He smiles back and echoes, “We’re cool.”
“So about that shower…” I say, gesturing to our muddy state.
“Ah, yes. Follow me.” He leads me into the bathroom and turns on the shower. Water sprays down, steaming up the bathroom as he lifts our connected wrists and frowns.
“So I guess we’re showering together, then?”
I nod. “I guess so.”
“Excellent.” He gives me a devilish grin. “Group showers are my favorite.” He starts taking his pants off and I hold up a hand.
“We’re not showering together naked.”
“Why not?” He stops unbuttoning his jeans.
“Because.”
He smiles. “Because…?”
“Daren.”
“Okay, fine,” he says. “But I’m not showering in my dirty jeans. These babies are coming off.” He yanks his pants off and I can’t help but stare at his body, wanting to run my hands up his legs and sink my teeth into his ass.
But I won’t do that. Probably.
I look down at my own dirty jeans and frown. Showering with them on would be pointless. I quickly take them off, already feeling myself start to blush as I avert my eyes from Daren’s and kick my jeans over to my suitcase, feeling a tiny bit nervous about being half-dressed around him. Which is ridiculous.
When I finally look up, Daren’s eyes are carefully fixed on my face and obviously struggling to stay there.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He licks his lips. “I’m trying my very hardest not to look at your amazing body.”
I tilt my head. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to think I’m some disgusting pig who just wants to drool all over you,” he says. “Although, side note, I do want to drool all over you. I just don’t want to be piggish about it.”
I roll my eyes. “If we’re going to take a shower together, you might as well look at me now.”
He drops his eyes and his gaze darkens with desire, which in turn makes me aroused. I really like that he really likes what he sees—and that’s never happened to me before.
I’m usually nothing but embarrassed or uncomfortable when I let a guy see me naked, or almost naked. The moment my clothes come off is usually the very same moment the guy’s eyes become vacant and he stops viewing me as a human being and starts treating me like his personal sex vessel.
But Daren’s eyes aren’t vacant at all as they stroke the outline of my panties and the curve of my hips. In fact, they’re full and swimming with more emotions than I can count. White-hot desire blazes in their depths, but so do awe, happiness, nervousness, and hope.
He pulls them up to my face. The same emotions continue to flicker in their brown depths as he scans my eyes, which only makes me want to show him more of my body.
“Do you have a pair of scissors?” I ask.
He blinks, clearly not expecting that question. “Uh… maybe.” He shuffles through a few bathroom drawers and finds a small pair of hair scissors. “Will these work?”
“Perfect.” I take them from his hand and start to cut along the seam of my royal blue shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Since we can’t take our shirts off and I don’t feel like wearing the same shirt another day in a row, I’m cutting mine off.” I finish and the shirt falls away from my body, drifting to the floor in a dirty blue heap and leaving me standing in just my black bra and panties.
Daren rubs a hand over his mouth. Then over his head. Then his mouth again.
“Now what are you doing?” I ask.
He bites down on his fist. “I’m trying not to comment and how beautiful you are because I don’t want you to think I only see your body,” he says. “But it’s really hard because I’ve never seen anything so perfectly lovely in my life.”
I bite back a smile but can’t contain the heat that spreads over my cheeks and neck. But I’m not embarrassed. I’m flattered. “Quit being so afraid of me. You can look at me, Daren. I’m not going to hold it against you. I swear.”
“Oh thank God,” he says in one fluid breath, shamelessly looking me over.
I smile and snip the scissor blades, feeling strangely powerful under his hot gaze. “Want me to cut off your shirt?”
He looks down in horror. “But I like this shirt.”
“You really need to work on your attachment issues,” I say. “What are you going to do, wear it in the shower and then to bed and then all day tomorrow?”
“Ew. No. Definitely not.”
“Then let me cut it off and sew a new one on you after the shower.”
He lifts a puzzled brow.
“I sew. Trust me. Now, come on. Snip, snip.” I step up to him and he turns to the side and lifts his arm so I can cut up the seam.
With every slice of the shears, a small bit of his tan skin is revealed. The sides of his toned ab muscles. The ripples of his lean rib cage. The thick muscle of his pec and shoulder.
I realize I’m breathing heavy and shake myself as I cut off the remainder of his muddy shirt and strip it from his body.
Then the two of us stand in the bathroom, both in just our undies, as steam begins to fill the room from the hot shower spray behind us. Steam begins to build low in my belly as well and I’m suddenly nervous.
I want Daren but it’s hard to trust my desires when I’m not used to them being so powerful and overwhelming. Instead, I hastily turn away and slip into the shower, pulling Daren in with me by the cuffs.
The hot water feels amazing as it drenches my hair and runs over my shoulders and back. We shower without speaking, taking turns in the spray and with the soap as we scrub the dirt from our skin. The silence isn’t awkward but rather tense and filled with unspoken yearning. Every once in a while, my eyes get lost on Daren’s body, trailing up and over his muscles and masculine lines. And just like when I was fifteen, I want to touch him.
His eyes are better behaved than mine, staying primarily on my face or the shower walls. The new passion-ridden part of my soul doesn’t like this and wishes he’d stare at me like he was before. Wanting me. Seeing me. He glances at my breasts or panties every few minutes, but the desire in his eyes is brief and well controlled.
This just makes more pieces of my heart float over to his hands.
We go to trade places again and our eyes lock. In the running water, his eyelashes have clung together making tiny black triangles above his brown eyes. And up close like this, his brown eyes look deeper than usual. They aren’t just brown. They’re tan and golden, with a ring of green just around the pupil, and small flecks of yellow within the ring. They’re beautiful and… deep.
He smiles at me playfully. “You want to kiss me again, don’t you?”
YES, I DO.
“You’re relentless.” I smile. “Stop trying to get into my pants.”
“What pants?” He grins at my panties and I splash water at him. “I’ll have you know,” he says, “that I’m not trying to get into anything at this particular moment. In the shower.”
“Are you not a fan of shower sex?”
“Listen to you, talking about sex all casually in your wet black panties,” he says. “Are you trying to kill me? And to answer your question, no. I’m not crazy about shower sex.”
“Inte
resting,” I say, drawing out the word.
He shrugs. “Showering with a girl is hot, don’t get me wrong.” He gives me an overexaggerated wink and I flick water at him again. “But it’s not ideal. You’re standing up and there’s usually not enough space to maneuver in, and then you have to keep the girl wet in spite of all the wetness of the shower, but warm even when the hot water isn’t on her… it’s tricky. There are a lot of factors involved. It’s convenient for cleaning up afterward, but it’s not my favorite place to have sex.”
“I see,” I say. “So what is your favorite place to have sex?”
“A bed,” he says simply.
I laugh. “A bed?”
“Yeah. Why is that so funny?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought a Legendary Lover like yourself would choose someplace more exotic than a bed.”
“No way. A bed is the most ideal. It’s comfortable, so nobody’s knees or elbows or backs get scratched up. It’s warm, so the girl can relax and I don’t have to work twice as hard to keep my body heat around her. And it’s large, so there’s plenty of room to switch positions and move around.”
It sounds like he actually cares about and has put a lot of thought into making sure his sex partners are comfortable, and not just how easy it is for him to get off.
He runs a hand through his wet hair and looks at me. “What’s your favorite place to have sex?”
“My favorite place?” The question throws me for a moment and I scramble for an answer. “Well, it’s probably… I don’t know, maybe…”
He waits.
I frown at the shower wall.
“You don’t have a favorite place, do you?” He smiles, but more out of curiosity than amusement.
“Sure I do. I just need to think—”
His smile fades. “Do you not like sex?”
“What? Of course I do.” I move my eyes away and reach for the soap. “Everyone likes sex.”
At least everyone is supposed to like sex.
He’s quiet for a minute glancing over my face and body in a way that’s more clinical than sexual.
“What?” I snap.
He spies a stroke of mud still on my forearm, and gently takes my arm in his hand.
“I’m just trying to figure out why a girl like you wouldn’t like having sex. Trade places with me again.” He places his hands on my shoulders and we switch places so I’m now standing under the warmth of the shower and he’s in the decidedly colder side.
I huff in offense. “Just because I didn’t have a particular sexing spot at the tip of my tongue when you asked doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy sex.” I pause. “And what do you mean A GIRL LIKE ME?”
He slips the bar of soap out of my hand and slowly lathers it up against my arm. “A girl who clearly has a lot of passion in her soul and loves with her whole heart. A girl who has a lot to give but gives it with discretion. A girl who knows herself better than most and trusts herself even more.” He slips the soap back into my hand and proceeds to gently caress my arm, and then my shoulder, with both of his hands gliding the foamy soap over my skin. “A girl who cares for others deeply and finds value in the most rejected things.” He flicks his eyes to mine, stroking my skin as the hot spray runs the soap off my arm and shoulder. “A girl like you.”
The sound of the falling water fills the space between us as my head goes hazy with the gentle touches of his hands, washing me. I want to say something, respond in some way, but just like earlier in his room, I’m lost for words. All I feel and see is Daren and his deep brown eyes, caring.
“I like sex,” I say lamely.
He nods and takes the soap from my hands where my fingers have started to wrinkle from clutching so long. “You know what I think? I think sex is difficult for you to enjoy because you’re so pretty. I think having sex makes you feel used by guys—even the good ones—because they can’t see the real you.”
I say nothing, my eyes trapped in his words.
“Kayla,” he says, running his hands up my arms and to my neck where he cradles my face. “I’m not like those other guys.” The water continues to fall around us. “I do see you. The real you.”
He leans forward and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead, he reaches behind me and turns the shower knob off. The spray stops falling, leaving the bathroom silent but for the dripping faucet at my back and my pounding heart.
24
Daren
After our shower, we towel off and I yank on a pair of shorts to sleep in as Kayla turns away. She dresses in a pair of tiny gym shorts and a strapless shirt before cutting her bra off her shoulders. Then she rubs coconut-scented lotion on her arms and legs and the movement puts me in a trance until she catches my eyes and I look elsewhere.
I’ve been trying so. Damn. Hard not to ogle her gorgeous, perfect body and it’s killing me. But I know she has issues with guys caring too much about her appearance and I want to be different. I want her to trust me. Even if that means depriving myself to the point of pain, which is exactly what I’ve been doing.
We don’t speak for several long minutes. When I looked in Kayla’s eyes and saw all those fears and walls she had up between herself and not just sex, but guys in general, I was desperate to assure her in some way.
And I didn’t want her to think of me as just another guy. I wanted to be more. And when I told her I was nothing like the guys she’s known in the past, I was telling the truth. I don’t know those other guys, but I know me. And I care about Kayla Turner with a fierceness I didn’t know I was capable of.
I just need to figure out what to do with it.
“Wow. I know celebrities who would envy a wardrobe like yours,” she says, walking over to my closet.
I follow her and pick out a clean shirt. “Yeah. It’s ridiculous, but aside from my mom’s necklace it’s the only piece of my old life that I still have.”
“And you have attachment issues.”
“Precisely.”
She takes the shirt and looks at the rest of my closet. “What’s with the shirts hanging off to the side? Are they for special occasions or something?”
“Uh, no.” I smile. “They have tears in them.” I pull a sleeve out from one of the shirts and show her a small rip in it. “I don’t have the money to take them to a tailor, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away because I know how much they cost.”
She shrugs. “I can fix them after I sew this shirt on you.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Sewing is, like, my thing. I always carry around a little sewing kit.” She points to her suitcase beside the wall.
“That’s awesome.”
She takes my ripped clothes out of the closet and sits cross-legged on the floor beside the suitcase. I sit across from her. Rummaging through her bag, she finds her sewing kit and carefully cuts along the sleeve before tucking the shirt around my body and stitching it up. I watch her hands as they move over my body, small and precise with each pull of the needle, until she’s finished.
“Wow. It looks perfect,” I say, staring at the seam. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” She pulls the first of my torn shirts onto her lap. “Because my mom and I were always low on cash, buying clothes was a rare occasion. So when I did buy clothes, I tried to buy items that would last a long time. But even nice clothes don’t last forever.” She carefully rethreads the needle and goes to work on the first torn shirt. “So I’ve gotten used to sewing up my clothes so they’ll last longer.”
“Smart,” I say, watching her work. “You seem to be really good at it too.”
She shrugs. “I’m okay. My mom was better, though. She taught me everything I know about sewing before she died.” Her eyes storm over.
I quietly ask, “How did she pass away?”
She inhales deeply. “My mom had a drug problem for a long time, but I didn’t find out about it until a few years ago. I should have known earlier that she had a drug problem. In a way, I think I di
d. The day she pawned her wedding ring and didn’t even get emotional made me suspicious, but I shrugged it off because she was my mother. And when I found out she sold my My Little Pony collection online and claimed that it had been stolen, I was heartbroken, but I let it go because she was my mom, you know?” She shakes her head. “But a real mother, a sober mother, wouldn’t be so heartless or deceitful. The signs were there all along, but I ignored them all—because she was my mother.
“We always lived paycheck to paycheck, but last year she told me we were completely broke. I had just started nursing school at college, but had to quit and get a job to help out with the bills. I worked full-time at Big Joe’s diner and made pitiful wages, while my mother worked as a maid at a hotel. But then she got caught stealing money from the hotel and was fired from her job. After that, she didn’t bother looking for more work. She’d just lie on the couch all day, popping pills. A few times I found her unconscious and had to call 911 to get her stomach pumped. It was terrifying. But worse, it was like she didn’t want to be alive anymore.
“I tried to get her help. I tried to cut her off and take care of her, but she always found a way to get more drugs. She’d steal from her friends or sell our things until a few years ago. Which, now that I know about the trust fund, makes total sense because the trust fund became accessible three years ago when I turned eighteen. So of course she stole from that. No wonder she was able to use for so long. Her habit—and her personality—spiraled, until she wasn’t the woman who raised me anymore. She was just a selfish, vacant look-alike. And so sick. Then one day I came home and she…” Kayla pauses with the needle in the air and swallows. “I was too late that time.”
The air leaves my lungs as I think about the terror she must have felt, losing her mother that way. “Kayla, I’m so sorry.”
She lifts and lowers a shoulder. “I saw it coming. Anyone who knew her could have seen it coming. It was hard, especially because I’d been in nursing school and kept thinking that maybe if I’d been more stern, or seen the signs sooner, I could have saved her. But I eventually came to terms with her death and I’m okay now.”
She goes back to sewing and my throat goes dry. I can’t imagine the horror of that experience for her.