Page 105 of Dirty Hit
I scowl, but I let him strip me out of the oversized T-shirt I’d dragged on sometime after we collapsed. His fingers are careful, almost reverent, skimming over tender spots without pressing.He gets me naked without making it feel clinical or overly erotic, which is a balancing act I didn’t know he had in him.
He climbs in first, sitting down in the tub so the water comes up over his thighs, then holds his hands out to me. “C’mon,” he says. “On my lap.”
“You want to add drowning to the charges?” I ask, but my voice is soft around the sarcasm. I let him lift me, lowering me slowly into the water. The heat hits, and I hiss, muscles tensing instinctively before everything starts to loosen.
He settles me so my back’s against his chest, his arms around me, one hand splayed over my stomach, the other resting on my thigh under the water. It feels intimate in a different way than last night did—less frantic, more… I don’t even have the vocabulary for it. Which is annoying as hell.
“There,” he murmurs near my ear. “Better?”
“Yeah,” I admit, closing my eyes for a moment. “It helps.”
“Good.” His fingers drum lightly against my stomach. “You did really well last night.”
I scoff, because my brain doesn’t know what to do with praise when I’m naked and sore and half floating. “I got wrecked and cried into your shoulder. Medal-worthy performance.”
“I’m dead serious,” he says quietly. “First time isn’t just about the physical shit. You trusted me with a lot. You let me push you. You checked in with me. That’s… not nothing, Brendon.”
I shift a little, wincing, and then lean my head back against his shoulder so I can see his face. He looks tired and content and weirdly young, like this is the version of him that existed before the monsters dug in.
The silence is comfortable despite the fact that my insides feel like they’ve been reorganized by a sledgehammer. The water laps softly against my skin every time I shift. He reaches over at one point and pours a little over my shoulders, letting it run downmy chest and back, his fingers following in a slow, grounding stroke.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he says eventually.
“I always do,” I say. “Welcome to the curse of being inside my skull.”
He smiles a little. “Give me one thought,” he says. “Just one. Doesn’t have to be the deepest one. First thing on top.”
I sigh, wondering how honest I want to be; then figure we’ve already crossed every other line, so I may as well keep going.
“I was scared I’d wake up, and you’d be… different,” I say. “Not in a bad way. Just… distant. Like you’d got what you wanted and now you were over it. I know that’s not logical, you’ve never made me feel like that, but my brain is an asshole.”
“Yeah?” he says, and I watch his jaw tighten. “Look around, Brendon. Do I look over it?”
I do. I look at him—at the way he’s literally sitting in a cramped bathtub, just to be with me while my body figures itself out, at the way he’s been touching me like I’m important, at the way he keeps calling me his, like that’s just a given now.
“No,” I say quietly. “You don’t.”
He reaches out and taps my wrist where the leather cuff sits, damp but present. “I don’t throw my toys away, Little Sin. Especially not the ones who climb into my bed and pinky promise themselves to me.”
“That sounds dangerously close to cute,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “You know you’re supposed to be terrifying, right?”
He smiles fondly. “You’re the only one who gets both. Everyone else just gets the monster. You get this too, so get used to it.”
My chest loosens a little more, and I sink deeper into the water, letting the heat and his voice wrap around me at the same time. I still hurt. I’m still embarrassed. My brain is still trying tofile last night under “irreversible sin” and “best decision of my life” at the same time.
“Okay,” I say, closing my eyes. “You promise you’ve got me?”
His eyes search mine, and for once there’s no teasing in them. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got you.”
“Promise?” I push, because last night he said it, and part of me needs to hear it again in the daylight, when the heat of the moment is gone.
A slow smile curves his mouth. He shifts one arm, lifts his hand out of the water, and hooks his pinky in front of my face, droplets clinging to his skin.
“Pinky promise,” he says.
My stupid heart stutters at our silly gesture. I curl my smaller finger around his, water dripping from both our hands, and squeeze. “Okay,” I whisper. “Then I’m yours.”
“You’ve been mine,” he says, leaning in to bump his nose against my cheek. “But it’s cute that you need the paperwork.”
