She did as he asked then stepped into the tub, one foot at a time. The temperature was perfect. Reaching up, she curled her fingers around his uninjured hand and guided him into the tub.
Together they sank down onto the ringed seat with moans of pleasure.
“This is so good,” she murmured as the heat of the water warmed her bones and stripped away some of the heaviness in her shoulders.
“Right?” He sank back and closed his eyes for a moment.
Unable to resist, she watched his handsome face as his dark lashes created a half-moon over his cheeks. The rising steam had already dampened the hair peeking out from his hat, reminding her of that first night they met.
Opening his eyes, he caught her looking. Embarrassed to be so obvious, she shifted her gaze to a bucket near his head. “You brought beers?”
“Always be prepared. Want one?”
“Yes!”
He reached up and grabbed one, already open because apparently, he was a Boy Scout when it came to hot tub session prep. He passed a bottle over.
“What should we toast to?” he asked.
She looked up at the night sky, the bright crescent moon, and exhaled. “To hiding away.”
“To hiding away.” He clinked her bottle and took a sip of his beer. “Eventually we have to come out of hiding, though.”
“Right. But for now, this bubble is the only place I want to be.”
“I’m liking it here, too.” He placed the bottle at the side of the tub. “Come over here.” His voice had changed.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because you’re getting a thigh cramp, and you need me to massage it out?”
“I need a massage alright, but not in my thigh. Besides, you owe me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thought we were even.”
He shook his head. “Not even close, but not because of what you think. This isn’t some payback for what happened on the ice two nights ago. You’ll never owe me for that.”
“Th-then for what?”
“For the last eight months of temptation. For being the cause of my wet dreams and nonstop hard-ons. For just being here and driving me into a frenzy.”
He ran his hand under the water and stroked something. It was very clear what that “something” was. “For this.”
He had been thinking of her all this time? “I can’t be held responsible for any of that. You have to take some of the blame.”
“Do I?”
She expected he would grin then. Like this would be a good point in the proceedings to showcase charming, devil-may-care Bast, the man who flirted and teased but was never serious.
But he didn’t grin, and as the moment extended, it transformed into something deeper. Significant.
“What do you need?”
“I need you to ease the ache, Pepper.”
She slid across the water and knelt on either side of him. “What about my ache?”
As soon as it came out of her mouth, she knew she meant more than the physical. She needed her soul to be soothed, her pain to be salved.
“I think more teamwork is needed.”
She liked when he thought of them that way. Escaping the city together like Bonnie and Clyde, cooking in the kitchen, giving each other pleasure. These things could have happened alone, but together, they made it easier. It was what she’d always hoped for in a partner.
He was already hard beneath her, his cock nudging between her legs. He moved one hand around to brace her against him. Tighten the hold.
“Hold on a second,” he murmured. “Let me look at you.”
“In this silly hat?”
“It’s a toque.”
“A what?”
He smiled. “It’s Canadian for a wooly hat, like a beanie.”
“You were wearing it when we met.”
“And you made fun of it, some crack about my grandma knitting it.”
She dragged her lower lip between her teeth. “And you said a sick little girl gave it to you.”
He rubbed soothing circles on her back. “Cecy. She’s a ten-year-old hockey fan from Chicago. She had leukemia, and I visited her a few times. Her grandma, Gwen, gave me the hat.”
That sounded familiar. “Is that the little girl you raised all that money for?”
“I just got the GoFundMe started. The fans did the rest.”
“And all you got was this stupid hat.”
“Hey!” He pinched her lightly and drew her giggle. “That hat’s special to me. I don’t let just anyone wear it.”
“I’m honored. Maybe I should show you how grateful I am.” She rubbed her wet breasts against his chest, the slippery friction divine.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance.” Strangely he wasn’t making any moves to forward this into orgasm territory. He seemed content to hold her close, hold her like she mattered. The quiet chill surrounding them made her feel like they were the only two people in the world.
“No one can bother you here, y’know,” he whispered. “This is a safe space.”
Now that was a lie. Nothing was safe about this. Not his fingertips grazing the side of her breast, nor his chest rising and falling gently, nor his scent curling inside her lungs and making it hard for her to breathe.
“It doesn’t feel safe,” she murmured.
He tucked a strand of her hair that had fallen from its topknot behind her ear. His hand hovered for a moment, as if he was unsure how to proceed, then his thumb absorbed the tears she hadn’t realized were falling.
That care, its unexpectedness, made the tears come faster. She hiccupped like she’d eaten too much too fast, and then she sniffed. “I don’t need your sympathy. If anything, I owe you all the care in the world.”
A little hyperbolic, perhaps, but she couldn’t bear his tenderness toward her right now.
He didn’t speak. His thumb was still on her cheek, mopping up the tears, but his eyes had gone dark. She recognized that look. She’d seen it when the cameras did close-ups—somehow they were able to get in close enough to see the whites of his eyes—as he was headed to the blue zone. Like he had a mission.
And she was it.
His thumb brushed her lower lip, which wobbled—whether that was before or after the glide of his thumb-pad against it, she couldn’t say. Not that it mattered. What mattered was he was touching her while looking like he wanted to devour her.
Yet he’d chosen not to do that. He still felt hard between her legs, but this connection between them had moved way past the physical.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For?”
“For being the last guy who should have defended me, yet the first guy who did. You haven’t demanded I justify why I’m worthy of that kind of care.”
“You don’t have to justify a thing, Pepper. I trust that you have your reasons for playing it this way.”
Trust. How was it this stranger was the one who took what she’d said at face value when everyone else assumed she’d brought all this on herself?
She inhaled, though her lungs seemed to be on hiatus. “I do have my reasons, but there’s also a chance I’ve made a huge mistake.”
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