Affliction

37

The shower was basically a raised lip in the floor with a curtain that went around the two sides that weren’t walls. Nicky was right, someone had put all my stuff on the little built-in shelves ready to go. I’d soaped, scrubbed, done both rounds of hair conditioner, and actually had time to do both legs just above the knees, and I was still showering alone. When I knew I was going to be interrupted I’d started shaving in zones, so at least if I had to stop I’d be even. You can shave or not shave, but one leg completely done and the other not shaved at all just didn’t work. So instead of doing one leg from ankle to hip, I did both legs to just above the knee, and then if I had time did the rest of the legs. What was taking the guys this long to decide who was getting in the shower with me?

I actually pulled the curtain back to check the time on my phone, and it had only been fifteen minutes. I’d gotten fast at showers; I guess it was having to get blood off me after most night’s work – lots of practice. Fifteen minutes wasn’t long to decide who would be feeding me and maybe not be able to do their bodyguard job until they’d slept, or eaten, or both. After this kind of major healing, it would be a drain on whoever I fed upon. We’d be down one guard. I’d give them twenty minutes and then I was calling someone.

I stepped back into the shower and started on my thighs. I might as well accomplish something while I was waiting. Patience was never my best virtue. I didn’t so much hear the door open as feel the line of cooler air invading the foggy warmth of the bathroom.

I couldn’t see anything through the curtain. I turned to face where the curtain opened, razor still in my hand. My pulse had sped up, my body already tightening, and that was without knowing who was about to come through the curtain. Maybe Dev had something on the whole surprise thing?

The curtain parted and Jean-Claude was standing there, pale and perfectly nude, his dark hair falling past his shoulders, loose and free and covering nothing. Of all the men I’d expected it to be, he hadn’t been on my list. I should have chastised him that he was risking himself traveling to another territory. That he was safer at home. That he was basically the vampire president of the country, and he had other responsibilities besides love. I should have said a lot of things, but I didn’t. I stepped out of the water and into his arms with a sound that was suspiciously like a sob. I let his arms and body wrap me close and raised my face for a kiss from those lips, that face. I had a moment to gaze into the darkest blue eyes I’d ever seen, as if the midnight sky could be blue, and then he was kissing me and I closed my eyes and gave myself to his lips, his mouth, and his hands gliding over the wet slickness of my body. It was as if that kiss were air and water and everything I’d been needing.

He picked me up, my feet leaving the ground, and I wrapped my legs around him as he shut the curtain behind us with one hand and walked us into the pounding water of the shower.