Ride With Me

Chapter Twenty

She set the glass down.

"I'm going up to shower."

He rose with her, easily, and his eyes tracked her left arm held against her ribs, a flinch she couldn't quite hide. "Need a hand?"

The offer was generous—she could hear it in the way he'd pitched it, so she could refuse without a scene. And she almost took it. Her pride caught the words on the way out and said them to her instead:

"I can manage, Knox."

He studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded once, slowly, and settled back into his chair. "Take your time."

She climbed the stairs with his eyes on her back, and she didn't look down at him, because if she looked down at him, she would see the split knuckles and the patience and the way he'd offered to wash her like it was nothing, and she'd go back down the stairs and let him.

She stripped with one hand, carefully, and stepped under the spray.

The heat took some of the ache out of her shoulder. Not all. The joint throbbed in a low, constant pulse where the doctor had seated it, and the bruise down her ribs sang a dull note under the water. She stood under the spray with her eyes shut and let the water run over her, and the strip came back again in pieces—the roar of the crowd, the scream of metal, the smell of burned rubber and hot asphalt, the way Knox had looked at her with a stranger's face before he had turned and walked toward Ryker. The sirens. The blood on his hands when he knelt beside her, his hands shaking, the clean part of his wrist brushing the hair off her cheek.

She opened her eyes.

The little bottle of shampoo sat on the shelf, childproof and smug.

She picked it up, braced it against her chest, and twisted the cap with her right hand. The cap gave with a pop, and the effort sent a spike of fire through her shoulder, down her arm, into her collarbone. She hissed through her teeth. Then she looked at the bottle, and at her hair, and at the water running down the drain, and the truth of it sat in her chest, plain and heavy: this wasn't going to work.

She tried anyway. That was who she was. She lifted her left arm—slow, braced, her elbow against the tile—and the burn came up vicious, radiating, and the bottle wobbled in her grip, and she caught it against her ribs before it could fall, and her breath came out in a hard, frustrated gust.

He wouldn't always be here, she told herself. Figure it out.

She tried again. The angle was wrong; her arm shook; the shampoo glugged out in a cold rope down her wrist instead of into her palm. She set the bottle back on the shelf and stood in the steam with her good hand braced against the tile and her head bowed, and the water drummed on her shoulders, and the last few hours sat on her like a weight she couldn't lift. She was so tired. Not just her shoulder—all of her. The adrenaline had burned off hours ago and left nothing but the hollow behind it, and she was standing in a bathroom that wasn't hers, and she couldn't even wash her own hair.

The knock came soft through the hiss of the water.

"Piper."

Her eyes opened. His voice, low through the door, pitched not to carry.

"You've been here a while. Water's going to run cold."

She looked at the little bottle. At her arm. And something in her chest did a slow, reluctant turn—the part of her that hated needing help, that had spent six months learning to ask for nothing, grinding against the plain fact that she lost this fight.

"Knox?"

"Yeah."

"I —" She swallowed. The steam was thick in her lungs. "I can't. I can't reach my hair. My shoulder."

A pause. Then, muffled through the wood, a laugh — low and soft, not cruel, like he'd been waiting for her to say it. She rolled her eyes at the door, at him, at the whole ridiculous shape of her day.

"Can you come in?"

The door opened.

The steam rolled out into the hall and around him, and he stood in the doorway with the light at his back, still wearing the same black shirt and jeans from the strip, his dark hair falling across his forehead, and his eyes caught hers through the haze and went dark and careful.

"You're going to be okay if I get wet?"

"I think I'll survive.

The corner of his mouth pulled up. He toed off his boots, peeled off his socks, and stepped out of his jeans with his back half-turned, and then he was just black shirt and boxers, and he stepped into the shower like it was nothing at all.

The water hit him, and he didn't flinch. The shirt went dark in a breath, clinging to the hard lines of his chest and shoulders, the ink showing through the wet cotton like it had been waiting for it, and the boxers went translucent, and he stood under the spray and let it run over him, and the sight of him—soaked, patient, utterly unconcerned about any of it—did something to her chest that had nothing to do with the steam.

"Okay." He reached for the bottle, and his voice had gone low and easy. "Turn around."

She turned.

His hands came up, and his fingers pushed her wet hair back from her face, and then the cool slide of the shampoo, and then his palms against her scalp—slow, firm, working the soap into a lather at the crown of her head.

"Too much?"

"No." Her voice came out small. "That's—that's good."

He worked in silence, patient, his fingers finding the pressure points at the base of her skull, the tender places behind her ears, and her eyes drifted shut, and her head tipped back into his hands as it belonged there. He worked the lather down the length of her hair, gathered it in his fist, squeezed, and the water ran over her shoulders, and his thumbs pressed slow circles at her temples, and the strip began to bleed out of her in layers, one memory at a time, down the drain.

"You're good at this," she said, and it came out almost accusing.

"My niece. I used to wash her hair when she was little. She wouldn't let anyone else do it. It’s much easier at a sink though."

She smiles. The image—this man, the ink, the scars, the quiet violence she watched him use with her own eyes hours ago—crouched over a little girl with a bottle of strawberry shampoo, careful, patient—cracked something open in her chest.

He rinsed her hair, his fingers combing through the strands, and when the water ran clear, he turned her by the shoulder, gentle, and reached for the little bottle of body wash.

"Now the rest of you."

"Knox, you don't have to—"

"I know."

His hands found her shoulders. He worked the soap into a lather and started at the back of her neck, slowly, tracing the line of her spine down to the small of her back, and his palms were rough and warm, the calluses dragging against her skin in a way that made her breath go shallow. He washed her like she was something precious—that was the thing she couldn't get past. The care in it. The way his thumbs charted the bones of her shoulders, the blades, the long muscles of her back, like he was memorizing the architecture of her. The way he skirted her bruised side as he mapped it, his touches were feather-light at the edge of the purple, his jaw tightening once at the sight of it.

He washed her arms. Her hands, one finger at a time, and his split knuckles moved over her skin, the cuts still raw against the soap, and she looked down at them—the hands that had nearly killed a man hours ago—washing her like she was holy, and her throat closed.

He knelt. The water ran over them both, and his hands moved down her legs, over the curve of her calves, the inside of her thighs, and she bit her lip and stared at the tile and tried to remember how to breathe.

"Knox."

"Mm."

"I thought you were going to wash my hair."

"I did." His hands moved up, over the outside of her thighs, the swell of her hips, and his voice came up through the steam, low and rough. "Now I'm washing the rest of you."

His hands found her b*easts. Not grabbing—just there, soap-slick, his thumbs passing over her n*pples once, slowly, and she made a sound she couldn't swallow, and his hands stilled.

"Okay?"

"Yes." It came out too fast. "Yes, that's okay."

He took his time there, too. His thumbs worked slow circles, her n*****s hardening against his palms, the steam pressing in around them, and the heat gathering low in her belly had nothing to do with the water. She gripped his shoulders for balance—the water ran over them, his shirt plastered to his skin—and her forehead came to rest against his chest, and she stood there, naked and soap-slick in his arms, letting him wash her, and it was the most intimate thing that had happened to her in years. More than s*x. More than any of it. A man washing her like she mattered, like she was worth the water.

"Okay." His voice rumbled against her cheek. "Let's get you out before you turn into a prune."

He turned the water off and reached past her for the towel, and she stepped out onto the bathmat—and her foot went out from under her, the tile slicked with soap and water, and the world tilted, and she went down, flailing, her bad arm flying out before she could stop it—

And Knox caught her.

One arm around her back, the other hooked under her thighs, and she came up against his chest with the breath knocked out of her, wet and naked and clinging, her hands fisted in his soaked shirt.

He looked down at her. Water dripped from his hair onto her face. And the grin that spread across his mouth was slow and wicked and utterly unrepentant. "You just cannot resist my arms, can you?" His voice was deep and raspy, scraped low with water and heat and the whole long day, and it ran through her like a current, down her spine, into her thighs, low in her belly, and she laughed, breathless, her face burning.

"Shut up."

"Never." He hitched her higher against his chest—careful, so careful, his arm taking her weight, her good side pressed against him—grabbed the towel off the rack with his free hand, and carried her out of the bathroom. "Which way?"

"Um—" The world tilted gently, his arms solid under her. "Left. Down to the end. The door on the right."