Torch (Take It Off #1)(25)
Author: Cambria Hebert

A few more tears leaked out and dripped on his shirt, but he didn’t complain. “It’s okay, Katie,” he murmured, stroking my hair. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“My entire life…” I said, pausing to drag in some air, “is a complete disaster.”

“You have me.”

For some reason those three words made me cry harder. Like the kind of cry that shook your insides and made ugly sounds rip from your throat. So very unattractive.

He didn’t say anything. He held me, just like that night in the parking lot. He was a complete rock while chaos reigned around him.

When I was done with my ugly cry, I used his shirt to wipe my eyes. He chuckled. “Feel free to use my shirt as a tissue,” he said dryly.

“Oh,” I said, not even realizing what I’d done. “I—”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Do you feel better?”

His tenderness was just more than I could bear. I started crying again. “I haven’t washed my hair in a week,” I sobbed, picking up his shirt and using it once again.

“You haven’t?” he said, trying to hide the amusement in his voice.

“No. It hurts my hands and wrists too much.” I dropped his shirt. “I smell!” I wailed.

That seemed to open the floodgates once again, and I swore if I didn’t stop crying soon I was going to drown us both.

I guess Holt finally had enough because he extracted himself from my snotty clutches and got off the bed. When I thought he would leave, he turned back and picked me up off the bed. He walked into the bathroom across the hall (I refused to use his master bathroom, saying it was for him) and reached around the curtain to turn on the shower.

“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.

“Washing your hair.”

“What? No, you can’t!”

Visions of me having to get naked before him swam through my head and created a flurry of panic within me. Before I could wiggle out of his embrace, he was stepping in the shower—both of us fully clothed—and pulling the curtain closed behind us.

I shrieked when the water soaked my legs and feet. “Holt!” I gasped.

“Hold your arms out of the way,” he instructed.

I did, pushing my arms up over my head so the fresh bandages wouldn’t get ruined.

Then he stepped beneath the spray, drenching us both. “We’re wearing clothes!”

“Do you want to get naked?” he drawled.

“I’m a virgin,” I blurted out, and immediately I wanted to die of embarrassment.

Every muscle in his body stilled. I wasn’t even sure he breathed.

Finally, after a few long, tense minutes, he looked at me. “Did I hear you right?”

I nodded miserably. What in the hell possessed me to say such a thing? It was the truth, but geez, talk about diarrhea of the mouth.

He stepped back out of the spray and set me down on my feet, my back facing the water.

I expected him to leave.

I didn’t expect him to stay.

I didn’t expect the words that came out of his mouth.

Carefully, he took my arms, looping them around his neck so my hands and wrists were behind his head, and then he took my face in his hands, lifting it up so he could stare down into my eyes.

“That makes me really happy, Freckles.”

I blinked. “It does?”

He nodded slowly.

“The thought of anyone else’s hands on you drives me insane. Now I get to be your first. And your last.”

Oh my.

He lowered his head, pressing a very brief kiss to my lips before pulling away and using his hands to tilt my head back. Warm water poured over my scalp, saturating my hair and making me moan.

“You’re really gonna wash my hair?” I asked.

“I don’t get into showers fully clothed for any other reason,” he drawled.

“We look ridiculous.”

“Who cares?”

I surrendered then. To his touch. To the feel of his hands in my hair. He used a lot of shampoo, so he spent an absurd amount of time massaging it in and running it through the thick mass of my water-logged strands. Then he rinsed it all out, the suds clinging to our clothes and bubbles floating around us in the tiny enclosed space.

He even conditioned it, taking care to work the stuff through the ends of the tangled mess.

“That feels so good,” I murmured. I don’t think I’d ever felt anything so pleasant in my entire life. It was as if the whole world fell away; all my responsibilities and all my stress just seemed to slip right down the drain with the suds he rinsed away.

As he worked, I was treated to the close-up view of his soaked shirt plastered to his chest. It molded perfectly against his ripped chest and abs. I could see every muscle, every plane of his body. I wondered how often he had to work out to look that way.

Suddenly I was self-conscious about what I looked like. I knew my shirt was see-through. I knew it was likely plastered to me the same way his was, except I didn’t look like that. I was thin, with not so many curves and small breasts. He was all tan, smooth, and tall with rippling muscles. I was small, freckled, and pale with no muscle definition at all.

“Watch your wrists,” he said, stepping back.

I held them up and out, thinking he was going to go get us some towels.

He took off his shirt.

I must have gaped because he paused. “Is this okay?”

I could only stare at the way the droplets of water clung to his skin and slid down… down into the waistband of his low-slung jeans.

“I just wanted to use it,” he said softly, stepping toward me cautiously like I was a bird with a broken wing. “To do this.” He used the end of the shirt to wipe my face and eyes, cleaning away what was left of my tears and what happened earlier.

I started to close my eyes again, but I forced them to remain open. I wanted the satisfaction of seeing him, of getting an eyeful of all that skin.

My arms began to feel tired from holding them out for so long, but I ignored the burning and continued to look my fill. His chest was completely hairless and it glistened beneath the water.

I found myself reaching out toward him, just wanting to see what he would feel like.

He shook his head slowly. “You’ll get wet.”

“I don’t care.”

He smiled. “I do. Bryant did a good job on those bandages. You need to leave them on all night.”

I sighed, robbed of something I wanted so badly. He gave a deep chuckle and directed both my arms back around his neck to rest on his shoulders.