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I squirmed under him, drawing a gasp from him. I went to move my arm, and he pushed it back on the wall again. “Let me.”

“Let youwha—fuck.”

He’d reached between us, his hand with its slightly rough calluses, soap-slicked, grasping both of us, stroking loosely, his breath as rough and fast as mine. He pressed our foreheads together, the wet of the shower and the steam causing beads of moisture—sweat, water, I didn’t fucking know—to run down both our faces and bodies.

He slid the fingers of his other hand into the damp hair at the nape of my neck.

“I still—haven’t—washed—your hair,” he managed in between pants.

“Fuck hair,” was all I got out, clenching my jaw to keep a moan at bay as his hand sped up.

I didn’t care about my hair, didn’t care about the wound in my side that I could barely feel. The only thing I gave a flying fuck about was the feeling of Taavi’s body against mine, the slickness of his hand and cock, the feel of his thighs as they bunched with his strokes. The metal handle of the shower door bit into one hand, and the tile was no longer cold under the other as I held on, my body screaming for release.

“Taav—”

“Let go,” he rasped, and I pressed my forehead against his shoulder as my orgasm slammed through me, watching as his hand kept stroking against our cocks, mine pink, his a coppery brown, the creamy whiteness of my cum on his fingers as he kept stroking blending with his as he milked his own orgasm.

“Fuck,” I breathed, my arms finally wrapping around him.

“You okay?” he asked, the fingers of one hand still wound in my hair.

“Ye—ow.” I’d tried to sit up.

He moved off my lap quickly. “Val—”

“I’m fine.” I managed to sit up with only a small wince.

Taavi let out a breath. “I’m—”

“Don’t apologize.” It was a reversal of our usual conversation. “I wanted you to.”

He blew out a sigh. “And I’m an adult perfectly capable of saying ‘no,’” he retorted.

“Did you not want to?” Guilt slammed into me.

“Of course I did,” he retorted. “But I should have—”

“What?”

He’d rinsed off his other hand, and now he ran both through my hair. “I should have made better choices. For you.”

“I like these choices,” I told him.

“I don’t like you hurting,”

“I know.” I looked up at him, at the furrow between his eyes and the frown lines around his mouth. “But it’s my fault, not yours. And it was totally worth it.”

He snorted at that, and I knew I’d won him over again. “Fine. Now let me wash your hair.”

He was gentle, efficient, and well-behaved, and I kept my hands to myself. I didn’t want to, but I did.

Then he washed himself quickly before shutting off the water and climbing out. Then he switched the doors—opening the one next to me instead of the one he’d gone through—and passed me a towel.

“I’m going to change that dressing,” he told me.

“Okay.”

The water had weakened some of the adhesive, which meant that when he gently and carefully pulled it away, it didn’t stick too badly, although the frayed edges of the stitching still caught a little on the dry gauze underneath, making me suck in my breath more in anticipation than pain.