Page 41 of Anything for You (Veterans of Silver Ridge #7)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Dove

D orian had whipped up a delicious dinner while I ran home to change and start a load of laundry.

I also grabbed my shears in case he didn’t have any.

He’d claimed he had clippers, but if he didn’t normally cut his own hair, who knew what shape they’d be in.

He likely only used them for his beard, and hair could be tricky, especially thick hair like his.

I couldn’t have explained why the prospect of cutting his hair thrilled me, but it did.

I couldn’t do anything fancy, but I knew how to trim, how to reshape, and I’d spent years doing men’s hair until the time I left the compound at fifteen, so I certainly had enough experience. I knew it’d come back.

“When was the last time you did this?” he asked from where he stood in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher after having refused my help on the premise that I’d be doing work to cut his hair.

“I’ve cut two men’s hair in the last year—both friends of Nan’s. They take people to the salon or bring someone into Silverton Springs, but before she moved in, she offered my services.”

She’d been so proud of me for the many skills I possessed, as she often put it, and she wanted me to charge them.

While she hadn’t been aware of how much money we needed to keep things afloat before we sold the house, she’d known I was working my tail off, and a haircut that took twenty minutes would be a nice boost.

I’d been simultaneously grateful and embarrassed.

“Am I jealous?” he asked, pulling a bar stool out from the counter.

I chuckled and finished setting everything up. “You shouldn’t be, no. They were nice, much older men.”

His gaze softened. It was one of those looks that would’ve seemed at odds with his burly, almost wild appearance, but now it fit him so well.

“Do you want to shower, or just want to wash your hair in the sink? It’ll be easier to trim when it’s wet.”

I shouldn’t have let my mind flash to what it might be like if I washed his hair in the shower but there it was like a lightning strike straight to my temporal lobe. My hands in his hair, his on my waist, the skin of his palms burning into me, water running down over both of us?—

“Maybe just the sink. I’ll shower after since I need to do my beard, too, and I can make sure I’m not covered.”

Thankful I didn’t need to speak, I nodded as he disappeared to the bathroom to get shampoo. When he returned, he settled a towel around his shoulders and leaned against the counters. “You okay? I can definitely just do it myself if it makes you uncomfortable.”

A weird, borderline hysterical giggle snuck out of me entirely without my permission. “Um, no. Washing your hair will not make me uncomfortable.”

He waited for more, but when I didn’t give it, he narrowed his eyes. “Can we acknowledge that wasn’t a normal response?”

I laughed full out now, appreciating his directness, as always.

“We can.” Woo, my cheeks were downright ablaze. “I can say with certainty washing your hair will not make me uncomfortable. I was just, uh, thinking about, um, something else, and it was… not just washing your hair.”

Something in his gaze changed. I couldn’t have verbalized what, but it was something a little predatory, if I had to name it. A gleam or an air or a vibe that shifted and he stepped closer.

“Tell me more. What more was there, if it wasn’t all hair washing?”

I swallowed hard. “Well, the location was… not the kitchen.”

A tinge of a smile crept into his expression. “Hmm, not the kitchen. Was it in the shower?”

One nod was all I had to give at this point because my heart was pounding and his hand on my waist flexed with a delicious pressure.

“And were you in the shower with me?” he asked, voice dropping low and brushing across my skin.

He was so close and so deliciously focused on me. What would he do if I told him exactly what’d flashed into my mind? What would he think?

When I didn’t confirm or deny a thing, his hand slid around to my lower back and he pressed me close so our bodies were tight against one another. Clearly, the man had a taste for torture.

“Were you with me, Dove?”

If he hadn’t anchored me to the spot, I would’ve expired from the flash of heat that sizzled from my neck where his breath coasted against my skin all the way to my toes.

“Yes.”

There. I’d said it.

But instead of saying anything, he exhaled, almost like he was winded, and rocked his forehead into my shoulder for a moment before stepping back.

The gear shift had me a bit confused, and my heart rate hadn’t slowed at all. When our gazes met, his eyes were absolutely aflame with heat and promise.

“That’s one way to do it,” he said, then chuckled and shook his head at himself. “But I think tonight, let’s stick with the sink.”

Air whooshed out of me in relief and yes, a tiny twinge of disappointment. Not that the next step in our physical relationship was jumping into a shower together for goodness’s sake, but I could admit to very much liking the idea of such an event occurring at some point.

Interestingly, I hadn’t wanted closeness like this with a man ever before.

Not really. I’d liked a guy in my early twenties, right out of college, whom I’d thought might be the one, and in that context, I thought I might want him to be my first and then only.

But our relationship had fizzled not long after the thought had come, and I’d only ever been glad I hadn’t gotten anywhere close with him.

I’d never regretted my choices. I’d never been embarrassed to be where I was in life without having had those experiences because I’d always felt certain I’d enjoy sharing that with my person, whoever they ended up being.

Between busy schedules, caring for Nan, and generally preferring the company of fictional men to the rampant disappointment real-life ones so often caused, I’d hardly even been tempted.

But as I ran the water into Dorian’s hair and combed through the wet strands, as shampoo bubbled between my fingers and I scratched into his scalp, as his muscular back and strong neck were on display and he patiently waited for me to finish, I recognized the situation for what it was.

I suspected Dorian was it, and that every glance, every kiss, and every touch was leading somewhere.

Of course this would occur to me as I washed his hair.

I’d done this for others, most recently Nan, and it’d always been pleasant.

A way I could help her. But with Dorian, it felt…

intimate. Charged in some way. Maybe that was thanks to his comments, or my wild imagination, or maybe it was simply due to what had always been building between us.

He towel-dried his hair in a way that made his biceps particularly bulgy and attractive, and he looked at me through long, dark lashes as he sat on the stool.

“You’re too tall,” I said, voice a little raspy after working in the relative silence of the hair wash. He was sitting down but we were basically face to face. I glanced around, noticing a step stool. “Can I use that?”

“Anything you need.”

His words sent a thrill through me, and I could’ve sworn I felt his gaze as I moved to the little stool. It only subsided when I situated it behind him and combed through his hair. He’d already told me what he wanted—a few inches off the top and the sides cleaned up.

In a few minutes, I finished with a final snip.

“Go take a look and make sure it’s short enough. I can take more off.”

I hoped I hadn’t taken too much, but honestly, it looked so good. His rich brown hair was thick and dark and looked really good longer, but seeing it trimmed up like this made me low-key nervous to face him after he’d trimmed his beard.

I’d seen that once before and it’d been dangerous. I already liked the way he looked. I was already pretty much completely in love with the man. I didn’t need him shifting from broodingly handsome to downright hot in a matter of minutes.

Without a word, he moved to the bathroom and not long after, he emerged. “Thank you.” He took the clippers and left again.

I busied myself with sweeping up the hair. I’d wondered if Bear would come investigate but he’d greeted me, ate dinner while we did, and had returned to his bed in the living room.

A few minutes later, he called for me.

“Dove, could you come here?”

I moved instantly, and so did Bear. There wasn’t strain in his voice, but there was something.

He was standing in front of the sink shirtless, a small animal’s worth of hair on the counter, looking at his reflection. His gaze shifted to meet mine when I entered.

He was gorgeous. Literally everything about him was.

He already had been, of course, but now I could see the shape of his jaw more distinctly.

He’d trimmed the beard short, only a little longer than Luc’s, and he was honestly unfairly handsome.

He’d neatened up the line at his neck and it looked downright dashing instead of borderline unruly like it had .

“Is the beard short enough?” he asked, scowling at his reflection with what was no doubt a too-critical eye.

“I think I need to take some of those self-defense classes with Tristan and Bruce,” I said, not entirely sure what was coming out of my mouth.

His brow furrowed more than it already had been. “I don’t disagree, but why?”

I sighed, walking up to stand next to him and not at all hating how we looked side by side in the mirror.

It should’ve been odd, our height difference and his dark hair and eyes with my blonde locks and lighter features, but instead we just looked…

right. Maybe no one else would ever think it, but to me we seemed an awful lot like a quirky but perfectly matched set.

“Because I’m going to have to know how to throw elbows properly when the ladies of Silverton see you.”