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I was being an asshole, and I knew it.
I slammed my way through the glass door and slapped my hand on the door as she finally got it open to leave, preventing her from escaping.
“Don’t,” I growled as I pinned her body face first against the closed door. “Don’t cry.”
After I’d lived through sharing her sorrow at the cemetery, I never wanted to see Ruby hurt that way again.
The meeting of our bodies skin-to-skin drained all the resistance from me.
Jesus! She felt so damn good.
“I’m sorry. I invaded your privacy. I didn’t know it was wrong. We’re a couple,” she said through broken sobs.
She sounded scared, and I hated that. I never wanted Ruby to be afraid ever again. “Don’t be scared,” I said, my voice husky with regret. “And you never invade my privacy. We are a couple. This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
Ruby was completely naked, and was obviously ready to climb into the shower with me. My wet body had saturated hers, and we were both dripping wet.
I felt the tension start to leave her body and her backside started to melt into my front.
Nothing had ever felt so damn right.
“Then what happened just now?” she asked tearfully.
“I got scared,” I confessed after I’d swallowed the lump in my throat. It was time for me to get real with her.
She’d fucking trusted me with every horrible thing that had happened in her past, so I was done being a coward.
“Why were you afraid?”
“Because the lower half of my body is uglier than what you’ve seen on the top,” I rasped against her ear.
Something about Ruby always made me spill my guts, even when I didn’t want to.
She started to squirm so hard in my hold that she got turned around and nailed me with a glare I’d never seen before.
“Are you trying to tell me that all this is over something that is completely superficial?” she asked in a furious tone.
I locked eyes with her, and what I saw coming back at me was pure anger. It was the first time I’d ever seen Ruby really pissed off, and her fury was mesmerizing.
“You don’t know how bad it really is,” I told her roughly.
“Seriously?” she shrieked as she pushed on my chest. “Well, let me see this awful sight for myself. Get back in the shower.”
“Ruby, I’m not—”
“This isn’t about you now,” she said in an unforgiving voice. “It’s all about me and whether I’m as superficial as the bitch who dumped you. And whether or not my delicate self can handle what happened to you.”
I had no idea what had happened to the sweet Ruby I adored, but this incensed, bossy Ruby was kind of a turn-on, too.
I backed up as she gently pushed me back into the shower, and then got in herself, slamming the glass door hard enough that I hoped it didn’t shatter.
She folded her arms across her chest as she surveyed every inch of my body while my back took the brunt of the water from the shower nozzle.
“What in the hell do I have to do to make you understand that I want you? That I’ll always want you,” she said desperately. “Just tell me and I’ll do it. I’ve spent every day fantasizing how it would be if you fucked me, and I think I pretty much covered every position. I need you, but I can’t make you trust me.”
I felt like a dick. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to do anything. You’re fucking perfect, and I do trust you.”
She’d done plenty to prove that my injuries weren’t going to affect the way she felt about me. I’d just been too deeply absorbed in my own fears that I hadn’t heard her.
But her message was pretty loud and clear now.
She moved forward and put her hands on my chest. I didn’t breathe as she started tracing every one of my scars.
“I don’t always like my body, either,” she confessed. “And it took all the courage I had to show you the scars I had from my abuse. But it’s something I can’t change any more than you can fix your scars. They’re part of us. Part of our history. But they don’t have to define us if we want to move forward. Neither one of us deserved the pain we went through. But haven’t we had enough pain now, Jett? Wouldn’t it be better to let it go and look at our future?”