Page 24 of Diamonds

It’s not fully hard.But he’s rocking a solid semi.

He glances at the bathroom door.“Do you have a towel?”

I blink.“Of course.”I pad over to my walk-in closet and grab a clean towel off the shelf.It’s bright yellow with pink flowers.

He squints at the towel.“Seriously?”

I smile nervously.“All my other towels are dirty.I go through a lot of them.”

“Why?”

I bite my lip.“My mum.She insisted that my father and I use a new towel every day.Reduce the spread of germs.”

He smirks.“Hotel housekeepers must have hated you all.”

I look down.“Mum wouldn’t be caught dead in a hotel.She saw those videos online of people with black lights showing stains on the bedspread and swore them off for life.We never traveled anywhere that was more than a few hours’ drive away.”

“So she never visited you in the States, did she?”

I cross my arms.“She passed away, actually, right before I moved here.”

She did a whole lot more than pass away, but I’m not revisitingthatmemory.Not after what we’ve been through.

I hand him the towel.“But that’s a whole other story.One for another time.Feel free to use my body wash and shampoo.And turn on the fan.Otherwise the mirror will fog up.”

He looks me up and down slowly but then turns and walks into the bathroom, giving me a great view of his sculpted arse.

He closes the bathroom door halfway, allowing a slit of light to peek out from the doorway.

I sit down on the edge of my bed and cover my head with my hands.

I’ll have to eventually tell Maddox about my mother.About what she did that day I was supposed to leave for university.

But it’s the one thing I’d rather discuss less than the severed head we dug up this evening.

“Alissa?”

I walk up to the door and speak through the crack.“Yeah?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, just come in here.Is this soap or shampoo?”

I crack a small smile as I walk inside.“Did you read the label?”

He pushes a small bottle with an opaque white liquid inside against the glass door of my shower.“It’s unlabeled.”

I narrow my eyes.“That’s strange.I don’t think I own anything that isn’t labeled.”I scratch my chin.“I had a friend pass through a few weeks ago.Maybe she left it in.”I point to the shelf in the back corner of the shower.“But all of my body wash and shampoo is on that shelf.Use whatever you need.”

“WhateverI need?”He raises an eyebrow.

I cross my arms.“I mean, within reason.”

He grins slightly and then starts to work a dollop of shampoo into a lather through his dark hair.He turns around, giving me another view of his beautiful backside.

My God, his body is bloody perfect.

And I’m suddenly feeling very unsafe outside of the shower.

“Maddox?”