Page 155 of The Echo of Forever

“I hear you, but we’ll eat first…” he said, giving her a pointed look while handing me a container. “That cool with you?”

Instead of answering him directly, his grandmother looked at me and winked, a silent confirmation of everything she’d just told me. He cared deeply, even when he pretended otherwise.

Inside…ourhome, a couple of hours later, he headed for the bathroom without a word.

I stood in our bedroom, listening to him move around before turning the shower on. What his grandmother had shared was on my mind. But also how he’d witnessed his father’s murder. About how he protected his siblings by never showing them how deeply he felt for them.

Needing to wrap my arms around him, I stripped out of my clothes, leaving them in a trail toward the bathroom. The door was already slightly ajar, and I slipped inside the steam-filled space.

Through the glass shower door, he stood with his back to me, head tilted up as water cascaded down the planes of his dark skin.

I slid in behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing kisses down his spine before resting my head in the groove of it.

“Was wondering when you’d join me,” he murmured, his voice vibrating through his back and into my body.

He turned in my arms and backed me against the shower wall. The cool surface made me gasp, but it wasn’t hard to fall in line as he gripped my waist to hold me in place.

“You want something from me, my forever?” he asked, staring down at me intensely.

It wasn’t desire looking back, though it always lived at the edges of his expression. It was something deeper, more vulnerable.

I reached up and traced the outline of his lips with my fingertip.

“Are you upset about your grandmother?” I asked softly, hoping it would make him want to open up.

He shook his head, water droplets flying from his head.

“Nah.”

But his eyes told a different story. They always did with me. It felt like I could read Demetrius better than anyone, and right now, those dark eyes were filled with worry he was trying to hide.

I rose on my toes and pressed my lips to his, a gentle kiss meant to soften him up a little. At first, he was unyielding to my attempt, but then I felt him begin to melt into me. He relaxed as his arms tightened around my waist. Just as he started to deepen the kiss, I pulled back slightly and pushed my arms around his neck, bringing our foreheads together.

“I wish I could live in your mind,” I whispered, repeating the same words he’d said to me before I told him I loved him. “I want to know everything you’re feeling.”

A smile split across his face, and before I could stop it, mine too.

“I’m not upset,” he admitted. “But I don’t want her to die either. I’m thinking about sending her and my aunt to Philly or New York, where she can move about a little more freely…” He shook his head, immediately writing that idea off. “They won’t go for that.”

I kissed his lips again and then murmured against them, “You don’t have to hide how much you love your family, Demetrius. I won’t hurt or let anyone else hurt them. Tell me how you feel, please.”

He reached behind him and shut off the water. Then, without a word, he opened the shower door and guided me out. I let him wrap me in a towel and watched him do the same with himself. He regarded me with knowing eyes as he backed me into the bedroom.

“You and my G were talking about me, huh?” he asked, walking into the closet and returning shortly after with a bottle of vanilla body oil. “Was wondering when I’d get to address this.”

I took the oil from his hands and guided him to sit on the edge of the bed. His towel loosened as he sat, revealing a strip of dark skin along his thigh.

“Yes,” I admitted, kneeling in front of him. “She thinks you hide how you feel to protect them, and I think she’s right, but you don’t have to hide it from me.”

I poured oil into my palm and began massaging his feet, starting with the right. I worked the oil into his skin, feeling the tension in his muscles gradually release under my touch.

He had the nerve to have pretty feet. Why did everything about him have to be so perfect?

“Easier said than done, baby,” he told me gently, watching my hands move up to his ankles to his calves. “Yes, I love my family. But I love you more. That’s why I openly show it, not because I’m giving you the love I hide from them, but because I love you so much it’s all I can fucking think about. Not expressing that shit would drive me insane.”

I listened intently, hearing the truth in his voice. The sincerity there was unmistakable.

My hands continued their journey up his legs, pushing the towel higher as I worked the oil into his skin. When I reached his thighs, the towel fell away completely, revealing his semi-hard dick.