Page 60 of Under Your Scars

“How’d you sleep?”

I moan with delight. “So good. This bed is amazing.”

“It’s a Hypnos. Worth every goddamn penny.”

“Do I even want to know how much it cost?” I tease, pulling a small laugh from him.

“No, probably not,” he mumbles into my hair, checking the time on his phone. He kisses my forehead with so much tenderness that my heart does cartwheels. “Let’s get up. Breakfast is served at eight.”

With a grumble, I sit up in the bed and rub the leftover sleep from my eyes. There’s a satisfying ache between my legs and when I attempt to stand, I nearly fall over. Christian laughs at me and I narrow my eyes at him.

It’s easy for him to stand up when he didn’t get railed all night by eight inches of steel. Ever the gentleman, he rescues me from my predicament by lifting me into his arms bridal style to carry me into the bathroom. Like the rest of his house, the bathroom is grand. The bathtub is the size of the bed, and the shower could fit at least ten people inside. There’s a double sink with bright white lights surrounding it, making it perfect for getting ready.

And the window? God, I’ve never seen the Atlantic Ocean look so stunning. I am making myself a promise that I’m going to run myself a bath one day and look out over the water for hours.

Christian flicks a switch on the wall, and a minute later, the cold marble tiles under my feet radiate a pleasant warmth that has my eyes rolling in sweet delight.

“I could live in this bathroom.”

Christian laughs again and nods towards the countertop. “I had someone take your keys and grab some things from your apartment. It should be everything you need to get ready.” He nods in the opposite direction, towards the shower. “Be careful with the water. It gets hot.”

I take my bottom lip between my teeth. “You could shower with me,” I suggest.

“No,” he snaps with a tone change so abrupt I need a chiropractor from the whiplash he gave me.

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll wait for you,” he says dryly, and then leaves, shutting the door behind him. My brow furrows with utter confusion. I don’t know what I did or said to make him change his attitude so quickly. It can’t be the fact that I asked him to shower with me. He had his dick inside me and his tongue on every sinful place he could manage last night. Showering together seems pretty PG in comparison.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe he’s weird about his shower time. For some people, it’s a way to unwind, and having me there might mess with the peace it brings him. I sigh to myself and turn to the countertop.

Whoever he sent to my apartment, I can tell it was a woman, because my pack of birth control pills is sitting neatly on top of a stack of clean clothes. My toothbrush, hairbrush, and my makeup bag are all there.

I pull Christian’s shirt off and toss it into the hamper near the door, and my gaze lands on something peculiar.

There’s a freestanding frame leaning against the wall. I run my hands along the sleek black frame. There’s a nail high above my head. That must be where it came from. It doesn’t have any artwork in it. Weird.

My eyes catch on something reflective in the frame. I lean in to look closer. It’s a tiny piece of a mirror. I raise an inquisitive eyebrow and look up at that nail again.

How did a mirror hanging that high up on a wall shatter?

On the floor, near the frame, there’s another tiny shard. I bend down to pick it up, not wanting Christian or anyone else to step on it, and when I turn it over in my hand, I notice that there’s a red smudge across the reflective surface.

Fifteen minutes later, I emerge from the bathroom with damp hair, fresh breath, and clean clothes. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was the best shower I’ve ever had. I feel like an entirely new woman, and most importantly, I smell like Christian. I used his body wash and shampoo, and it feels so…domestic. It feels like I belong here, and when my eyes meet Christian’s, sitting on the bench at the edge of the bed, I can’t help but smile.

His hair is damp, so he must have showered in some other room in the mansion.

He smiles back. “Hungry?”

He’s returned to that charismatic side of him that’s always made me weak at the knees. I nod, and he holds out his hand for me to take. He pulls me into his lap and I giggle when his fingers dig into my ticklish sides. “I have it on good authority that there’s the world’s best French toast waiting for us in the dining room.”

Yeah, I was definitely overthinking it—he just values his private shower time.

“The world’s best?” He captures my lips in a searing kiss, and I can feel him grow hard against my center. “Jesus, how is your dick still working? My vagina has never been so sore.”

He sensually licks up the column of my neck. He grabs a fistful of my hair to tug me closer to him, and as I begin to grind into his lap, there’s a sharp knock on the door. It swings open a second later, and a middle-aged woman in scrubs walks in.

“Oh! Mr. Reeves, I’m so sorry.” She quickly turns around. “I thought you were alone. Pardon me, I only came to tell you that Mr. O’Donnell is being difficult about his medicine again.”