Page 125 of Veiled in Brick

I spun to face him, water splashing around us as I attempted to straddle his legs. His thighs were pressed firmly against the side of the tub and there was no room for it, so I rested my shins on him and sat back on my heels. The loofah floated between us, and I grabbed it.

Liam watched me intently as I returned the favor and ran it over his skin. He held his arms out, sinking them back into the water when I was finished with them, and then leaned his head back against the tile again as I worked my way from his chest to his neck. I dropped the loofah back to the water and grabbed the hand towel. I sank it into the tub, wringing it out before touching it to his hair.

“Close your eyes, Lee,” I instructed in a whisper.

He did so and I swiped as gently as possible, wetting the area until there were no more traces of red. His hair was dark and damp when I finished, the strands curling softly from the moisture. I set the towel on the side of the tub once more and then reached down to squeeze the loofah. His eyes still obediently closed, I brought my suds-covered fingers to his face. I traced his stubble, pushed his hair off of his forehead to cover every last inch, and when I ran over the scar on his upper lip, his mouth fell open in a soft exhale. I placed my hands in the bath once more. Soap quickly rinsed off, I repeated my actions to wipe away any trace of it on his face.

Liam waited for a moment, and when he finally seemed to suspect that I was finished, he looked at me. The lids lingered for a long while over his eyes with every tired blink, his warm gaze full of adoration as it inspected me.

“Let me see your face,” he muttered, ordering just as I did, “close your eyes.”

He repeated my actions, paying extra attention not to aggravate the scrape on my cheek. His fingertips ran tiny circles over my forehead and my chin—down my neck and to my upper chest. Tracing my collarbones then, his touch slowed. He trailed back up to my neck, his thumbs lingering by my jaw and clasping my nape, and I sighed into his hands when he worked up to my scalp.

“That feels good,” I murmured.

“Good,” his voice vibrated back to my ears, and I could hear his smile. “Lean back.”

I obeyed, and my hair dipped back into the tub. Stretched backward between his legs with his arms supporting my back and his fingers working through my hair, I chuckled.

“You’re lucky I’m very bendy.”

“No,” he replied, and then quickly corrected to, “Well, yes, but more like I’m lucky you’re so small—wouldn’t be able to do this otherwise.”

He brought me back up, water streamed down my back, and I continued the forward momentum, stopping only when I was stretched onto his chest and my palms splayed across his pectorals. I looked up to him, and he wore a small smirk.

“Weird time to try to piss me off by commenting on my size,” I told him quietly.

He shrugged a brawny shoulder, and I placed my lips on his with no hesitation.

He was still wet, our faces cold, and he scratched my neck softly as our mouths moved together. The kisses were sweet. Closed-lipped. Chaste, but he never ushered me away. Our motions slowed, he rested his forehead against mine, and he whispered down to me:

“Do you want shampoo for your hair?”

I shook my head. “I want to go to bed.”

He nodded, our noses brushed together, and he asked, “Sleep with me?”

It was a question. Of course, it was a question, but it was spoken with need. His chocolate eyes were filled with desperation. And though I was anticipating sleeping with him anyway for I wanted his protective touch just as much as he seemed to want mine, his tone cracked me in half. It crumpled me, and I hummed in agreement before the next words fell out of my mouth.

“Love you, Lee.”

He smiled, his hands tangling further in my wet hair. “Love you too, Zo’.”

His returned words glued me together, and our lips touched once more. Lazily this time, we moved against each other with the feeling that we had all the time in the world. Eventually, we stood, dried ourselves off, crawled into his bed without bothering to find clothing, and his arms were around me again. The blankets were up to our shoulders, and I was pulled flush to his chest. Neither of us dared to move, and if I were being honest, I was half-wondering if we would have sex. The combination of knowing the threat over us all was gone, the closeness that we shared as we slowly cleaned each other in the bath, the additional exchange of I love you’s, and sharing a bed for the first time was heady—hell, I was expecting sex once we were buried under the sheets. We held each other tightly as if we were scared the other would let go. We caressed the lines of each other’s bodies softly—murmured quiet sweet nothings and followed them up with kisses in more neglected areas like eyelids, earlobes, and the tips of our noses.

We didn’t have sex, though. We slept. We drifted off in each other’s arms, woke several hours later to shift our bodies into a more preferable position, and dozed off again. Our eyes opened occasionally—tightening grips and happy grumbles all around—and sleep would take us once more.

Epilogue

On day one after it all had occurred, I requested a week off from work.

That was reasonable, right?

I wasn’t sure of the etiquette when it came to recovery from a situation such as this, but that felt fitting, so I didn’t question myself when I decided to cite personal reasons and utilize almost all that remained of my paid time off.

It took little to no convincing for Liam to do the same. His college schedule along with the contract job he had been working were a touch more complicated to avoid, but he did so nonetheless.

“Family emergency,” Liam said into his phone, his eyebrows flying up at the response in his ear as he pointedly set his coffee mug down on his kitchen table. “I have to explain my family emergency? That’s kinda personal—what do you mean, ‘Is it personal time or a family emergency?’ It’s both.” Liam rolled his eyes, hard. “I know you don’t offer PTO.”

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