Page 67 of Shattered Veil

This is fine.

Totally fine.

Upon closing the door to her bedroom, the creaking of water pipes and telltale splashing against a plastic curtain reached my ears, and my head snapped to her bathroom door, which was now slid mostly shut. A tiny sliver of light peeked through, and though I wasn’t attempting to examine what was occurring beyond the space, I still saw it.

Her, I mean.

There was nothing distinguishing about the sight. It was simply a flash of her bare flesh as she moved from one side of the bathroom to the other. I hadn’t, by any means, seen her naked body—nor was I looking for her naked body—but it still made my entire being flinch, and the notion of playing it fucking cool was obliterated from my brain in a quick poof!

I blinked several times, my vision turning fuzzy as I cocked my head and stared at absolutely nothing. Water audibly dripped to the floor in louder, weighted splashes—no doubt due to the rivulets that were now rolling off of her body. A humid waft of something I could only describe as vanilla spice made its way into my nose, my eyes went heavy, I unlocked my knees to take the few steps to the door, and I rolled it aside enough to poke my head through the opening.

“Cas?”

The master bath was white and small—room enough for a toilet to the left, a sink and small vanity smack directly in front of the door, and a shower to the right with an ivory curtain.

“Ah, you found me,” she spoke from behind the fabric with the slightest of humor in her voice that made me bite my lower lip as I smiled.

“That I did,” I replied.

“House all locked up?”

“Mhm.”

“Is Sky good?”

“On the couch where you left her last.”

“Mmm. Good. You comin’ in?”

No, no—surely, I hallucinated that.

“Huh?”

Cassie peeked around the curtain, her face fresh—clean—and her cheeks flushed from heat. Her hair slicked back and entirely wet, she was looking at me with a wide grin.

“Come on—shower with me?”

Yes, ma’am.

I nodded enthusiastically, clawing at the back of my shirt and the remainder of my clothing to pull them off with haste. Cassie watched me for a moment and then chuckled as she pulled the curtain back to its original position.

She was facing away as I stepped in, her head angled up to the showerhead as water rained to her chest and rolled down her slight curves. It was clear where the stream had already traced over her as I eyed the long, pink, heated streak of her skin. It was just wide enough to nestle between her shoulder blades, running from the base of her neck to the dimples on her lower back. I placed my hands on either side of it, flexing my fingers into her shoulders, and dropped my head to touch my mouth to her spine. Cassie hummed happily as my lips damn near burned, and I murmured:

“The water’s scalding you.”

She quietly noted, “I like it hot.”

I trailed my hands down to her hips. “I see that.”

Cassie rested her head back against me, rolling it to the right against my clavicle, and I wrapped my arms around her waist to fully embrace her from behind. As expected, her body was radiating heat, and I fell into the flames, softly kissing her neck that she had stretched and left exposed before grazing my nose along her jawline.

In the most casual of motions—as if she had done the act several times before—Cassie grabbed my right wrist and brought it up to her lips, nipping the inked skin along my pulse point. I could hear her smile rather than see it as she made a contented noise, and she held my arm to her eye level as her fingers lazily traced along the dark marks. She eventually lowered it back to place my hand on the swell of her hip, but she continued tracing along the ink on my right arm as if she had memorized the lines.

“Do your tattoos mean anything?”

It was a simple, everyday question, and I relished in it.

I released my grip on her to extend my arms, looking as if I had forgotten about them. The marks on my upper half were all in a dark, monochromatic color scheme. The designs were mostly abstract, ranging from looking as though someone had taken a paintbrush and carefully dragged it across my skin in calculated strokes to flinging the same bristles at my body to create a harsh splatter. There were no letters…nor were there depictions of Latin or another language that I would have to translate for those who asked.

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