Page 73 of Anything for You
Dorian had whipped up a delicious dinner while I ran home to change and start a load of laundry. I also grabbed my shears in case he didn’t have any. He’d claimed he had clippers, but if he didn’t normally cut his own hair, who knew what shape they’d be in. He likely only used them for his beard, and hair could be tricky, especially thick hair like his.
I couldn’t have explained why the prospect of cutting his hair thrilled me, but it did. I couldn’t do anything fancy, but I knew how to trim, how to reshape, and I’d spent years doing men’s hair until the time I left the compound at fifteen, so I certainly had enough experience. I knew it’d come back.
“When was the last time you did this?” he asked from where he stood in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher afterhaving refused my help on the premise that I’d be doing work to cut his hair.
“I’ve cut two men’s hair in the last year—both friends of Nan’s. They take people to the salon or bring someone into Silverton Springs, but before she moved in, she offered my services.”
She’d been so proud of me for the many skills I possessed, as she often put it, and she wanted me to charge them. While she hadn’t been aware of how much money we needed to keep things afloat before we sold the house, she’d known I was working my tail off, and a haircut that took twenty minutes would be a nice boost.
I’d been simultaneously grateful and embarrassed.
“Am I jealous?” he asked, pulling a bar stool out from the counter.
I chuckled and finished setting everything up. “You shouldn’t be, no. They were nice, much older men.”
His gaze softened. It was one of those looks that would’ve seemed at odds with his burly, almost wild appearance, but now it fit him so well.
“Do you want to shower, or just want to wash your hair in the sink? It’ll be easier to trim when it’s wet.”
I shouldn’t have let my mind flash to what it might be like if I washed his hairin the showerbut there it was like a lightning strike straight to my temporal lobe. My hands in his hair, his on my waist, the skin of his palms burning into me, water running down over both of us?—
“Maybe just the sink. I’ll shower after since I need to do my beard, too, and I can make sure I’m not covered.”
Thankful I didn’t need to speak, I nodded as he disappeared to the bathroom to get shampoo. When he returned, he settled a towel around his shoulders and leaned againstthe counters. “You okay? I can definitely just do it myself if it makes you uncomfortable.”
A weird, borderline hysterical giggle snuck out of me entirely without my permission. “Um, no. Washing your hair will not make me uncomfortable.”
He waited for more, but when I didn’t give it, he narrowed his eyes. “Can we acknowledge that wasn’t a normal response?”
I laughed full out now, appreciating his directness, as always.
“We can.” Woo, my cheeks were downright ablaze. “I can say with certainty washing your hair will not make me uncomfortable. I was just, uh, thinking about, um, something else, and it was… not just washing your hair.”
Something in his gaze changed. I couldn’t have verbalized what, but it was something a little predatory, if I had to name it. A gleam or an air or avibethat shifted and he stepped closer.
“Tell me more. What more was there, if it wasn’t all hair washing?”
I swallowed hard. “Well, the location was… not the kitchen.”
A tinge of a smile crept into his expression. “Hmm, not the kitchen. Was it in the shower?”
One nod was all I had to give at this point because my heart was pounding and his hand on my waist flexed with a delicious pressure.
“And were you in the shower with me?” he asked, voice dropping low and brushing across my skin.
He was so close and so deliciously focused on me. What would he do if I told him exactly what’d flashed into my mind? What would he think?
When I didn’t confirm or deny a thing, hishand slid around to my lower back and he pressed me close so our bodies were tight against one another. Clearly, the man had a taste for torture.
“Were you with me, Dove?”
If he hadn’t anchored me to the spot, I would’ve expired from the flash of heat that sizzled from my neck where his breath coasted against my skin all the way to my toes.
“Yes.”
There. I’d said it.
But instead of saying anything, he exhaled, almost like he was winded, and rocked his forehead into my shoulder for a moment before stepping back.
