Page 56 of Rivals
I’ve never tried the relationship thing. I’ve preferred my time with women to be brief and hardly committal in an attempt to protect myself. Regardless, most women don’t like how I am… a little intense with a heaping side of anger. Revna doesn’t seem to care because she knows where we stand, which is nowhere. Or it doesn’t bother her because she understands it to some degree. I think she does, especially when I think back to how she responded to my portrait of her.
She steps towards me and we trade places again while she rinses her hair. The smell of my soap fills the room, and the dominant part of me likes that she smells like me. We haven’t said a word, but it feels like we are saying everything.
“I want you to move in with me,” I blurt out. I mentally backhand myself because that was not how I wanted to start this conversation. I wanted to come at this logically because I think it is the only way we can make Italy work. I want to get Revna there more than I want it myself. I want to see the look in her eyes when we see the Sistine Chapel, the Four Fountains, the Triumph, and David. I want to see her see all of it.
I think I’m falling in love with her.
“I’m literally in your shower with you,” she says. The fear surrounding her has dissipated, and she looks at me with clear eyes.
“You know what I mean,” I say. She tilts her head and grabs my razor. She sticks her foot to the wall and begins dragging it up her leg. I watch her until I realize she’s distracting me. “Revna,” I bark. She smiles to herself while she carefully shaves her legs.
“Lachlan,” she murmurs.
“Do I need to spell it out for you, muse?” I ask her. She shifts to the other leg and pulls the razor closer to her knee. Her hand is shaking, and she cuts herself. She curses and ignores it, going around the small, welling cut.
“Indulge me, Lachlan,” she says. I’m done, but I stay in the spray. I’m afraid if we leave the safety of the shower, then I won’t be able to have this conversation with her.
“I think it’s the only way we can make Italy happen. We need to add up what it will cost and then get an idea of what it’s going to take for us to buy supplies there. We leave in three months from today, so we have to figure out how to make this happen and fast.”
She drops her leg and rinses the razor in the water. I step to the side, and she steps back under it. Her shoulder brushes my chest, and we’re so close. I look down at her, and she tilts her head into the spray again. “This was a temporary thing,” she whispers with her eyes closed and head tilted up into the water.
I know I’m asking for more than before. I know that I’m asking her to trust me in an entirely different way. If she says yes, then she won’t only be trusting me, but she will also be fully relying on me. The reality is that I could kick her out at any time. I would never do that. Even if I hated her, I’m not evil. But I recognize this is a lot to ask of someone who does not allow anyone else to have the possibility of control over her life or to trust someone else fully.
If I were her, I don’t think I would agree to it, either. I know it’s a long shot, but the numbers won’t add up if we don’t do something drastic. We’ve come this far. We can’t stop now. She flips the water off and steps out of the shower, grabbing her towel to dry herself off. I step behind her and do the same, still waiting for an answer. She hasn’t yelled at me, glared at me, or called me an asshole.
I can’t take it anymore. “Say something.” She looks at me through the mirror while she puts lotion on her body and face. I take a few steps closer to her, so I’m directly behind her.
She swallows thickly and tilts her head back. I’m so tall I can look down and into her eyes. “I’m scared,” she says. Her eyes widen as if the moment of vulnerability shouldn’t have come out.
So all I can do is level with her. I would never say these words to anyone else, but it’s her. I am coming to believe she understands me more than maybe anyone else in this screwed-up world. “I am, too.”
“Did you finish your final?” she asks. I frown at her and she looks at herself in the mirror as she squeezes toothpaste on the brush.
Revna is excellent at deflecting. If she’s not using her words to get out of something, she uses her body. I take a deep breath and let it out through my nose, my nostrils flaring in the process. I take another step forward, pressing myself against her so the tops of her hips hit the edge of the vanity. “You know I did. Now answer the question.” She continues brushing her teeth and then spits into the sink.
She presses her butt into my groin, and I grab her hips, trying to stifle a groan. She’s working hard to avoid answering this question, but I won’t have it. I need to know she’s in this—the competition, that is. “Why?” she asks.
“I just told you why, Revna,” I grit out.
I spin her around, and her towel falls away from her body. She can’t hide from me, and she knows it. I grab her neck and push her further into the counter, forcing her back to arch. She whimpers, but it’s not out of fear. Her legs widen slightly against me, and I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. Her coffee colored eyes are reaching out to me. I can feel the need rolling off of her, but I won’t give her what she wants—what I want—until I get an answer.
I trail my hand between her breasts to her center. She nibbles her lower lip, and I grin. “Give me an answer so I can give you what you want, little bird.” She glares at me. This is not where I thought this was going. I hoped we could sit down, discuss it, and hopefully come to an agreement. I shouldn’t be surprised. It takes us a while to end up on the same page, but when we do, the results are explosive. We were incendiary the first time we kissed. When I’m with her, the world could be burning down around us, and she would be the only thing that matters to me. She looks at me like I am all the things I wish I was, that my mistakes don’t define me, and neither does my past.
She lifts her hand and grasps the back of my neck. At some point, my towel fell off my hips. We appear to be creating some kind of routine that ends up with us back in the shower after we just took one. Fingers dig into my skin as she tugs me down to her level. I relent, pressing my lips to hers. Her other hand comes to my face, and she presses her body against mine, telling me what she’s afraid to put into words. She stains my lips with her desperation and bleeds her vulnerability onto them.
I grab her thighs and squeeze them, lifting her up to the counter and pushing between her legs. She pulls back to breathe, and I trail kisses down her jaw to her collarbone. She sighs as I taste her clean skin while her fingers slip through my damp hair. I know what she’s doing, but part of me thinks she needs reassurance from me in this form. That it will somehow connect us further in her mind, well, it does in mine, too.
I pull back and level her with a stare. Her lips are red, and her cheeks and chest flush from our moment. I knead the back of her neck gently. “Revna, baby, I—“
“Lachlan, please just—let me think about it. What you are asking of me is really hard for me to do. Let me think about it.”
Her eyes are raw and scared. So I say the words I know she needs to hear. “You are safe with me, little bird.” She gasps, and I take her mouth like I own it. Possession rolls through me, and I want to take her right here and now, but she deserves more than that. She deserves to feel cherished and cared for in this moment. Emotions have been flying high, and I know if I push her further, it will push her over the edge, and there will be no coming back from it.
We have been through so much together in this short period of time, and I’m not sure what the next three months will bring. But for now, I want to live in the moment that is Revna. I want to feel her skin on mine. I want to drown in the pool of pleasure between us.
I lift her off the counter and carry her to my bed. “The windows,” she says while I skim kisses down her neck. I lick her nipple, and she moans softly.
“You don’t want to give them a show, baby?” I ask her. Her eyes open, and her eyebrow lifts.
