Page 44 of Awaken the Dragon
It sounded odd, and if it were under any other circumstance she may have taken offense, but when he reached for the bottle and poured more soap into his hands, she found herself enticed.
“I do not...cannot—” The right words would not come.
“It’s a shower,” he said as if he knew exactly what she had failed to say. “And afterward, we’ll return to the Office and go about our day. You’re unsure, and so am I. But I don’t want to deal with any of that right now. I only want to be here in this moment.”
He talked while his hands slipped farther down her torso to glide right past her navel and slip between her legs. She almost stumbled at the instant jab of desire and slapped her palms on his bare chest to remain steady. His muscles bunched and tensed beneath her hands and he continued to move his hands between her legs, dragging soap along her lips and inner thighs. She kept her hands on him while he moved methodically soaping every part of her body.
When he pushed her beneath the spray, she sighed when the water pulsed over her skin.
“Feel better?” he whispered against her ear.
“Yes.” It was the truth and when she felt his fingers in her hair next, she shook her head. “You cannot. I need—”
“Shampoo with conditioner,” he finished for her. “I have some. Though it’s not for women, it’ll still do the trick.”
She knew he had the shampoo because she’d seen it when she came into the bathroom after the last time they had sex. And he was right, it was not her normal product, but after all the things that had happened last night, she wanted to feel the water all over this morning, needed to replenish herself from head to toe.
“I can do it.”
He pushed away her hands the moment she raised them to her head. “I know you can, but I want to. I want to help relax you.”
Oh he had done that very well several times throughout the night. That was her body speaking; her mind and spirit were still thoroughly confused and out of sync.
He didn’t wait for her to respond but took the bottle of shampoo from another shelf and poured some into his hand. If her mind and spirit were not on board with him washing her hair a few moments ago, they were singing a different tune the minute his fingers began scraping along her scalp. Not too fast and not too slow, he raked her scalp, blending that action with soaping all of her hair.
“How many times have you done this before?”To other women?That echoed in her mind, but she figured he knew what she was asking.
“Never.”
When she didn’t respond, he turned her to face him and she fought to keep her gaze on his face and not lowered to his chest or abs or other places.
“I’m not in the habit of lying to women, or anyone else for that matter. If you ask me a question and I answer it, you can take it as the truth.”
“I believe you.” But she didn’t know how to react to the knowledge that she was the first to be in this position with him.
“Good, now let me finish before I mess this up.”
Shola smiled because there was nothing he could do to mess up this moment for her—the moment she first yearned for something more from her life than what was her destiny.
Warrick stepped out of the shower and grabbed a thick burgundy towel. He wrapped it around the lower half of his body and walked into his bedroom.
Enes was sitting in the chair across from his bed. She was one of his favorites with her short-cropped platinum blond hair and hazel-and-yellow-tinted eyes against a copper-toned complexion. That’s why he’d elevated her to general manager at Twilight, the most popular club in Burgess.
“We didn’t have a meeting scheduled,” he said after walking past her and going straight into his closet.
On the left were suits, arranged in order by color, jackets on the top bar, pants on the bottom. Straight to the back of the closet were shirts, again arranged by color. Ties had two specially made racks, and shoes took up one full wall.
Seven minutes after going in, Warrick came out with an outfit for the night and dropped the towel to the floor. She watched him, like always, admitting that she probably knew his body better than he knew it himself, an intriguing thought, if she were his type.
“They want the money now. We have it. We should—”
His cutting glare stopped her next words. She swallowed, the sound loud in the otherwise quiet room. He stepped into his boxer briefs and sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks. The pants came next, and then he stood, grabbed the shirt and pushed his arms into the sleeves.
“You’ve been distracted,” she continued. “It’s understandable with the wed...ah, ceremony coming up. But business goes on. Enforcers have been all over the place, so attendance at the club’s been down.”
“Increased enforcer presence can be laid at your feet.” As a rule he didn’t believe yelling was always necessary to get his point across—no matter how irritated he might be with someone.
“You told me to take care of her.”
