“Cheers to that,” she says, sipping her wine again, then setting her head against my shoulder. Peering toward the bathroom, she goes very still. “Wait. I was supposed to watch the tub as it filled, wasn’t I?”
“Shit.” I nearly drop my wineglass as I set it down, then run into the bathroom.
“Sorry!” she yells from behind me.
“It’s all right,” I call over my shoulder, reaching for the handles to turn off the spigot. “It barely overflowed. Not too much water on the floor. Just be careful—”
“I started daydreaming,” she says, rushing into the bathroom, clearly not having heard me, “and completely lost track of—ack!”
Slipping on the water that’s spilled onto the tiles, Kate slides across the floor, then slams into me. I wrap an arm around her and try to steady us, pinwheeling my free arm until I catch a towel that’s hanging nearby, but it just rips the towel rack out of the wall.
I clutch Kate inside my arms as we fall, me onto my back, Kate on top of me. We land with a loud, wet splat.
The room is stunningly quiet.
After a prolonged stretch of silence, Kate whispers, “I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I wheeze.
She picks up her head from where I’d tucked it against my shoulder to protect her, eyes wide as she looks at me. “Why do you sound like that?”
“Air,” I croak as I point to my chest, then lift a finger. “Just need a minute.”
She bites her lip. Her face is getting progressively redder.
“Swear to God, Katerina,” I wheeze. “If you laugh right now—”
A cackle bursts out of her so loud it echoes off the tiles. “I’m sorry!” she shrieks, tears starting in the corners of her eyes. “I can’t help it when this happens.” She doubles over so hard on another cackling laugh, air wheezes out of her.
My shoulders start to shake as I fight a laugh, not knowing how my lungs can handle it when I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. Despite my worries, a hoarse, deep laugh leaves me as my head flops back onto the wet floor.
“Christopher!” She’s still laughing as she buries her face in my chest. “I’m so sorry. I’m the worst.”
“Hush.” I drag her back down into my arms, pulling her across my body and clasping her jaw in my hand, stealing a deep, hot kiss. Gently, I tug her lip between my teeth and earn a delicious, tiny head-to-toe shudder. “You are the best.”
Her laughter dies away. She looks at me, unblinking, and brings a hand to my face, sweeping back the hair that’s fallen onto my forehead. “I think you are, too.”
Leaning in, she brushes her lips over mine, sweet and fleeting. “Let me clean this up,” she says. “Then I’ll call you in, okay?”
“I can help—”
“Christopher.” She kisses my jaw, my throat, her hand sliding down my chest. My hips lift, waiting for her to finally touch me where I ache so badly for her, but she stops just short of where I want. “Please let me clean up my mess.”
Grumbling a little about it, I sit up with her carefully, then let her push me out of the bathroom, before she shuts the door in my face.
Suddenly the door opens a crack, one beautiful blue-gray-green eye blinking at me. “Oh, and by the way. Just to be clear, when I call you in. Please be”—pink dances up the sliver of her cheek that I can see—“clothed. I think I can only take one of us naked at a time, to start things off.”
I lean into the crack of the door and steal a kiss. “Clothed it is.”
* * *
—
Now it’s my turn to sit on the edge of the bed, staring into the fire.
“Ready!” she calls.
I straighten like I’ve been shocked. Clearing my throat, I stand from the bed. “Coming,” I call back.
“Heh,” she says. “So soon?”
“Watch it, Wilmot,” I tell her, even though I’m smiling, reaching for the door and once again realizing my hand isn’t steady.
“Ooh, I’ve been Wilmot-ed. And I thought calling me Katerina was as stern as you could sound.”
Opening the door, I tell her, “Katerina, you haven’t even seen stern . . .” My voice dies off.
A mountain of bubbles surrounds her, obscuring most of her body, but not all of it. The tips of her bare toes. Two knobby knees. The freckled tops of her shoulders. All that hair, piled high on her head, delicate wet tendrils plastered to her neck.
Her face, flushed and lovely, tight with nerves.