We’ve been swimming naked together every night, so this shouldn’t feel as stripped down as it does. But the lights are on, and he’s looking at me like he’s seeing me for the very first time.
The inexperienced girl in me wants to shy away, but the woman who goes after what she wants opens her legs and revels in the look of intensity on Beau’s face.
“Bailey.” This time, my name is less of an admonishment and more of a plea.
“Triangle or strip? I tried to get the rest, but it was awkward.”
He touches me now, calloused palms sliding up the insides of my thighs. Spreading me. Silver eyes burning like hot coals.
“I can clean it up for you,” he murmurs, removing one hand to take both the bar of soap and the razor.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” He silences me with the finality of that statement. I almost get the sense that it’s more than just wanting to. He needs to.
He wets the bar of soap and rubs it over the mound of my pubic bone and along where the seams of my underwear might go. He’s thorough and … businesslike about it. Which might explain how I’m able to sit here with my legs spread—without combusting entirely—while Beau looks at my pussy really fucking closely.
I’m both relieved by his restraint and aching for his fingers inside me. To feel so full like I did all those nights ago.
But he doesn’t cross that line. He lathers the soap, rubbing it back over the same spots with a wet hand. I feel myself clench and release when he gets dangerously close to where I want him. My arousal is only disguised by the fact that we’re both drenched with lavender soap and bath water right now.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks as he places the soap down and dips the razor in the bath.
I gaze back at him, eyes wide, lips parted. His chiseled body kneels between my spread thighs, and the way he handles me is so sure, so caring. How could I be anything but okay with this? “I trust you,” I reply quietly. As the words land, he jolts slightly.
Without saying a word, he dips his head closer and uses his fingers to spread my lips in a way that makes the razor land in flat, even strokes.
My head tips back and my eyes flutter shut. “Fuck,” I murmur as he grips me. The pressure of his fingertips, the scrape of the blade, the knowledge that his face is right there.
When he finishes tidying one side, he methodically moves on to the next. Large, deft fingers spread and manhandle me as he fixes up the spots I failed to reach. I can feel myself leaking, but I ignore it. There’s no way he can tell.
I feel like I could come just from his proximity. But I don’t. I focus on breathing, on not shaking. I focus on willing one of his fingers to slip inside me—for him to cross that line.
For him to be even more impulsive than he’s already been by crawling into this bath with me.
“There,” he announces roughly, voice echoing in the steamy bathroom as he massages the top portion of hair that remains. His jaw is set tight, brow lightly furrowed. “Have you decided what I’m doing up here?”
“Oh, you’re doing that part, are you?”
He doesn’t even pretend to make eye contact with me when he responds, “When I start a job, I finish it.”
“Okay.”
“What shape?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even think I care.” All I care about is coming. Based on the way Beau’s eyes are eating me up right now, I don’t think it matters at all.
“Triangle,” he bites out. “If you hate it, you can easily change it to a strip.”
“Or you can.” My voice sounds thick, deep—not my own. I feel like someone else right now. Someone beautiful and powerful, someone sure of herself and what she wants.
And what I want is him.
He swallows and nods, then moves in closer. My hand grips the tiled edge, the sharp corner digging into my palm. The huge diamond on my ring finger sparkles under the light from above.
“Or I can,” he repeats as he glides the razor over the top horizontal line.
“Next time,” I add, making his eyes finally snap up to mine.
“Next time,” he repeats, and it feels like an agreement. It feels like a moment where we both realize this pull between us is stronger than either of us can resist.
Or maybe in this moment, we both realize that neither of us cares to struggle. We’ve both struggled enough already.
His gaze drops along with his head, and he gets to work.
Beau is meticulous, hand moving between us, pressing each leg open wider, and then resting on my lower stomach. His face is close, so close. He looks like an artist painting at an easel or something. It almost makes me laugh, because what else is a girl supposed to do in this situation? Tossed so far out of her realm of experience by the gruff military man.