“But eggplant is mushy.”
“Not when I make it. I promise you’d like it.”
“I have an eggplant face. That’s basically a dick face. A mushy dick face with a Carhartt logo.”
Rowan shifts the hair back from my shoulder and lays a gentle kiss on my cheek. I don’t have to see his reflection to feel his smile as his lips linger on my skin. “This is not having the intended effect. Let me try again,” he says, amusement warm in his voice. His other arm wraps around me to unclip the first of two buckles for my sling. My wince of pain is met with another kiss. “That color doesn’t remind me of eggplant, for what it’s worth. It reminds me of blackberries. The best berry if you ask me. It reminds me of irises. They have the best scent of any flower. It reminds me of night, just before dawn. The best time of day.” The other buckle clicks free and I close my eyes against the pain as Rowan slides the sling from my arm.
“But—”
“You’re all the best things to me, Sloane. No matter how many bruises are in your heart or on your skin.”
When I open my eyes, it’s not my marks I see. It’s not the swelling or the scrapes or the blood. It’s Rowan, his navy eyes fused to mine, his arm banded across my waist as his other hand traces slow patterns on my skin.
I place my good hand over his, wrap my fingers around his knuckles where scars crisscross over bone. Then I lift his hand away, every nuance of his expression absorbed by my watchful gaze. I guide his fingers to the top button of my shirt and let my hand rest on the tense muscle of his forearm.
No words are shared between us. Just the connection of our eyes in the mirror, one that doesn’t waver.
Rowan frees the first button. The second. The third. The fourth is low on my sternum. The fifth reveals my upper abdomen. The sixth the jeweled bar at my navel. Still he holds my eyes as he works the seventh and eighth buttons free. A slice of skin down the center of my body glows in the light that bathes us from above the mirror.
My pulse pounds. I could see it in my neck if I was willing to break my gaze away. But I’m not. I keep holding on as Rowan’s fingers curl around one edge of my shirt.
He folds it open, exposing my breast to the warm air. Then he does the same with the other side. And still our gazes remain locked. It’s not until I swallow and raise my brows that he finally lets his eyes fall to my body.
“Jesus…” he whispers. “Sloane…”
My flesh is a mess of scratches and bruises, all of the marks darker and more obvious than they were hours ago. His gaze drifts over every inch of my exposed skin as though I’m something precious yet damaged, a broken revelation. It might not be how he expected, but I know he’s imagined me like this before, bared and vulnerable to his gaze, his touch. Just like I’ve imagined him. But it’s different to feel it in the heavy silence that stretches between us. I couldn’t have expected the way my blood would charge through my flesh, or the way the whole world would shrink to this pinpoint, this moment in a mirror.
Rowan’s gaze rests on my throat, his navy eyes nearly black, his pupils consuming the color until only a thin band of blue remains. It traces a line down the center of my body, his attention so slow and deliberate that it feels like a touch against my skin. It flows over the ridges on my sternum. It veers left and slows over my heart. It traces the rose gold piercing encircling my peaked nipple. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and I shiver as his gaze crosses my chest to the other side and the matching piercing on my right breast.
“Something caught your eye, pretty boy?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says, his voice pained. “God, yes, Sloane. All of you.”
Rowan drags the shirt down my uninjured arm first, then takes his time to pull it from my swollen shoulder, his eyes remaining steady on the reflection of my body. The fabric falls away and pools at my feet. He takes a deep breath before he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my leggings and pulls them over my hips. His fingers wrap around my ankle to raise my foot from the cool tile and tug the fabric free of one leg and then the next. When he rises to his full height behind me, I can see every strained breath in his chest, every thump of his heart as his pulse surges in his neck.
“I need to get my shit together,” he mutters, his voice low and gritty, the words not meant for me. He holds out a hand for me and I take it. “Come on. Into the bath before I fucking die.”
I drag my feet as he tugs me toward the cloud of white bubbles shimmering in the tub. “Would that mean I’d get an extra win?”