My Not-Yet Mate and the Thirty-Day Trial novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Hot Water

The bathroom in my grandfather's farmhouse has a claw-foot tub and a shower on a pipe that bangs.

I got the water as hot as it would go and pulled Joss in under it by his belt loops.

He was still in his jeans.

He did not seem to mind.

Steam filled the little room, and his hair went dark and heavy and fell across his eyes.

I peeled the wet denim off him, and he stood naked under my showerhead with his hands hanging loose.

He is a lot of man for a small bathroom.

His shoulder bumped the tile.

His knee knocked the soap dish and sent it clattering into the tub.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't be sorry. Turn around."

He turned.

I took the shampoo from the shelf and worked it into his hair with both hands, slowly, scrubbing at his scalp.

His head tipped back into my palms.

A long breath went out of him, and his shoulders dropped an inch.

"Nobody's washed my hair since I was about six," he said.

"Your mother?"

"My mother."

"How does it feel?"

"Like I might fall asleep standing up."

I laughed and rinsed it out.

The suds ran in a white stream down his back, over the red lines I had left, and he hissed when the water hit them.

I put my mouth on his shoulder blade where it stung.

"Laney."

"Hm."

"If you keep doing that, I'm not going to make it to the part where I get to touch you."

"We have thirty nights," I said against his skin. "Make it."

He turned around so fast that the water sprayed the curtain.

He caught my wet face in both hands and kissed me.

It was a deep, hungry kiss, and I tasted soap and steam and his mouth.

I had forgotten my coveralls were still on until he began to peel them off me.

He stripped me out of the wet navy cotton with a dedication I would have admired in a surgeon.

Then we were skin on skin under the hot water, and I felt every hard inch of him against my stomach.

"The tack room was for me," I said. "This one's for you."

His eyes went dark.

I took the bar of soap and worked up a lather in my hands.

I washed his chest first, the wide slope of it, slow circles over the saw scar on his ribs.

I washed his stomach.

I took him in my soapy hands and washed him there too, long and firm, from the base to the tip and back.

He gripped the shower pipe with one fist, and it rattled in its brackets.

"Laney. Laney, God."

"Am I doing it wrong?"

"You are doing it so right."

I stroked him until his hips began to push into my grip, and then I let go.

He made a noise of pure protest.

"Turn around," I said. "Put your hands on the wall."

He did.

He braced both palms on the green tile above the taps, with the water pounding on his back.

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