Teaching Their Omega novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Wash

The Ingram bathroom had a claw-foot tub the size of a rowboat, and by seven the next evening it was full to the brim.

"It's tomorrow," Rhett said.

He knelt on the tile beside the tub with his sleeves pushed up and a bar of lavender soap in his hand.

"I know it's tomorrow," I said, from the water.

"I love you."

He said it plainly, no joke, his hazel eyes steady on mine.

My heart did something unwise.

"I heard you," I said. "Thank you."

"That's not the answer I wanted."

"It's the one you get tonight."

He grinned, crooked, and dragged the soap down my arm.

Declan sat on the closed toilet lid in his shirtsleeves, watching us with his notebook shut on his knee.

"Lesson six," he said. "Is it bathing?"

"Lesson six is being looked after," I said. "Get in."

"There isn't room."

"There's room."

He took off his shirt.

Then the rest of it, deliberately, and stepped over the edge into the water, and the level rose and slopped onto the tile.

Rhett stripped in a flash and climbed in behind us both.

The tub was too small and we fit anyway.

I ended up between them, my back against Declan's chest, my legs over Rhett's thighs, hot water up to my collarbones.

Rhett held the soap.

"Where do I start?"

"Anywhere. Slowly."

He began with my feet.

He lifted one, and soaped it, and rubbed his thumbs into the arch, and I groaned out loud.

"Oh, God. Don't stop."

"I won't."

He worked up my calf, the back of my knee, the inside of my thigh, in long, slow, soapy strokes.

Every stroke left my skin humming.

Behind me Declan filled his palms with soap.

He ran them over my shoulders and down my arms.

He massaged my neck, and my scalp, working shampoo through my loosened hair until the black strands floated.

I let my eyes close.

"I've never been washed," I said.

"Never?" Declan said, close to my ear.

"Not by anyone. Not since my mother."

"Why not?"

The water lapped.

Two sets of big, gentle hands went still.

"My first heat was when I was nineteen," I said.

"I was at college in Burlington, in a dorm. It came in the middle of the night."

"Lowen," Declan said.

"Nobody had taught me anything. My mother was a Beta, and she didn't know. I thought I was dying."

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