The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Hot Water
He stood in my bathroom at twenty past six in the morning, holding my shampoo bottle.
"It says 'Hydrating Coconut,'" Sam said.
"It's for hair."
"I have no hair."
"You have a beard."
He considered the bottle gravely.
"I was told the water in this country is a public utility," he said. "No one told me it comes out of the wall hot."
I leaned against the sink with my arms crossed and watched him.
It was the first time he had been in my apartment.
It is a one-bedroom on Wickenden Street with a ficus I have not killed and a TV I never turn on.
He had followed me home through the grey dawn with his hands in his jacket pockets.
He had looked at every parked car and shop window.
His shift had ended at six.
Mine had ended at the same moment, by my own decree.
I had said, "Come home with me," and he had said, "Yes," as if I'd handed him a weapon.
Now the bathroom steamed up around us, because I had turned the shower on to full heat and it filled the little room with fog.
"Take off your clothes," I said. "I'll show you how it works."
He undressed quickly, and I did, and we stepped into the tub together, behind the white curtain.
The water hit us both.
He gasped.
He stood under the spray with his head tipped back and his eyes closed.
The water ran down his shaved scalp and his beard and across his chest in sheets.
"Oh," he said, in the voice of a man at the altar. "Oh, Lucy."
"Good?"
"I have bathed in rivers and in cold stone baths."
"I have been dunked in a horse trough."
He opened his eyes, and they were wet.
"I did not know it could be like this."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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