Reaching up, he carefully cradled my jaw in his large hands and leaned down to give me a soft kiss. “We’re going to work on your second answer being the only one you give when I ask you that question again, I’ll make sure of it.” I knew he would. “But first, you’re going to have a shower and get into bed. You need sleep to heal.”
This I knew was the truth, sleep would help me both physically and mentally. Leaning back, he looked down at me and tapped me on the nose, the action so different from his gentleness only seconds before. It worked, though, because I couldn’t stop the grin that it brought out, but I sure as shit could stop the giggle that had almost come with it.
Seeing the grin, he winked at me and then picked me up and started walking toward where I assumed his bathroom was. I’d obviously been to his house before so I knew where the guest bathroom was, but I hadn’t ventured any further into the place.
When we entered the huge room with slate tiles on the walls, an old-fashioned looking bathtub on one side, and a huge shower on the other, I fell in love. It would be impossible not to. There was a beautiful mix of modern and old, and with the sinks and bathtub being white, the contrasts between it all made each feature stand out.
Placing me down in front of the shower, he stood back and made a frustrated noise. “Ah, shit,” he groaned, rubbing his face with his hands. When I just raised my eyebrows, he sighed, “The shower’s voice activated.”
Well, that was a problem now, wasn’t it?Chapter EightCharlotteNot for the first time since I’d met him, I felt sorry for Levi. He’d worked out a system for me to shower which involved me knocking on the glass.
To get it to start, he’d yelled at it through the open door of the bathroom. After that, I was to knock once if I wanted it to be warmer, then twice for cooler. When I was done, I knocked three times on the glass and he yelled at it to stop. Admittedly, I thought his shower was freaking awesome – if you had the power of speech on your side, that was.
After I’d gotten dressed, we’d faced a new dilemma – where I would sleep.
He had two other guest rooms, but one was an office and the other one was down the opposite end of the hallway. If I needed help through the night – or what was left of it – it’s not like I could shout out, and I had to agree with him when he’d pointed out that there was a possibility I’d have nightmares or flashbacks about what had happened to me. So, with no arguments from me, he decided I’d sleep with him in his room until I felt more comfortable being on my own.
Which led me to now - warm, exhausted, in pain, and unable to switch off. It wasn’t what had happened per se that was preventing me from sleeping, but the information Eric had blurted out during his ranting. Even the fact that he’d dated me for money wasn’t the problem. I didn’t have a high opinion of the guy as it was, so I wasn’t surprised now that he’d stoop as low as he had. He’d proven tonight he was willing to stoop a helluva lot lower than that, too, so I guess I was kind of numb to that part of it all.
No, what was bothering me was that my parents had controlled everything in my life to the extent that they had. And I couldn’t understand why. If they didn’t want me, why had they done it? They obviously had nothing to gain or lose by me even living with them, so why? And I wasn’t sure Eric was telling the truth about his own parents either. I’d been around them a lot, and you couldn’t hide behavior like that – again, I knew this firsthand from my parents. And, if he was lying, should I call them to warn them about what he’d done?
There was also the fact that I had sweatpants on instead of shorts. I wasn’t feeling the way I normally would yet, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to sleep with them on and I didn’t have anything to change into.
“I can hear you thinking,” Levi muttered sleepily from behind me, making me smile. His long fingers running through my hair and gently massaging my scalp made me purr inside the safety of my brain. “I would ask if you wanted to talk about it, but…”
Reaching behind me, I pinched the first part of him I hit, blushing when I realized it was his butt cheek. Could have been worse, could have been his penis or a ball, I guess.