room for him, and I studied his face for…I’m not sure. He didn’t look tired, but then I suspected he was used to long hours at work.
His eyes ran down my broken body and back up again, and I could see the emotion fucking with him behind those tawny eyes of his. “It looks worse than it feels,” I lied.
The corner of his lip tilted a bit. “Liar,” he replied amusingly.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He reached around me to grab the bodywash I brought into the shower with me. “I should be asking you that.” Pouring some wash into the loofah, he put the body wash back and carefully began washing my body. “Tell me if I hurt you.” I nodded, but even if he did, I wouldn’t stop him. He was trying to take care of me, and it would seem…rude to stop him.
I placed my hands on his shoulders as I lifted my foot, so he could scrub the bottom. “Are you going to tell me what happened,” I asked just before he switched to the other foot.
He looked up at me. “Do you really want to know?” I nodded and he stood up.
This time, I reached for his bodywash and returned the favor. I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t a hardship. Ciro had the body of a god, and if my body hadn’t hurt as badly as it did, I’d be all over him.
I accidentally blurted out my thoughts. “God, I want you.”
Ciro groaned. “Baby, there’s no way I can…you’re too hurt.”
I looked up into his face. “I know,” I told him. “I know, but…I want to risk it so badly.” Ciro closed his eyes and dropped his head back. I knew it wasn’t fair to put him in this position, but I wanted him.
Ciro lifted his head and opened his eyes. “I’ll make you a deal,” he grimaced, and I could tell this was costing him. “When we get out of this shower, I’ll lay you on the bed. You’ll let me eat that delicious cunt of yours, and if your body can handle the orgasm, we’ll see about how I can fuck you without it hurting too much?”
I knew we were both fooling ourselves. Broken ribs were a bitch. Anything we did would cause me pain, but I wanted that orgasm.
“Deal,” I said, smiling. I turned around so that he could wash my hair. “Now, are you going to tell me what happened?”
Ciro’s hands were like magic in my hair, and I let my head fall back and let him do his thing. “The safe deposit box and thumb drives contained blackmail material and transactions,” he said. “The prominent citizens of Cedar Creek aren’t as squeaky clean as their uniforms and election campaigns imply.”
“Jesus,” I breathed out. “No wonder they needed that box.”
I felt a tug at my scalp. “Don’t you dare fucking sympathize with those two assholes.”
My eyes were still closed, but I rolled them anyway. “I’m not,” I denied. “I just…I can see the importance of why they needed it.”
Ciro grunted but didn’t say anything as he turned me around to wash the shampoo out of my hair. Next, he went to work on conditioning my hair. As we let it set, he got busy washing his dark hair and finished with what happened. “Your buddies confessed who it belonged to, but I wasn’t really interested in what they had to say.”
“Are…are they…gone?” How could this ever be a real conversation between a couple? I knew if I planned on staying with Ciro, I was going to have to work this lifestyle into my mental capabilities, but it still felt a bit surreal.
“They’ll never bother you again,” he answered, which was a ‘yes’.
We switched spots, so he could rinse his hair and then switched back, so we could finally rinse the conditioner from my hair.
A minute or two later, standing under the spray, with my head tilted back and my eyes closed, Ciro’s voice touched every part of my battered body. “God, I love you,” he breathed.
My head shot up and my eyes flew open. It wasn’t what he said, because he had made the same claim when we were at my house yesterday, it was the veneration in his voice as he said it. I stared into his face and I knew he wasn’t feeding me a line.
Ciro Mancini was in love with me.
“Yeah?” I asked breathlessly.
Ciro nodded. “I’m completely in love with you, Robbie,” he repeated. “And you have to