It was a sweet sentiment, one that made my heart thud even harder for her and her alone, but it didn’t change the fact that I was actually physically dirty and could feel the city sitting heavy in all my pores. Without warning, I took a big step backward and pulled her with me into the shower. She swore at me as the water drenched her and immediately plastered her clothes down her body. She used two hands to push her hair out of her face but begrudgingly took the body wash I handed her and started to work the liquid over my shoulders and chest while I scrubbed my hair within an inch of its life. She’d helped me pull those haphazard stitches out a few days ago, so it felt good to scrub my scalp.

“I like coming back to you.” I meant coming back to her in my space, in my life, so deep there was no way she could ever leave.

“Good. Wanna tell me how your night went?” Her hands skated over my abs and her index finger dipped in my belly button, which had me sucking in a breath. I frowned when I noticed a dark shadow around her eye and what looked like a raw scrape mark at her hairline.

“After you tell me why you look like you ran face first into a wall.”

She lifted a finger to her tender eye and winced. She raised a sleek eyebrow at me and pinched one of my nipples, twisting hard enough to make me grunt in pain.

“Let’s just say you leave a lasting impression on the women in your life. We can talk about it later. It makes me kind of mad at you even though it’s not really your fault. I want you to tell me about your night.”

I scowled but could see by the stubborn tilt of her damp mouth that she wasn’t going to budge on the subject, so I told her, “I found the kid’s real name. Tried to track him down at his family’s house. Nothing panned out, but now I understand why the kid has it in for me.”

“Oh yeah?” Her hands got a little lower and I saw her smirk as my breathing faltered when she wrapped a soapy fist around the erection bobbing up and down in front of her.

“Yeah. Like you always tell me, my actions have consequences. The kid is one of them. I messed up and it in turn messed him up. I made him what he is, so I can’t really fault him for wanting a piece of me. I’ve been there myself.”

I grunted a little bit as she pushed me back under the spray of water so that all the suds sluiced down over my skin and onto the tile under our feet. Her gray eyes were luminous as she gazed up at me and it was a fog I never wanted to escape from.

“That makes me want to kiss you.”

“What? Taking responsibility for the role I played in my own misery?”

“No.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to the center of my chest, where my heart did its very best to kiss her back. “You seeing someone as a person, as a human being that is a product of their environment. You being able to recognize his motives and their validity. That’s new.”

I threaded my fingers in the back of her neon-colored hair and bent my head to kiss her on the crown of her head. “You’ve made me soft. You always did.”

She squeezed the very not-soft part of me that she still held in her hand. “Soft things can be harder to break than rigid things. They have more give in them and more bounce-back.”

I hummed in agreement. “Didn’t you say something about a kiss?” I wanted to change the subject to something a little lighter. I’d had enough of introspection and soul baring for the night. Plus, we were both wet and aroused. There were much more interesting things we could be doing with our mouths than talking.

She pulled back and smiled at me. She was spending too much time with the devil because temptation and promise dripped off every inch of her as she told me, “I sure did.” It was pure wickedness that gleamed out of her eyes as she dropped to her knees in front of me and leaned forward to press the softest, sweetest kiss to the underside of my dick where it jutted up toward my belly. I groaned and she moved to press butterfly-light kisses all along one side and then down the other before pulling the entire length into the enveloping heat of her mouth. It made my eyes roll back in my head and I was pretty sure it was the best kiss I had ever received in my life.

I already had my hand on the back of her head, so I let her set a pace that worked for her and leaned back so that my back was against the shower wall. It was hot, slippery, and so goddamn sexy I felt my legs shake. She curled one hand around my hip for leverage as she bobbed up and down, going deeper and taking more of me inside with each pass. It made my abs tense up and my balls tighten. It made my spine lock and my skin pebble up in desire. She swirled her tongue around the plump head and I think there was even a gentle scrape of teeth involved at one point. All I knew was that it felt like being worshipped. Like being honored. Like she wanted to be exactly where she was, and when her free hand got creative and disappeared between my legs so that she could caresses and stroke my sensitive sac, I was pretty sure it was the first time this particular devil saw heaven.

I didn’t last much longer after that. I groaned her name and it echoed off the tiled walls as I emptied myself into the back of her throat. As I leaned limply against the wall, feeling spent, shaky, and determined to be worth all the things this woman gave to me, I pulled her up to her feet and held her as she kissed me under the chin with a sassy grin on her pretty face.

“Not so soft.”

That made me bark out a laugh as I wrapped an arm around her and picked her up off her feet. It would only take me a minute to recharge so I could kiss her back.

“Just enough hard and enough soft to make me the perfect man.” I said it sarcastically because it was no secret that I was as far from perfect as any one man could be. I think that was why I pushed everyone else around me so hard.

She laughed uncontrollably as I started to tug and pull her wet clothes off of her. It was like pulling a wet suit off of a deep-sea diver. Her eyes darkened to slate and her smile softened as I kissed her and brushed her hair off her face. I wanted inside of her more than I wanted my next breath. There was no wait left in me when it came to her.

“Perfect for me.”

Those words had my dick getting hard again and zeroing in on her soft center. I smoothed her wet and tangled hair off of her face and lowered my mouth to hers. When we were in bed together, or really whenever I took her, it felt frantic and rushed, like I was afraid she was going to change her mind on me at any time and disappear out of my life for good. With all her stuff mingled with mine, with her pliant and waiting under me, some of that rush took a backseat for once. I wanted to savor her. I wanted to breathe every sigh, feel every quiver, own every pull of her body as I pushed inside of her. I wanted to simply be with her and appreciate that we both got the opportunity to have each other.