Page 49 of Desperate Measures

I stepped in beside her and turned the water on the eight-headed shower system, forcing the water to hit me until the temperature adjusted, which only took seconds.

“Hmm,” she hummed, licking her lips as she bent to grab one of those puffy loofah things she’d hung up inside the bathroom.

I took it from her, no longer smiling as I reached for her body wash and squirted two pumps onto the thing. Then I gestured for her to turn around and I started to wash her.

I never did that before, but for some reason I felt compelled to. Like I needed to take care of her, to clean her body, and touch all that pretty, pale softness just to make sure that it was real, and it was here, and it was mine.

Mine.

I really liked the sound of that.

But while I was obsessing over my wife’s sumptuous body, she was having other thoughts. Big thoughts. I turned her back around, and it was written all over her face.

“Talk to me, Sweetheart. What’s going on?”

“Well, that’s the second time we,you know.”

“Fucked like rabbits?”

“Oh my God. I was going to say had sexual intercourse.”

“Ew. Don’t ever say that again about you and me fucking please,” I joked.

I was still grinning when she grabbed the second loofah and poured some of my body wash on it. Confused, I just stared until she rolled her pretty eyes at me.

“Turn around,” she said, shaking her head.

Michaela pushed my hip, and I humored her, turning around. I didn’t want to admit that shivers danced up my spine as she washed me, but they did.

No one had ever done that before.

Taken care of me, I meant.

And fuck, it caught me off guard. It felt—it felt good.

“Anyway, what I meant was that’s twice and you’ve never used a condom.”

“Did you want me to?”

“Well, I mean, I trust that you are clean, but I am on birth control. I just wanted you to know?—”

Then I got mad because I knew what she was thinking. I turned around and faced her, grabbing her chin to force her to look at me.

“I know about your birth control, Michaela. And I know that I can’t get you pregnant until you’re off it for at least three months. When we want to have kids, we’ll make that decision together. But I’m not fucking you raw for any other reason than because I want to. Understand?”

She nodded, the simple gesture was weighted with more meaning than it should have been.

Her midnight eyes—so deep, so dark—were huge right then. The pupils almost swallowing up everything else.

They were like bottomless pools, sucking me in, pulling me under with every glance.

I couldn’t look away, even if I wanted to.

It was as if the longer I stared into them, the further I sank, lost in the sheer gravity of her presence.

I felt like I was drowning in those eyes, the unspoken words between us flooding the space with a quiet intensity.

That ugly thought she had in her head, thinking I was trying to knock her up. To use her. Just another thing to hold against her father, to force his hand.