He looked at her. "You're going to be shy about that after I was just inside of you?"
Her cheeks darkened with a blush that just increased her sex appeal, but then shook her head.
Christ. He wished she wouldn't look so damned innocent all the time. It was unnerving.
"Your scar," Cindy said. "Does it hurt?"
And there she went with the being innocent thing again. "Sometimes. Not as much as it used to, but it feels weird when I stretch my back out, and I can't do any yard work without a shirt on anymore."
"Because of the sun?"
He nodded as they stepped into his bathroom. "Yeah."
"How are you going to get your shirt-" Cindy stopped speaking when Jack reached behind himself to his back pocket and produced the key to their shackles.
Her eyes went wide. "Are you serious? You were keeping it in your back pocket? What was all that about not getting undressed then?"
Jack shrugged and grinned at her, but he only undid his shackle so he could take off his sweater, which immediately felt good on his warm skin. He didn't remove her shackle, of course, and when his top half was naked, he reattached the shackle to his wrist.
"I just wanted to see if you were still willing to do it if I stayed clothed."
Cindy narrowed her eyes at him. "You're a jerk. What was that supposed to prove?"
She was angry, but her eyes still glanced down to the scars she hadn't seen before on his shoulders, down his arms, and each reaching around his ribs. His chest and stomach were pretty much untouched. His back was the worst, and he could pretty much see the wheels turning in her head. She wanted to see it for herself, but she wasn't about to ask. Not yet at least.
Jack got out of his jeans and kicked them into the corner. "It proved that you would have sex with me if I didn't get naked."
He reached over and turned the dial for the hot water, and the spray immediately started up.
Jack heard Cindy's tiny gasp as he showed her his back, letting her see the damage for the first time. He pretended he hadn't heard a thing.
"After you," he said, looking back at her.
Cindy jumped, and to mask her horror, she sent him a dirty look. He thought it was pretty half-assed, but she stepped into the shower anyway. "I hope the chain rusts."
"It'll keep for one shower, and I'll dry it off after we're done," Jack said, and he stepped in after her before closing the curtain.
Cindy put her face under the spray, which only partially wet her hair since it was so thick. She always needed to stay under for a good five minutes, running her hands through the red strands, before it got fully soaked.
Why did her wet hair have to be such a turn on? Water flowed down her smooth skin, over the swell of her ass and in between her cheeks as well. He could just imagine how her breasts looked.
Actually, he could picture that because of course, he'd seen her in the shower before. Which meant thinking about the last time they'd bathed together. Fucking great.
He turned around, picked up his body wash and got to work scrubbing off the sweat, ignoring his stupid dick that was half hard again.
Cindy was a little too quiet. Even with the sound of running water, he should have heard her doing something. Scrubbing her hair, using his body wash, anything. He turned to look at her, and found her staring at him again. This time she couldn't seem to hide the sorrow on her face. "What?"
She shook her head, that sad frown still on her brow and mouth. "Jesus, Jack, your back. I didn't know-"
"Yeah, yeah," Jack muttered, not the least bit happy with the reaction he was finally getting. "It looks like raw ground beef. I get it."
Maybe it would have been better if she'd laughed at him. This whole innocent act was getting to him in ways her seduction hadn't.
"I'm so sorry," Cindy said.
Equal parts of anger and pain flooded him, and Jack had to turn around again before he said or did something he regretted. Like told her how long it had taken for his hair and eyebrows to grow back, the agony he felt while lying in the hospital bed, and how he'd cried like a little kid when he learned he was the only one who'd made it out of the house. "Whatever, it's over and everything's going to be fine after the collectors get here."
Cindy hesitated. "Don't you even want to know what happened?"
"The only thing I want to know is what you did with the baby," Jack said, looking down at her stomach, her still very firm, very flat stomach. She didn't look like she had ever carried a child. He'd seen girls online post pictures of themselves after having kids. Some of them looked great, but despite how gorgeous Cindy was, Jack doubted she could be part of that fraction of a percentage of women who could carry a child without there being any differences to her breasts, hips and stomach. "If there ever was one."
"Of course there was," Cindy said. "I wouldn't lie to you about something like that."
Or, maybe she was part of that percentage. "So where is it? Did you drop it off at a fire station? Because I checked out your living conditions, and there was no sign of a toddler living with you."
That had been the first thing he'd checked on when he took her. The last thing Jack wanted to do was leave a child, a baby, alone and defenseless without an adult around to feed and care for it.
There had been nothing. No crib, no toys, no pictures. Not even a second bedroom and definitely nothing in her room that suggested she had a guy who stayed over some nights. Cindy lived alone.
"Miscarriage," Cindy said, and she was looking down at her hands, playing with her fingers.
Jack's stomach dropped, and the sick sensation of all the blood within him draining from his face and body came next, which was the first clue that he believed her.
He believed her. She had been pregnant, and she'd lost the baby.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if that was why she'd burned down the house, but looking at her now, he was dangerously close to seeing her the way he used to see her. She was just a girl, a woman at this point, and despite her dangerous powers, he hadn't thought her capable of squashing a spider.
Really. She always made him do it.
"I-I'm sorry," Jack said.
Cindy was avoiding his eyes now. "You don't have to apologize to me, you know. It was yours, too. I already dealt with it."
If that was true, then why wasn't she looking at him?
"Aren't you upset?" Cindy asked, and now she finally was looking up at him. "I just told you that you were almost a father."
"I heard you," Jack said, and he felt some warmth return to his limbs. "I believe you. I'm just more concerned about you right now."
And it was true. The second the words came out of his mouth, he knew them to be the truth. He believed her about the pregnancy and the miscarriage. He didn't think she was lying about that.
Cindy stared at him, her purple eyes wide and so damned innocent. Nothing was as easy or as clear cut as he thought it would be. He almost wished for everything to go back to when he had thought it was so simple. To when he hated her and despised her. Everything was easy, then. His mission had been simple.
Why couldn't Jack have a radar? An inner lie detector? Something! Something that he could use that would tell him with a hundred percent certainty whether or not this was all an act? He wanted to pull her to him and just hold onto her.
He handed her his body wash instead. "It doubles as shampoo," he said when she took it with a questioning glance.
"Seriously?" she asked, giving him a look. The corner of her mouth was turned up in a sexy half smile.
"I'm a guy," Jack said. "I don't keep girly conditioners and soaps in here. Old Spice is all I got."
Cindy continued to stare at him, but then she smiled and opened the cap. Jack couldn't take his eyes away from her as she soaped herself up.
To make matters worse, she looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. "Want to wash my back?"
He recognized a come on when he heard it. Just like he recognized how she was deflecting so he wouldn't ask her any emotional questions involving their child.
Despite that, he couldn't bring himself to care as his cock took over the thinking for him. "Hell yes, I do."
Chapter Eleven
Cindy hadn't been this satisfied in years. Not since Jack was taken away from her, and there was nothing in the world better than being made to face the tiled wall of the shower, having her hands thrust above her head and her feet nudged wider apart before being mounted.
This was just proof of the fact that she hadn't been laid in forever, otherwise it just made no sense for her to be able to get off so soon after her last orgasm.
Or Jack was just that talented.
Either way, he left her gasping and shaking, with a smile on her face, before he finally got to washing her back like he said he would. He even helped with her hair.
Yeah, this definitely felt like they were two years back in time. Even as they rinsed their bodies and Jack turned the water off so they could dry and get out, it was only when the chain clinked between them that Cindy remembered that she was still a prisoner.