I huddled against him, my skin cooling off fast. My teeth chattered. He held me tighter, resting his cheek against the top of my head.
“I’m sorry if I was too rough,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean it, accusing you of shit like that. I just … fuck. I’m sorry.”
“Rough wasn’t a problem, but the trust issue … we’re going to need to talk about it sometime.” I rested my head against his shoulder, stared up into his troubled eyes.
His chin jerked as he gave me a tight nod.
“But right now, I’d like to talk about Vegas.”
The arms around me tensed. “What about Vegas?”
I stared back at him, still trying to think everything through. Not wanting to get this wrong, whatever this was.
Marriage, that’s what it was.
Shit.
“We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last twenty-four hours,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess we have.”
I held up my hand, my sparkly ring. The size of the diamond didn’t matter. That David had put it on me was what made it important. “We talked about lots of things. We slept together, and we made promises to each other, important ones.”
“You regretting any of it?”
My hand slid around the back of his neck. “No. Absolutely not. But if you woke up tomorrow, and you’d somehow forgotten all of this. If it was all gone for you, like it had never happened, I would be furious at you.”
His forehead wrinkled.
“I’d hate you for forgetting all this when it’s meant everything to me.”
He licked his lips and turned off the tap with a foot. Without the water gushing out the room quieted instantly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was angry.”
“I’m not going to let you down like that again.”
Beneath me his chest rose and fell heavily. “Okay.”
“I know it takes time to learn to trust someone. But in the meantime, I need you to at least give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“I know.” Wary blue eyes watched me.
I sat up and reached for the washcloth on the edge of the bath. “Let me clean you up a little.”
A dark lump sat on his jaw. Blood lingered beneath his nose and near his mouth. He was a mess. A big red mark was on his ribs.
“You should see a doctor,” I said.
“Nothing’s broken.”
Carefully, I wiped the blood from the side of his mouth and beneath his nose. Seeing him in pain was horrible. Knowing I was the cause made my stomach twist and turn. “Tell me if I press too hard.”
“You’re fine.”
“I’m sorry you got hurt. In the bar tonight, and in Vegas. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
His eyes softened and his hands slid over me. “I want you to come back to LA with me. I want you with me. I know school will start back eventually and we’re gonna have to work something out. But whatever happens, I don’t want us apart.”
“We’re not going to be.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Morning light woke me. I rolled over and stretched, working out the kinks. David lay on his back beside me, fast asleep. He had an arm flung over his face, covering his eyes. With him there, everything was right with my world. But also, everything was on show. He’d kicked off the sheet sometime during the night. So the morning wood thing was true. There you go. Lauren had been right on that count.
Waking up beside him with my wedding ring back on my finger had me grinning like a loon. Of course waking up beside a bare-naked David would have made just about anybody smile. Between my legs felt a little sore from last night’s efforts, but nothing too bad. Nothing sufficient to distract me from the view that was my husband.
I shuffled down the bed a bit, checking him out at my leisure for once. He didn’t have much of a belly button. It was basically a small indent followed by a fine trail of dark hair leading down across his flat stomach directly to it. And it was hard, thick, and long.
It being his penis, of course.
Gah. No, that didn’t sound right.
His cock. Yeah, much better.
We’d sat in the warm bath for a while last night at his insistence, soaking. We’d just talked. It had been lovely. There’d been no mention of the woman who’d obviously cheated on him and/or left him at some time in his past. But I’d felt her presence lurking. Time would kick her out the back door, I was sure of it.
He smelled faintly of soap, a little musky, perhaps. Warm wasn’t something I’d ever registered as having a smell before, but that’s what David smelled of. Warmth, like he was liquid sunshine or something. Heat and comfort and home.