Chapter 7: Aftercare in the Shower
He held her until her breathing evened out, until the fine tremors in her limbs subsided into a liquid heaviness. Her weight against him was a perfect, warm anchor. He registered the stickiness on his abdomen, the mess they’d made, the sharp scent of sex cutting through the sterile air. His operational mind, never fully offline, catalogued it all: fluids to be cleaned, evidence to be sanitized, the subject to be secured.
With a gentleness that belied the ferocity of minutes before, he eased back. Her eyes were half-closed, dazed. “Don’t move,” he murmured.
He went to the bathroom first, retrieving a soft, grey towel. Returning to the couch, he saw her as she was: beautifully wrecked, the pink jewel still glinting obscenely between her cheeks. Kneeling behind her, he placed a hand on the small of her back. “Deep breath.”
He gripped the base of the plug and, with a slow, steady pressure, withdrew it. She gasped, her body arching at the sensation of emptiness. He set the toy aside on the towel, then used a clean corner to gently wipe her skin. Every motion was efficient, tender. When he was done, he tossed the towel aside and simply looked at her.
“Arms up,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
She complied, boneless, and he slid his hands under her, lifting her from the couch. She was pliant, her head lolling against his shoulder as he carried her the short distance to the bathroom. He shouldered the light switch on, the harsh fluorescence making her flinch. He set her down on the bathmat, her feet barely touching the floor.
Without a word, he turned and started the shower. He tested the water with his hand, adjusting until the temperature was just shy of scalding, the way he knew she liked it. Steam began to billow, clouding the mirror.
He turned back to her. His own clothes were still on, disheveled and stained. He stripped methodically, folding his pants and shirt with his usual precision despite the circumstances, placing them in a neat pile on the closed toilet lid. Naked, he stepped into the stream, then held a hand out for her.
She took it, letting him guide her under the hot spray. Water plastered her hair to her skull and coursed down her body in rivulets. He reached for a bar of plain, unscented soap and a washcloth.
It began clinically. He started with her shoulders, rubbing the cloth in firm, circular motions. He worked down her arms, over her collarbones, across her back. He washed away the sweat, the scent of her arousal, his own release. He was thorough, like a soldier decontaminating after a mission in a polluted zone.
But the mission parameters had shifted. The sight of her, head bowed, water sluicing over the curves he’d just claimed, altered the objective. His scrubbing slowed. The circles became caresses. He knelt behind her, soaping the cloth again and washing the globes of her ass, his touch lingering on the skin that had so recently stretched to accommodate him. A soft sound escaped her, lost in the drum of the water.
He moved to her front. He washed her stomach, her ribcage, the underside of her breasts. His touch was no longer that of a medic. It was possessive, rediscovering. He lifted one breast, soaping it carefully, his thumb brushing back and forth over her nipple until it peaked tightly under his ministrations. Her breath hitched.
“Levi…”
“Quiet.” His command was soft, but absolute. “I’m not finished.”
He moved lower, kneeling in the shower spray. He parted her legs gently with his hands and washed her thighs, the creases of her hips. Then he brought the cloth to her core. He didn’t scrub. He pressed the warm, soapy fabric against her, holding it there, letting the heat seep into her. Through the material, his fingers found her clit, applying a slow, relentless pressure. She braced her hands on his wet shoulders, a moan tearing from her throat.
“See?” he murmured, his face close to her stomach. “Every part of you belongs to me. Even clean, you’re mine.”
He let the cloth fall, discarded at their feet. He replaced it with his mouth.
The noise she made was half-shriek, half-sob. He held her firmly by the hips, his tongue laving her with a focused intensity that had nothing to do with cleanliness. He tasted soap and herself, a clean, sharp saltiness. He fucked her with his tongue, deep and slow, then fastened his lips around her clit, sucking with a rhythmic pressure that made her thighs shake.
“Levi… I can’t… again… so soon…” Her words were gulped between gasps.
“You can,” he growled against her, the vibration driving her wild. “And you will. Come on my tongue, sweet girl. Let me taste it.”
His words, filthy and direct, combined with the expert pressure of his mouth, pushed her over another edge. It was a different orgasm, sharper, more concentrated, a white-hot wire of pleasure that zipped from her core to the tips of her fingers. She cried out, her body bowing as he drank her in, relentless, until the last tremors subsided.
He stood then, water streaming down his face. He was fully, impressively erect again. His cock stood out thick and veined against his stomach. He reached for the shampoo, pouring a measure into his palm.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice thick.
Dazed, she obeyed, presenting her back to him. He massaged the shampoo into her scalp, his strong fingers working in slow, deep circles. It was an act of such mundane, breathtaking tenderness that her eyes prickled with sudden tears. He rinsed her hair with care, smoothing the suds away from her face. Then he turned her back to face him, his hands cradling her jaw, tilting her face up under the spray to rinse it clean.
His gaze was unreadable, a storm of possessiveness and something darker, more fragile. He pushed her gently against the cool tile wall, the contrast with the hot water shocking her skin. He hooked one of her legs over his hip, opening her up. He didn’t ask. He guided himself to her entrance and pushed inside with a single, deep, consuming thrust.
She was impossibly sensitive, still pulsing from her climax, and the fullness was almost too much. She whimpered, her nails digging into his biceps. He didn’t move for a long moment, just buried himself to the hilt inside her, letting her adjust, his forehead resting against the tile beside her head. His breathing was ragged.
“Tell me,” he whispered, his lips against her ear, his voice raw with an emotion she couldn’t name. “Tell me who this is for.”
“You,” she choked out, the word a pledge. “Only you.”
“Again.”
“You! God, Levi, it’s only ever been you!”
That broke him. A harsh, guttural sound ripped from his throat, and he began to move. These were not the measured, punishing thrusts from before. This was something more primal, more desperate. His hips hammered into hers, the sound of their bodies colliding loud in the tiled space, echoing over the shower’s roar. He fucked her with a frantic, driving need, as if he could weld their bodies together through force alone, as if he could brand his claim into her very bones.
“Mine,” he chanted into her skin, between bitten-off gasps. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
She was crying, but she didn’t know why. The pleasure was a dizzying crest she couldn’t surmount again so soon, but the emotion was a riptide pulling her under. She held onto him, her arms locked around his neck, her face buried in the wet column of his throat, tasting the clean water and the salt of him. She met his furious pace as best she could, tilting her hips, taking him deeper, letting him use her body for this catharsis he couldn’t voice any other way.
His rhythm fractured. His thrusts became erratic, slamming deep and staying there, grinding against her. He was shuddering, his control completely shattered. With a final, broken groan, he spilled inside her, his whole body convulsing with the force of it. He held her pinned against the wall, his weight heavy on her, his breath hot and ragged in her ear.
Slowly, the world came back. The sound of the water. The cool tile against her back. The heavy, spent weight of him inside her. He softened, but didn’t pull out. Just stayed there, connected, as the water began to run cool.
Eventually, he moved. He pulled out with a soft, wet sound and reached to turn off the shower. The sudden silence was deafening. He grabbed a fresh towel and wrapped her in it, rubbing her dry with the same thoroughness he’d used to wash her. He toweled himself off quickly, then led her, silent and shivering, back to the bedroom.
He pulled back the precise, military-tight covers of his bed and guided her in. He climbed in beside her, pulling her back against his chest, enveloping her in his heat. The grey dawn was seeping around the edges of the blackout curtains.
Her mind was a blank, blissful hum. But his, she knew, was already racing ahead. She could feel the tension returning to the muscles wrapped around her.
She could feel the tension returning to the muscles wrapped around her. It was a subtle tightening, a coiling of springs beneath his skin. The afterglow was cooling, and the relentless machinery of his mind was clicking back online.
“You’re thinking so loud I can hear it,” she murmured into the pillow. Her voice was sleep-rough, a stark contrast to her cries from the shower.
He didn’t deny it. His exhale was a warm gust against the back of her neck. “The doctor,” he said, the two words dropping into the quiet like stones.
“I know.” She shifted, turning in his arms to face him. In the gloom, his eyes were dark pools, unreadable. She traced the severe line of his jaw with her fingertip. “We have a story. The shadow-man. The vague threat. It’ll work.”
“It’s a delaying tactic. Not a solution.” His hand came up to capture hers, pressing her palm flat against his chest. His heartbeat was a steady, rapid drum under her skin. “He has institutional power. You have a barista job and an empty apartment in another state.”
“And I have you.” She said it simply, a statement of fact.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. That was the problem, she realized. He saw himself as a variable, not a constant. A soldier in a foreign land, not a permanent defense. Her fluency here was a strength, but his was in conflict, and he was trying to solve a systemic threat with the only tools he had.
“He’ll use the law like a blade,” Levi said, his voice low. “Paperwork, petitions, calls to social services claiming concern. He’ll make you look unstable, a flight risk. He’ll freeze your assets, get a wellness check issued, force a confrontation.”
The casual way he laid it out, like a tactical breakdown, chilled her more than any shouted threat. “So what’s the play, then?” she asked, borrowing his terminology.
He was silent for a long moment, his thumb stroking absently over her knuckles. “We don’t wait for him to make the first move,” he finally said. “We go to him.”
Aria went still.“What? No. That’s the opposite of hiding.”
“It’s controlling the engagement. We meet on neutral ground, with you presenting a unified, stable front. With me there.” His gaze sharpened, focusing on a point beyond her shoulder. “We show him you are not alone. That you have protective, credible support. We let him see that his ‘patient’ is not a vulnerable, isolated girl. He’s looking for a crack to exploit. We show him a wall.”
“And if the wall doesn’t scare him?”
“Then he reveals himself.” Levi’s eyes met hers, and the cold intent in them was absolute. “If he reacts aggressively, if he threatens, if he slips and shows his hand beyond professional concern—then he becomes a tangible threat. Not a shadow. And tangible threats can be dealt with.”
The unspoken how hung in the air between them.She knew his methods. They weren’t legal ones. “Levi…”
“It’s the cleanest option,” he stated, cutting off her protest. “It contains the conflict. It draws his fire away from your established life and onto a fortified position. Me.”
The self-sacrifice in it was so quiet, so matter-of-fact, it took her breath away. He was offering to make himself the target. To stand between her and the bureaucratic arrows so they’d stick in him instead.
“I don’t want a wall,” she whispered, her throat tight. “I want a partner. Not a human shield.”
His expression didn’t change, but something flickered deep in his eyes. “They’re the same thing.”
“They’re not.” She pushed herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. The dawn light was gaining strength, painting his pale skin in shades of grey. “A partner doesn’t just take the hit. They fight with you. You’re planning to just… stand there.”
“My standing there is what makes the fight unnecessary.” He reached up and tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was unbearably gentle. “Your safety is the only objective. Every action serves it.”
Frustration bubbled in her chest. He was so close, his skin still warm from hers, yet he was galaxies away inside that strategic mind. “You showered me like I was a mission debriefing,” she blurted out.
That finally got a reaction. His brows drew together slightly. “I cleaned you.”
“You reclaimed me.” She held his gaze, forcing him to see it. “It started clinical. Then it wasn’t. That’s what this is. It can’t just be a battle plan. I need to be in the strategy session.”
His hand froze, his fingers still curled around that strand of her hair. The gentleness in his touch solidified into something else—a brittle stillness. He withdrew his hand, sitting up slowly against the headboard. The sheets pooled around his waist, exposing the pale, scar-riddled landscape of his torso. In the grey light, he looked like a statue weathering a storm.
“I am in the strategy session,” he said, his voice flat. “You are the primary objective. The objective doesn’t strategize. It is protected.”
Aria sat up, pulling the sheet to her chest. The air between them, so warm and humid moments ago, now felt charged and thin. “See? That. That right there. You talk about me like I’m a package to be secured. A mission parameter.”
“You are.” There was no malice in it, only a devastating, simple truth. “In a hostile environment, the primary asset is secured. All actions flow from that.”
“This isn’t a fucking battlefield, Levi!” Her voice cracked, frustration finally boiling over. “This is my life! My messy, complicated, stupid life with stupid pink phones and overpriced creamer! You don’t get to just insert your… your operational efficiency into it and sandblast all the rough edges off!” She gestured wildly at the sterile room. “You’ve built a panic room and you’re trying to shove me into it.”
He watched her, his expression unmoved, but a vein pulsed in his temple. “A panic room is effective. It has a single purpose. It works.”
“And what happens when I have to leave the room, Levi?” She leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “What happens when I go back to Binghamton to pay my rent and make cappuccinos for Karens? Your perimeter doesn’t extend that far. You can’t control that.”
“I can mitigate the threats before you return.”
“By confronting my doctor? By making yourself the target?” She shook her head, a dry laugh escaping her. “You don’t act how you used to. You’re not soft or gentle or warm. All you care about is perimeter and security.”
The words landed in the quiet room. He didn’t flinch, but his gaze dropped to his own hands, resting on the grey sheet. They were capable hands. They could rebuild an engine, disable a phone’s tracking, bring her to shuddering ecstasy. But soft? They hadn’t been soft in a very long time.
“Soft gets you killed,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. “Warm is a vulnerability. Gentleness is a luxury we didn’t have.”
“We have it now.” She reached for one of those hands, but he pulled it back, out of reach. The rejection was a physical sting. “Or we could. You just refuse to pick it up.”
“I can’t just disappear Levi.” Her tone shifted, the anger banking into a fiercer, more grounded desperation. She ticked points off on her fingers. “Xavier is in NYC. Sasha is in Utica. We had people who need us, and you just want to… what? Hide.” She let the word hang, accusing. “You’re a public figure, Levi. You own a goddamn motorcycle company. You can’t just disappear and call it good.”
His jaw tightened. The fame, the notoriety from his past exploits—it was a tool he used sparingly, a spotlight he despised. She was wielding it against him now, turning his visibility into a weakness.
“And you definitely cannot get in a legal fight with my fucking doctor,” she pressed on, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Are you listening to yourself? You want to walk into a medical professional’s office and… what? Intimidate him? That’s not a strategy. That’s a felony waiting to happen. That’s you getting put in a box I can’t open.”
He finally looked at her, his grey eyes like chips of flint. “You underestimate what I can make disappear.”
“I’m not underestimating you!” she nearly shouted, throwing her hands up. “I’m overestimating the legal system! They have paperwork, Levi. Databases. They’ll bury you in it. They’ll find the cracks in your new identity, they’ll dig up your old one, and then where are we?” She took a shaky breath, forcing her voice lower. “I’ll just change doctors. It’s the simplest solution. We ghost him, go no-contact. He can file whatever reports he wants from a distance. Without me in his office, he has nothing but conjecture.”
“Running,” Levi stated.
“Adapting!” she fired back. “It’s what I’m good at, remember? You said it yourself. My ‘fluency’ here is a strength. So let me use it. Let me handle the civilian problem like a civilian. You handle… the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“The stuff I don’t know about!” Her patience finally snapped. “The shadows you see that I don’t! The reason you have three different deadbolts on a third-floor apartment door! You watch the perimeter, fine. But let me live inside of it. You can’t secure an empty room forever. Eventually, the walls collapse.”
Silence descended, thick and smothering. The muffled sound of a car alarm bleated from the parking lot below, a distant, tinny echo of disorder. Levi stared at the wall opposite the bed, at the unopened, rain-smudged letter from her that he’d framed like a trophy of a failure. His breathing was the only sound, measured and deep.
When he spoke, his voice was stripped raw, scoured of all its defensive armor. “I don’t know how to do both.”
The confession was so quiet, so utterly alien to him, that it stole the air from Aria’s lungs. He wasn’t looking at her.
“I don’t know how to be the person who… who buys the pink thing,” he continued, the words seeming to physically pain him, “and also the person who ensures the pink thing can’t be used to track you. The man who washes your hair and the man who calculates exit routes from the shower stall. They’re separate systems. They require different… operating protocols.”
Aria’s anger drained away, leaving a deep, aching hollow. He wasn’t refusing to be soft. He was confessing he’d forgotten how. That the part of him capable of gentleness had been archived, compartmentalized behind layers of survival code, and he couldn’t find the command to run both programs at once.
She moved slowly, crossing the space between them on the bed. She didn’t try to touch him. She just sat beside him, her shoulder almost touching his, and looked at the same blank wall.
“Then we write new protocols,” she said softly. “Together. You don’t have to figure it out alone inside that head of yours. That’s the whole point of not being alone anymore.”
He was silent for a long minute. Then, he gave a single, sharp nod. “Changing the doctor. It’s a tactical retreat. It avoids direct engagement with a fortified position.”
“It’s me telling a creep to get lost,” she corrected, a faint smile touching her lips. “But yeah. We’ll do it from a distance. We’ll use your paranoid magic to make sure he can’t follow any digital trail. And I’ll go back to Binghamton next week.”
He stiffened beside her.
“I have to,” she said, before he could speak. “My life is my defense. You said it. I need to reinforce it. I’ll call the doctor’s office from my apartment there, with my own phone. I’ll tell them I’m transferring my care. I’ll be normal, and present, and un-crazy.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. His skin was warm. “And you… will you be okay? Here? While I’m gone?”
The question seemed to baffle him. His wellbeing was never part of the equation. “I’ll monitor. I’ll establish a secure channel. I’ll run checks on the new physician.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He finally turned his head, his cheek resting against her hair. He inhaled deeply, as if trying to memorize her scent. “I will be… operational,” he said, which was the closest to ‘okay’ she knew she would get.
“Good.” She slid her hand into his, threading her fingers through his. This time, he didn’t pull away. He held on, his grip firm, almost too tight. “And when I come back,” she said, her voice a whisper against his skin, “we’ll figure out the next thing. Xavier. Sasha. One thing at a time.”
He brought their clasped hands up, studying the contrast—her smaller, warmer hand with its short, neat nails, tucked inside his larger, scarred one. A unit. A flawed, messy, terrified unit.
“Okay,” he said.
It wasn’t a surrender. It was a treaty.