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your back.”
    You never have to say it.
    “Sometimes, I want to.”

Chapter Five
    In your wildest dreams
    Jessa
    It was a warehouse, with high ceilings and reinforced metal and small windows that were shuttered against the storm. When the music that had been playing came to a stop, I heard hail hit the metal and it sounded like bullets. I cringed the first twenty times or so and then my senses got used to the dull pings.
    At some point, Bishop had disappeared, but Mathias was here with me. I can’t say I wasn’t happy about that. I knew there must be some kind of underground bunker, like we’d had in D.C., and the thought of all the people I’d have to meet frightened me. At that point, I was ready to pray that the storm continued indefinitely, if it meant I’d just stay here with Mathias.
    I rubbed my bare arms and shivered. The warehouse was heated, but the ceilings were so high, it was hard for it to stay very warm. It didn’t help that my feet were bare.
    It didn’t help that I knew Mathias was watching me—watching me in the way a man watches a woman he wants. Finally, I turned toward him.
    I was sure he was armed, but in the blur of the fighting, I hadn’t seen him pull a weapon. And he hadn’t pulled one on me after I’d stabbed him. He hadn’t, at any point I’d seen, taken time to dress, or even look at the wound. I couldn’t see anything through the jacket though, and I thought better of reminding him what I’d done.
    I looked down just then and realized I was covered in dirt and blood and dust. Self-consciously, I touched my hair, which must’ve been the rat’s nest it felt like. It had been forever since I’d had a proper shower, which is probably why that man had studied me so hard today before agreeing to buy me.
    Maybe I should be grateful I looked like hell. That hesitation allowed Mathias and Bishop time to save me.
    I stared at my hands, the blood caked under my nails, and then Mathias’s hand was in front of mine. I looked up and he was right there—I hadn’t heard him move or seen him, but he was holding out his hand to take mine.
    I stuck my palm against his and he gave no indication of his feelings, instead gave a light tug and I was following him across the large floor, weaving through motorcycles until we got into a large bathroom area. There was an empty four-stall community shower in here.
    “Is there water?” I asked, and he turned it on in the closest stall, put my hand under the cold water, pointed to the hot and shook his head. When I told him, “I don’t care,” he turned, grabbed a few towels and placed them on a bench outside the shower. And then he took off his shorts and disappeared...into the next shower.
    I didn’t look but I heard the water turn on. There was a five-foot wall between the two, and the showers faced in opposite directions. It took everything I had not to blatantly stare at him, and after the experiences with men I’d had recently, you’d think I’d want nothing to do with any of them. But my body felt differently about Mathias, and the sensation was nerve-racking, to say the least.
    “Idiot,” I told myself as I stripped my dirty clothes off and turned the shower on. He hadn’t been kidding about no hot water, and I stood under spray that was so cold it burned and I didn’t care. I rinsed and scrubbed the LoV and Charlie and the entire past weeks off me, rinsed my entire damned life away as fast as I could. I forced myself to rinse the shampoo fully from my hair. My teeth were literally chattering by that point.
    I turned the water off. Mathias’s shower was still running. I wrapped a towel around me and dried off my arms and legs, wrapped my hair and rubbed some of the water out of it. And then I finally got the courage to look over at Mathias. There wasn’t a curtain. His back was to me, and he stood with his face under the spray. His shoulders were wide, his back muscled, narrowing to a cut waist—and he was heavily tattooed. The