This too, proves difficult, given that I can’t put a lot of weight on my foot, but I manage to sort of sideways moonwalk under the spray like a hobbling magician and finally feel the warm water pouring over my face. I tilt my head back to let it rinse the lingering shampoo from my hair, keeping my eyes shut tight until I’m almost positive I’ve gotten it all out.

“Okay,” I tell him. “I think I’ve got it. I had a towel on the toilet. Do you think you could…?”

“Yeah,” he answers quickly. “Grab one of my hands with both of yours. Keep steady.”

I do it, gasping a little when I feel the brush of his hand against my hip.

“Shit,” he hisses. “Sorry. I’m just trying to turn the water off.”

“I-it’s fine,” I manage, my skin feeling too warm where he’s touched me. “Hurry up with the towel. It’s cold in here now.”

“Okay, I’ve got it.” He gives my hands a tug. “Can you step out?”

“Maybe? Let me just—Fuck.”

He catches me, because of course he does. I’m fully aware that my naked, wet boobs are pressed to what I think is flannel (let’s be real, of course it’s flannel), and I can feel the bite of a shirt button pressing into one of my nipples. One of his hands is still wrapped in both of mine, but the other—the one that was holding the towel—is now wrapped around my upper arm, holding me steady against him.

God, and his scent. It’s not a combination that should be mouthwatering, but I find myself wanting to lick him all the same.

Neither of us speaks at first—hell, I might not even be breathing—but it really is getting colder by the second, and a cold, wet ass is one heck of a motivation to not let awkwardness get the best of you.

“Don’t say one word about me being clumsy.”

His hand might flex at my arm, but I’m not sure. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“The towel,” I mumble, my voice still sounding too loud now that the water is off. “Can you wrap it around me?”

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Just…hold still.”

No trouble there, I think. Even though when I’m standing this close, I’m assaulted again by the warmth and scent of him. So much so that it makes something pulse low in my belly. Makes me even more aware of the fact that I’m naked with him. Again.

His hands move over me carefully when I release my grip on him, and I feel the terry cloth gingerly meeting my skin as he slowly works the towel around my body. I replace his hands with mine as soon as my fingers can find the towel’s edges, quickly covering myself with it for some semblance of modesty as I attempt to straighten.

“I can help you to your room,” he tells me. “Just grab my hand.”

Once again I find myself holding Hunter’s hand, but this time he pulls my arm up and over his shoulder to tuck me into his side, no doubt trying to support my weight so I can hobble to my room. If I weren’t so painfully aware of how close my naked body is to him, I might actually die from embarrassment.

But I am aware. I am very aware.

It’s hard not to be aware when the thin light of dusk is still spilling in from my bedroom window, less so now than it was when I got into the shower, but still enough that I can make us both out as Hunter guides me to my bed. I peek up at his face to find it dutifully trained upward at the ceiling, his lips pressed into a tight line as he helps me along.

“I’m not looking,” he assures me.

A childish part of me pouts somewhere in the back of my mind. I mean, doesn’t he want to look? Even a little? It’s not as if he hasn’t already seen it. I quickly squash that ridiculousness though. Mostly because I’m still hobbling and growing increasingly colder by the second—it’s hard to feel indignant when your nipples could cut glass.

“My clothes are on my bed,” I tell him. “If you could help me sit down, I think I can—”

“Right,” he cuts me off, guiding me toward it.

He gently helps me into a sitting position on top of the quilt, quickly turning his broad back to give me privacy. “Do you want me to step outside?”

“Um.” I’ve got one foot in my underwear at this point and am struggling to get them on with my throbbing ankle, and I know the pants are going to be twice as difficult. “I might…need your help. But stay turned around. Just in case.”

“Okay.”

I manage to get my underwear on after a minute of huffing, and I grab for my sweater next, figuring it will be an easier task to tackle. I shrug into it sans bra, thinking that the material is thick enough to hide that fact. Not to mention it’s growing darker by the second. The pants do indeed prove to be a problem—it’s hard to pull them up while I’m in a sitting position. I have one pant leg mostly to my knee, but the other—the one that goes over my injured ankle—is being a little bitch about it all.

“Hunter,” I whine. “I can’t get my pants on.”

I think he makes a sort of groaning sound in the back of his throat, but I might be imagining it.

“Okay,” I tell her, turning my head ever so slightly. “I won’t look, all right?”

“I’m mostly dressed,” she points out. “It’s fine.”

I turn and immediately crouch, my fingers brushing along her calves as I try to locate the waistband of her sweats in the half-dark room. My knuckles brush against her skin when I find it, and my fingers curl into the edge as I slowly start to pull her pants up her legs.

Now, I know this is probably one of the most awkward, ridiculous moments of my life, and I shouldn’t feel a rush of adrenaline and a quickening pulse as my knuckles inadvertently glide against her knees and then higher over her thighs as I work the material up to where it’s supposed to be, but my body doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

“Lift up,” I murmur, my voice rough.

She raises her hips as instructed so that I can work her pants to her waist, then she lets out a quiet gasp that makes me still for half a second when the backs of my fingers graze her ass on the way.

“There,” I rasp, quickly pulling away from her. “All done.”

“I can’t find my socks,” she mourns. “I think they got knocked off the bed.”

“Oh. I have…Just a second.”

I move to the other side of the room, knocking my hands against the things on the dresser, the sound deafening in the quiet space, right before a bright beam of light illuminates the entire room.

“You had a flashlight that entire time?”

I can only hope she can’t make out my sheepish expression in the glow of the flashlight. “I didn’t think you’d want me to bring it into the bathroom. Didn’t think you’d want me shining it on you when you were naked.”

The flashlight is pointed right at her, so I clearly see the way her lips part slightly and her eyes go wide, no doubt realizing that fact herself. If the sudden burst of her scent is any indication, I almost think she might not have minded.

Hopefully the bright light of the flashlight is washing me out enough that she doesn’t see my face flushing.

I move the beam to the floor in search of her socks, quickly finding them under the edge of the bed where they’ve fallen. I grab them before I set the flashlight upright on the ground beside me, looking at her from where I’ve knelt and holding out my hand in a quiet request. She gives me her foot while I barely breathe, unsure how putting on her socks could be so hard on my heart. It’s practically dancing in my chest right now.

I slide one sock over her good foot before moving to the sprained one, cradling her heel gently as I carefully pull the material over her toes and upward to slide it onto her foot. Again, the backside of my finger teases her skin as I work, but there’s an added bonus of my palm half curving against her calf as I tug the long sock all the way up.

“Done,” I tell her, looking up at her from the floor.