Mate Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #3)(12)

Pros: hot water, clean showers, and she was about to scrub three years of Alaskan bush grit from her skin. Vera stripped down, turned on the hot tap, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Red, puffy eyes, streams of black mascara down her face, wind-burned cheeks, and tangled hair that had been in perfect curls this morning, but now lay limply across her shoulders and down to her ribs. Turning from side to side, she giggled. Tobias, that lucky dog. But when her eyes landed on the puncture wounds at the top of her breast, her smile faltered, and she twisted to study the ones on her back. Tobias’s bear jaws were huge to make the marks so far down.

“I’m claimed,” she whispered, shocked all over again. This had actually worked.

Plumes of steam were billowing from above the white shower curtain by the time she was done staring at the bite mark. When her eyes landed on the tiny, miniature bottles of hotel shampoo and conditioner by the sink, her smile returned tenfold, and she let off a long squeal.

“What’s wrong?” Tobias asked in a panicked voice as he threw the door open.

She turned and held the precious commodities up. “Vanilla scented!”

Tobias wasn’t looking at her newly discovered hair care system, though. He was frozen in the doorway, eyes glued to her boobs. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

Well now, that wasn’t the reaction the boys on Perl gave her when they spied on her while she bathed in the river. She frowned down at herself. “Bad?”

Tobias shook his head, back and forth, back and forth, eyes scanning down to her belly, then lower.

At last, he lifted those emerald green eyes to hers with a stunned look on his face. “You look…”

“I look what?” Pretty, gorgeous, like a goddess. Tobias was about to add another pro to her list.

“You look hearty.”

“Hearty?” She snorted. “Like beef stew? Dig deeper, Silver.”

Tobias straightened his spine and slowly covered his obvious erection with his hands, which was a better compliment than “you look hearty.”

“I mean you look hot. Sexy.” He cleared his throat and squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them again with an uncomfortable smile. “I like the way you look.”

Vera wasn’t modest at all. Not anymore. Not after Perl Island, but suddenly, her skin flushed with heat under Tobias’s gaze. “Do you want to take a shower with me?”

Tobias stood frozen in the doorway for a long time. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing, but finally, he gave her a slight nod and began to undress. To give him privacy, she stepped into the shower and yelped at how hot the water was. It had to be almost boiling. Frantic, she turned it colder and pressed herself flat against the wall to avoid the scalding jets.

Just as she found the perfect temperature, Tobias stepped in and straightened to his full height. He was a tall man with wide, muscular shoulders and took up most of the room in the shower, but Vera didn’t mind. There was something intimate about this. Without a word, she lathered up a washrag with the bar of soap and began to run it over the hard curves of his body. His eyes darkened as she dragged the cloth down his pecs and abs, across the sexy strips of muscles over his hips. He turned for her slowly, and she ran soap suds down the taut musculature of his back. She’d never seen a more well-built man. “I like the way you look, too,” she murmured.

“Is this your first hot shower since you moved to Perl Island?”

Vera huffed a laugh. “No one moves to Perl. I was placed there. And yes, this is my first hot shower. It feels heavenly.”

“And you’re spending it washing me?”

“It’s not just washing you, Tobias. I’m getting to know you.” Heat flooded her cheeks again, and she wondered what the hell was wrong with her skin. She wasn’t a blusher.

“I don’t know anything about girls.”

“I could tell that from the weird-ass compliment you gave me.”

Tobias chuckled and took the rag from her fingertips. He rinsed it under the water, then lathered it up and turned her. Gently, he washed around her new bite mark, already half-healed thanks to her shifter abilities.

“What do girls like? Or specifically, what do you like?”

The question caught her off-guard. Partly because she was relaxing by the moment under his soft touch, and partly because no one had ever asked her what she liked before. Not that she could remember, anyway.

“Vanilla scented shampoo and conditioner,” she teased.

“You joke a lot. You never let a conversation get serious. Why?”

Observant bear, already digging at her roots. She joked and smiled to cope with the hard stuff. To take away the sting of having to think about things she didn’t want to. It was a survival mechanism. She couldn’t admit that part out loud to him, though, because he would see how messed up she was. Tobias Silver’s opinion meant more to her than anything else right now. No, it didn’t make sense, but there it was. She liked him, and she wanted him to like her, too. “I like painting my nails, doing my make-up, getting my hair done, and wearing sundresses. I like shaving my legs and looking put-together. Perhaps that sounds silly and super girly to a man like you, but you have to realize I was deep in the wilderness with all men for a long time, and sometimes it felt like I was drowning. Like I was losing myself completely. Perl is no easy place to live, and I was fine getting my hands dirty. But every once in a while, I want to look in the mirror and feel like a woman.” Her voice shook at the end, so she swallowed hard.