What I Want, Chapter Two.

Sitting on the toilet seat, she let her eyes flush themselves of his smoke and his sweat until steam permeated the air and made her skin sticky. She turned off all but the dimmest lights, not wanting to see the damage she had let him inflict on her. He'd bruised her, she was sure of it. She bruised easily, visibly. That's what she paid for having pale skin.

She reached into the shower and turned the water down from scalding. She pulled down a towel and ran her fingers through her hair. Then she took off her clothes and stepped into the warm water.

All she wanted was to be clean of him.

She hummed a little tune as she tipped her head back into the stream of water, letting the water run over her face, her lips.

He had kissed her. Tongue in mouth, lips on lips. He had tasted like smoke and cinnamon. She hadn't wanted him to kiss her. She hadn't wanted that at all.

Her face was set to a grimace as she took out her bodywash and wondered exactly what she had meant when she told Remy: "It's what I want."

"What I want." She said, flooding her voice with feeling. "Damnit all to hell if I don't know what I want." But she knew that she didn't.

She thought for a moment about who she wanted, but quickly tossed it away. With two telepaths in the house, and one of them dating the man she wanted, it wasn't safe to let herself think that kind of thoughts, even if neither of them was currently there.

But she couldn't help imagining him running his hands up and down her sides. She couldn't help recalling the week before when he had come upon her on the roof, standing on the balustrade and leaning out, trying to make her voice carry as far as it possibly could. When he had grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him as if she was his last lifeline and-almost inaudibly-whispering: "Don't you ever do that again. Ever." And then vanishing almost as quickly as he had appeared.

She couldn't help but wonder if he was attracted to her. She couldn't help but wonder if he liked her any more than was expected of him. And she couldn't help but stop herself from wondering for long. After all, she knew it was just a dumb fantasy. Childish and naïve.

Satisfied with her state of cleanliness, she began to rinse the soap from her body, her eyes drooping slowly closed as the hot water ensnared her senses into a lulling, sleepy compliancy.

Her mind was screaming at her body to wake up, not to wander outside and fall onto her bed. The bed that smelled like French cigarettes and sweaty arousal.

Eventually her body complied. She opened the window and put the fan on, trying to get his scent out of the room, bundled up her sheets, pulled on a nightgown and briskly walked out of the room.