Or she sort of did—but not in disgusting nightwear, and unshaved, and just...
Oh, it might not be supposed to matter, but Roula had had enough sex where itreallyhadn’t mattered. A very different thing. For a while it was perhaps nice to feel wanted, no matter your attire, but for Roula things were a little more complex. She had been taken over and over, no matter what she wore or how she looked.
She wanted to feel nice—not just for him, but herself.
‘Still here?’ Galen said when he came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel.
‘Well, I want to hear what’s being said. I assume you’ve checked my phone?’
‘I have.’ Galen nodded. ‘Do you want to go through to the lounge for a debriefing and then I’ll show you to a guest room, or do you want to speak here in bed?’
Why was hesodirect?
‘Here’s fine, but...’
‘Roula...’ He opened and closed several drawers as he spoke. ‘I have a rule...’
‘What?’
He tapped his ring finger. ‘They don’t turn me on.’
He did not see her burning cheeks, for he was still looking through drawers.
She diverted her eyes as he pulled on some dark grey lounge pants, which were tight at the bottom and had clearly never been worn because they had a price label on the front of the waistband—though she tried not to notice as he got under the sheets.
‘Get in,’ he said, and she did, and they faced each other, and his shoulders were broad and wet...
‘You don’t ever dry yourself properly,’ she told him.
‘I dry the important bits,’ he said, and then added, ‘I dry them very thoroughly. The rest...’
He liked her pink blush and the temporary receding of pain in her eyes.
It wouldn’t last.
Galen had heard her mother’s tirade, and it would seem that Nemo’s lawyers, along with her family, were rather hoping Roula might want to fabricate a suitable defence and help Nemo.
Galen was not one for affection, but he would have liked to wrap her up right now and hide her for six months. He was incredibly relieved that she lay in his bed, not down a hallway, or streets away, or on Anapliró...
He resisted, though. Even as he saw the trouble swirling in her eyes...
‘Your mother did call, but I think you should wait till tomorrow to call her back. Tensions are high.’
‘What did she say?’
‘I was brushing my teeth,’ he said, ‘so I didn’t get all the details. But anger was the general drift.’
‘Did she call me a traitor?’
‘Not sure... I was gargling.’
Galen breathed on her, and it was minty and antiseptic, and Roula had never imagined, not even in her wildest panics about what her mother would say, that it would even possible for it to be delivered in such an offhand, calm, minty and, yes,sexyway.
And as he went through her messages he took out, not the agony as such—this was too heavy for that—but he dulled the acute sting in a way she could not have envisaged.
‘Can I ask how you’re doing?’ Galen asked her.
‘Grateful to pause,’ she admitted. ‘So, you hide yourself here on the anniversary of your parents’ death...?’