Bared to You

"I want to be here." He paused beside me. "Can I hold you?"

I turned into him and squeezed him hard. "Please."

He pressed his cheek against mine and hugged me close. The embrace wasn't as natural and easy as we'd grown used to. There was a new wariness between us that was different from anything we'd felt before.

"How are you doing?" he murmured.

"Better now that you're here."

"But still nervous." He pressed his lips to my forehead. "Me, too. I don't know how we're ever going to fall asleep next to each other again."

Pulling back slightly, I looked at him. That was my fear as well, and my earlier conversation with Cary didn't help matters. He's a ticking time bomb...

"We'll figure it out," I said.

He was quiet for a long moment. "Has Nathan ever contacted you?"

"No." Although I had a deep-rooted fear that I might see him again one day, whether accidentally or deliberately. He was out there somewhere, breathing the same air..."Why?"

"It was on my mind today."

I pulled back to search his face, a knot forming in my throat at how tormented he looked. "Why?"

"Because we've got a lot of baggage between us."

"Are you thinking it's too much?"

Gideon shook his head. "I can't think that way."

I didn't know what to do or say. What assurances could I give him, when I wasn't sure my love and his need would be enough to make our relationship work?

"What's going through your mind?" he asked.

"Thoughts of food. I'm starving. Why don't you go see if Cary wants to eat? Then we can get started on dinner."

Gideon found Cary sleeping, so he and I ate a candlelit dinner for two at the dining table, a somewhat formal meal while lounging in the worn T-shirts and pajama bottoms we'd put on after our respective showers. I was worried about Cary, but spending quiet downtime alone with Gideon felt like just what we needed.

"I had lunch with Magdalene in my office yesterday," he said after we'd enjoyed a few initial bites.

"Oh?" While I'd been ring shopping, Magdalene had been enjoying private time with my man?

"Don't take that tone," he admonished. "She ate a meal in an office covered in your flowers, with you blowing kisses from my desk. You were as much there as she was."

"Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction."

He lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a quick, hard kiss to the back. "I'm relieved you can still get jealous over me."

I sighed. My emotions had been all over the map all day; I couldn't decide how I felt about anything. "Did you say anything to her about Christopher?"

"That was the point of the lunch. I showed her the video."

"What?" I frowned, remembering my phone had died in his car. "How'd you do that?"

"I took your phone up to my office and pulled the video off via USB. Didn't you notice I brought it back last night, fully charged?"

"No." I set my silverware down. Dominant or not, Gideon and I were going to have to work on which lines crossed over into my freak-out zone. "You can't just hack into my phone, Gideon."

"I didn't hack into it. You haven't set a password yet."

"That's not the point! It's a serious invasion of my f**king privacy. Jesus..." Why in hell did no one in my life understand that I had boundaries? "Would you like me rummaging through your stuff?"

"I've got nothing to hide." He pulled his smartphone out of an inner pocket of his sweats and held it out to me. "And you won't either."

I didn't want to get into a fight now, things were too shaky as it was, but I'd let this go long enough. "It doesn't matter whether or not I have something I don't want you to see. I have a right to space and privacy, and you need to ask before you help yourself to my information and my belongings. You have to stop taking whatever you want without my permission."

"What was private about it?' he asked with a frown. "You showed it to me yourself."

"Don't be like my mother, Gideon!" I shouted. "There's only so much crazy I can handle."

He jerked back at my vehemence, clearly surprised by how upset I was. "Okay. I'm sorry."

I gulped down my wine, trying to rein in my temper and unease. "Sorry I'm mad? Or sorry you did it?"

After the length of several heartbeats, Gideon said, "I'm sorry you're mad."

He really didn't get it. "Why don't you see how weird this is?"

"Eva." He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. "I spend a quarter of every day inside you. When you set limits outside of that I can't help but see them as arbitrary."

"Well, they're not. They're important to me. If there's something you want to know, you need to ask me."

"All right."

"Don't do it anymore," I warned. "I'm not kidding, Gideon."

His jaw tightened. "Okay. I get it."

Then, because I really didn't want to fight, I moved on. "What did she say when she saw it?"

He visibly relaxed. "It was difficult, of course. Even more difficult to know I'd seen it."

"She saw us in the library."

"We didn't talk about that directly, but then, what was there to say? I won't apologize for making love to my girlfriend in a closed room." He leaned back in his chair and exhaled harshly. "Seeing Christopher's face on the video - seeing what he really thought of her - that hurt her. It's hard to see yourself being used that way. Especially by someone you think you know, someone who's supposed to care about you."