Free Take Your Time (Fate and Circumstance #2) by Leddy Harper

away stole the air from my lungs.
    I grabbed a towel from the closet and rolled it up behind his head, guiding his neck to the dip in the basin. At least he wouldn’t be able to see me from where I stood behind him, so he wouldn’t be able to witness the immense turmoil I’m sure riddled my face.
    My mind twisted with confusion and my stomach fluttered with unexpected excitement. I didn’t understand any of it. A complete stranger had managed to pull things from me that I didn’t even know were there. That night we’d spent together, just talking, had been intoxicating, and it had left me wanting more. But once the moment passed and I was able to think clearly again, I realized it’d been nothing more than a fog that had settled around me. As soon as that fog lifted, I no longer wanted him. The desire to have him with me, or to talk to him about everything, had faded. So why did I feel relieved to see him? Why did my insides seemingly illuminate like it’d been taken over by a swarm of lightning bugs when I realized he hadn’t gone back home?
    I turned the water on, checking the temperature before soaking his hair. “So what was your plan? Come see me and then go back home?” I ran my fingers through the dark strands of hair on the top of his head. They were long, as if styled after a faux-hawk, but I hadn’t seen him wear it that way. Both times I’d seen his hair—Saturday night and then again today—he’d worn it down and to one side, lying over the short hairs on the side of his head, leaving the other side and back visible. I thought it seemed rather punk rock, which was a little out of place in this neck of the woods. We were more country out here—southern. But I couldn’t stop focusing on the way his hair felt between my fingers in order to form enough words to ask about where he was actually from.
    “I don’t really have a plan.” His admission brought me back to the present, realizing I’d been stroking his hair long enough. If I didn’t pull it together, this would end up being the longest shampoo in history. “I haven’t thought much past seeing you.”
    “Don’t you have horses to train? A family that’s expecting you? I’m sure they wouldn’t be too happy to hear that you’re delaying your return for some slutty girl you met at a bar.” I pumped a few squirts of shampoo into my palm and began to run it through his hair, massaging his scalp with my fingertips as I worked up the lather. I focused on my job instead of the client, hoping my brain could disconnect my feelings for him and make him just another person in my chair.
    “They know where I’m at, and they understand.” The longer I shampooed him, the quieter and slower his words grew. “And I think…you should…give yourself more credit…than being a slutty girl…at a bar,” he finished saying, his voice becoming deep and desperate.
    I pulled my attention from his head to his lap, noticing how he kept fidgeting in his seat, appearing to be uncomfortable. No one had ever complained about the chairs before, always saying how they’re the most comfortable seats in any salon they’d ever been to. They were, after all, the most expensive on the market. But I quickly realized that his shifting hadn’t been due to the comfort of the chairs at all. No. He awkwardly adjusted his leg, shifting it over the other knee, attempting to hide the bulge in his faded jeans. It made me smile. It also made me massage his scalp deeper, really giving it to him.
    I leaned closer to his ear, never letting up on the pressure of my fingertips, and seductively said, “Since you seem to know me so well, why don’t you tell me how I should see myself.”
    He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat once more, finally throwing his clasped hands in his lap—even though that did nothing to hide the impressive imprint that protruded against his thigh. That one visual told me so much about what he had beneath his clothes, and it made my mouth