Free APOLLO RISING (The Apollo Saga, Book 1) by Sage Arroway Page B

arched brow.
    “Just kidding,” he teased, turning to the hallway. “How long do you think you’ll be?”
    The thought of a long, hot bath made her skin tingle, but she forced herself to return focus to the last slow, steady cuts with the blade. “I’m almost done,” she insisted, “I want to make sure we have enough for the next couple of days, plus…” She left her sentence unended, realizing that he had already left the room completely.
    She wrapped up the meat, and set it to one side while listening to the water running in the old tub. Pulling the red-stained apron over her head , she laid it on the edge of the sink and walked towards the bathroom, kicking off her shoes on the way. Tyler was standing in the hallway, looking into the hall cubby.
    “Got towels in here, somewhere?” he asked, seeing her approach.
    Allie shook her head, pointing towards the bedroom. “In there, in the main closet.”
    Following her instructions, he returned a moment later, a pleasantly surprised expression on his face. In one hand, he held a stack of towels, and in the other, an old dusty guitar case. “I couldn’t help myself,” he confessed. “I see a guitar and I can’t not touch it.”
    She was shocked – how could she have forgotten that was back there? “Where’d you find that?”
    “It was in the back of the closet. Is it yours?”
    She shook her head, “No, it was my dad’s, I guess. Moll said he played it all the time for my Mom, and so she held on to it after…”
    “Oh, hey, look,” he interrupted, “if you’d rather I didn’t…”
    She couldn’t help but smile at his expression, like a little boy who’d just broken his best friend’s toy. “It’s fine, really,” she assured him. “I don’t mind. I never saw him play it anyway, so, it’s really only a guitar to me. Feel free, I don’t even know if it works.”
    He handed her the towels, and let his fingers touch hers longer than necessary. “Thank you, Allie.”
    A shiver coursed along her skin, and she hurriedly excused herself, hearing her voice tremble as she did so. She closed the door behind her and stood against it for several moments until she heard him walking away and into the main room.
    The water was only halfway up the tub, but the steam rising up called out to her in a way that felt almost primordial. She stripped off the blood-stained clothes and let them fall into a pile on the floor and stepped into the tub. It was even hotter than she had expected, but she didn’t care. Picking up a nearby bottle of bathsoap, she poured a bit of it under the faucet and let a mound of bubbles build before she sank down into the water. Every inch of her screamed out deliciously as it met the sharp, wet, sting of the bathwater until she was able to lay back with her shoulders and knees rising up from the water’s surface. And she came to rest, watching the blood on her skin dilute into the water, tingeing it pink.
    Beyond the door, she heard Tyler begin to tune the guitar. She nearly laughed out loud at how comically bad it sounded. Each note, one by one, however, shifted and changed until it joined the one before it. And eventually, they began to play in harmony.
    Allie sat up and turned off the water, easing back into her former posture, sliding down until her head and hair were underwater, and then rose back up until the water rippled up beneath her chin. She wanted to be wrapped up in all this heat, letting the warmth seep into her bones, find each last inch of skin and muscle and ease them into sublime relaxation. A slow, lingering sigh slipped past her lips, bordering on a moan as s he lifted her hands to her face and slicked back the water from her face.
    And then, from the other room, she heard Tyler begin to play. Just a few chords at first, as if he was just getting to know the guitar, and then a soft and beautiful melody ensued. The soothing sounds helped her to drift into daydream, where she imagined him—gratuitously naked, like