What the hell was wrong with him?

Oh, right. There was still the matter of getting his pants and leg and everything beneath it off without completely creeping Ellie out.

Speaking of, she gasped then lunged forward, slopping bubbles and water onto the floor. Not that he minded. She grabbed his waistband and tugged, counterbalancing him enough for him to regain his equilibrium. "Lucas!"

"Shit. I'm fine." He brushed her fingers away from where her knuckles grazed the patch of skin below his belly button. Entirely too close to his cock for comfort.

Well, unless she planned to take things a lot farther than he did.

They both noticed, right about then, that she had emerged from the water. Her perky tits looked amazing decorated with suds and soaked from the bath. The urge to bury his face between the mounds, plump them with his hands and decorate them with love bites had him clenching his teeth to resist it.

"Jesus." Ellie relented, retreating to the opposite corner of the tub. She sank until her body was obscured from his gaze once more.

Half of him wanted to cry.

The other half cheered.

Besides, it gave Lucas an idea. Two could play that game.

"You sure you're not getting out?" He gave her a final opportunity to dodge the uncomfortable situation.

"Positive."

Stubborn woman. He kind of liked it.

"Fine. Then I'm coming in." He crossed his arms and widened his stance.

Still she didn't even flinch.

So Lucas sat on the edge of the tub and removed his shoes from both his meat foot and his prosthesis. Next he took the knife Ellie had returned to him after their hike and set it next to the food. His secure phone he left on a shelf above the tub, safely out of the splash zone.

Finally, he used his arms to anchor himself as he spun around and submerged his lower body.

It felt fucking weird to be getting wet with jeans on. Ellie's outraged shock was enough to push him over his aversion and inspire a chuckle. She sputtered in response.

Once he started, he couldn't hold back. He laughed loud enough that he startled himself with the impact of his joy reverberating off the tiled walls.

When was the last time he'd heard that sound? Maybe never.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ellie scooped up some water and launched it at him.

A rooster tail of droplets smacked him in the face. It only made Lucas clutch his stomach, which cramped from laughing so hard.

"Is it okay for your leg to be wet like that?"

"Yep. It's carbon fiber. Waterproof."

Now that her precious bubble shield blanketed him-preserving his modesty, as well as hers-he got to work on his jeans. Soggy, they were harder than usual to remove, though he managed.

Before long he'd worked the thick denim down his legs to his ankles.

Then Lucas disengaged the proximal lock on his prosthesis and slid it off. With that done, he tugged his jeans off the top of his prosthesis, below his stump, then kicked them from his uninjured foot. Everything was a pain in the ass these days.

"Fuck," he hissed.

"Are you stuck or something?" Ellie asked. "Serves you right for assuming I'd be critical of your body, dumbass. You'll be lucky if you don't slip and drown tangled up in your pants."

"Whatever. You'd save me long before that happened." It did weird things to his guts to know that was true too.

"Probably." She flashed a rueful smile. "So what's the cursing for then?"

"Damn, it just hurts. It's like taking your shoes off at the end of a really long day. Magnified a thousand times over," he admitted, wincing as he thought of her poor battered feet.

Slinging water everywhere, he put both his leg and his jeans on the floor next to the tub. With one final pass, he slipped his underwear off and added them to the pile. He'd have to be careful to step only on the mat until he could wipe the mess up.

Rubbing his knee through the socks and liner dampened the effectiveness of Lucas's hands, so he began to strip those off too. The stump socks he flung, adding them to the growing laundry pile. After rolling the liner down, he put the floppy gel sleeve on the tub surround so that he could clean it properly after they finished bathing.

Buck naked, yet hidden, he grinned. Settling in, he realized Ellie was staring at him with her brows drawn together, causing adorable wrinkles on her forehead.

"What?" he asked.

"I don't get you." She gestured toward him. "I've already seen you without your leg on. It's not a big deal."

"Oh sure, being an amputee is nothing." He frowned. "Trust me. From the number of people who stare at me when I go out, I know what a freak I've become."

"I can understand people being curious. You're different, sure. So am I, though my issues are invisible until I blank out in the middle of a grocery store aisle or something equally humiliating. That doesn't make you worse or anything." Ellie stared at him. "I realize I didn't know you before the accident. But, even after, when you were far more impaired than you are now-clinging to the hope you were going to go back to your old life on that mangled foot-you were never this insecure."

Lucas reached behind him and grabbed the knot at the back of his neck. He squeezed it as he considered how to explain. "I guess I've always been physically superior. I don't mean that in a douchey kind of way, but it's the truth. I didn't think much about running or any of the demanding things I had to do to excel in my training. Now, even the simplest things take a ridiculous amount of effort. Sometimes-despite having a great sense of balance, improving my core strength and practicing maneuvering with this damn thing on-I still fall on my fucking face."

"Everyone does. You get back up."

Ellie scooted closer to his right, so he edged to his left. If they kept this up, soon they'd cause a whirlpool in the tub from spinning around its perimeter in an eternal game of duck-duck-goose.

"Why do you keep pulling away?"

He knew she was referring to more than their current situation. "You deserve someone better. Someone who can lift you up, not drag you down."

Ellie closed her eyes for a moment. She drew a deep breath then stared directly at him.

"Are you sure it's not because you resent me? For my part in making you this way?" Her lower lip wobbled, and her voice had cracked as she asked.

Even in the days and weeks he'd visited her, taught her self-defense or hung out with her at their mutual friends' houses after she'd been caged, she'd never once cried in front of him. To know that he might cause her to do so now broke his heart. He'd hurt her when a lot of what he'd done in the past year had been to avoid exactly that.

"What?" His spine went ramrod straight. "Is that really what you think?"

"I don't blame you." She shrugged. "If it weren't for me..."

"Then we'd never have cracked the Sex Offender formula in time to create an antidote and stop its spread. We also wouldn't have had an ironclad case against Morselli without you." Lucas gaped at her, incredulous. "Don't you realize how many lives you-and the rest of the team-saved that day? The thought of you in that place...it tears me up. It does. But I've sacrificed a lot in my life for the sake of the greater good.

"The number of heroic men and women I've known who've given their lives to fight evil is more than I can count anymore. Even when normal civilians had no idea of the dangers they were in from unknown threats, they still gave everything they had. To keep it that way. Guys like John. Or my partner, Steve, who died on the floor of that dungeon."

He should probably shut up, since tears were spilling down her cheeks. But now that he was talking, he couldn't stop.

"So, no. I don't think what happened was your fault. Not in the least. And if I had to do it again, knowing everything I know now, I'd do it without a second thought. That stuff was pure evil. No one could understand that better than you. Millions of people would have been victims-either through addiction or by being abused by its users. This was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, even if it has a big impact on me personally. Never once have I blamed you for any of it."

"Then why-?" She couldn't get anything else out.

That was fine. He understood what she meant. She needed to know why he kept driving a wedge between them-to keep them both safe.

"Because I'm fucked up. And so are you. The potential for disaster is enormous. Would either of us survive the fallout of a bad breakup when we're both already jacked? Could we really make something work when we're each concentrating on ourselves so much? It's better to avoid making things more complicated between us.

"I know you can feel this crazy pull too. I don't know what to do with that. I never had the luxury of indulging in a real relationship before. I had a hell of a lot of affairs, sure. But never anything serious. It would have been too risky to have someone I cared for floating out there. A giant target. And learning how to do that, how to be a partner...I'm not sure I'm capable when I need to be selfish right now."

Ellie didn't utter a sound. When she only gawked at him, he mentally rewound what had spewed from his mouth unfiltered. "Shit. See, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call you-"

"It's okay. You're right. I am fucked up. I jump at the slightest breeze when I'm walking outdoors. I have nightmares pretty much every time I fall asleep. It's absolutely killing me that your front door is unlocked right now, even though I know it's a silly thing that wouldn't keep anyone serious out."

The raw honesty pouring from her questioning stare had him rooted in place.

"So...what if I admit it makes me feel safer to be near you?"

How could he take that from her after everything she'd suffered through?

If he could make things better for her, shouldn't he?

Even if it made him less comfortable. Vulnerable.

Because too much more of this and he wouldn't be able to cast her aside again. Then they'd both be screwed, since everything he said still held true.

"Come here." He opened his arms to Ellie.

Chapter Seven.

When Ellie neared to take him up on his offer, Lucas didn't hesitate to pull her in tight to his chest. The side of her face rested just below his collarbone. He didn't even shift when their thighs aligned.

It surprised him that Ellie didn't recoil when she couldn't deny his leg stopped short of hers. Knowing it and feeling it were different things. Every time he looked down was still a shock. He supposed he'd had thirty-five years to get used to his foot being there and less than one to rearrange his perception of his body. The difference between his mental picture of himself and reality caught him off guard sometimes.

Not E. She accepted him as he was.

For a while, they sat there, propped against the tub, letting the jets pummel their abused muscles, kneading them into relieved putty.

His fingers wandered through Ellie's soft curls, picking out leaves or twigs and unsnarling what he could of her platinum mane.

"Wash my hair?" she asked.

So he did. Slowly rubbing the shampoo into her scalp, taking pride in every bit more she relaxed against him. Content, he couldn't think of a single reason to move once he'd finished rinsing her off. So he didn't.

Lucas simply enjoyed her companionship.

Something he couldn't really say he'd ever sought from a woman before. That's what his brothers-in-arms had been for. Another enormous part of him he'd suddenly lost along with his foot.

"Lucas?" she asked eventually.

"Yeah."

"Pass me that apple and some water, will you?" She snuggled tighter to him when he shifted.

"I'll do better than that." He kissed the top of her head, maybe light enough that she wouldn't notice, then grabbed the water and handed it to her.

While she twisted the cap off, he took the apple and his knife in one hand. Unable to juggle them, yet unwilling to surrender his hold on her, he tossed the knife to his other hand and flipped it open.

The schwip of the blade extending rang in the bathroom.

Ellie's nails dug into his ribs. She turned her face into his pecs and slammed her eyes closed. Her lips moved as if she was repeating something to herself in a continual loop. Her breath came in fast, shallow bursts.

Lucas was afraid to move, even to conceal the knife. He didn't want to accidentally cut her with the extra-sharp blade if she lurched away. "You okay, E?"

"Uh-huh." She filled her lungs so deeply it had to be an intentional technique she used to calm herself. "The guard who was in my section most often used a switchblade at my throat to keep me from fighting when they forced me to swallow Sex Offender. I tried to resist. I hated how it made me feel. The things I did."

She shuddered hard enough to cause noticeable ripples in the roiling waters of the tub.

It hadn't taken five minutes before Lucas had failed her and brought some painful memory to the surface. "E, this is exactly what I'm talking about." His rage at her captors had leaked into his exclamation.

Ellie whimpered before glancing up at him.

"I don't want to scare you." His stare ping-ponged from her to the knife in his hand. He was afraid to budge.

"You do not frighten me." She turned and faced the knife. "My memories do. They're phantoms I can't fight."

Ellie extended her hand and wrapped it around his. She tugged until he followed, slowly. Little by little, she brought the razor-edged blade closer to her. When it got within a few inches of her face, he prevented her from moving it farther.

"Put it against my neck," she whispered.

"Hell fucking no!"

"Do it." She pulled again and still he resisted.

"E-"

"Do what I say for once!" she snarled at him. "Give me control. Please. Let me have it back."