The first hit of hot water against my back was almost enough to make my knees buckle.God.I braced my good hand against the tile and just breathed through it, letting the heat sluice down over me in a slow, steady wave. The knot of muscle around my injury was wound up so tight it felt like a fist clenched permanently under the skin, and the water wasfinallystarting to coax it loose. I stood there with my eyes closed and my head bowed and let it happen. Three days of bad sleep and bad mood and bad self-pity began to slide off me and pool around the drain.
I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough that the satyr finished his shower and left. Long enough that another guy took his spot at the showerhead next to mine, gave me a polite nod, and let me have my space. Long enough that the throbbing in my shoulder downshifted from a yell to a mumble.
When I finally turned the water off, I felt almost human again.
I toweled off carefully, knotted the towel back around my waist, and pushed through the heavy frosted-glass door at the far end of the shower room.
Steam hit me in the face like a warm hand.
The main bath was the showpiece of the whole place, and even now, on my fifth or sixth visit, it took a second to adjust to it. The room was huge with a vaulted ceiling, arched alcoves, and the whole thing was tiled in deep blue and gold mosaicthat Marco had once described as "what you'd get if a Roman emperor sponsored a gay porno."
He wasn't wrong. The bath itself was sunken into the floor, an enormous oval easily sixty feet across, with stone ledges built into the perimeter at varying depths so you could sit anywhere from waist-deep to neck-deep depending on what your body wanted. Soft red lights glowed under the waterline, throwing rippling gold patterns up onto the walls. The air was thick with steam and the faint, clean smell of mineral salts.
There were maybe a dozen men already in the water, scattered around the edges in the loose, unspoken constellation of a slow afternoon that hadn’t quite picked up for evening yet. There were a pair of human guys talking quietly at one end. And then there was a werewolf I half-recognized stretched out along a ledge with his eyes closed, his fur dark and wet against the tile. On the other side were two creatures I couldn't quite place pressed close together in one of the alcoves, the bigger one's hand moving in lazy circles against the smaller one's lower back. Nobody was being aggressive about anything. It was early. Right now this was just a place where men went to soak. The raw animalistic fucking would come later in the night.
I picked an empty stretch of ledge in one of the dimmer corners, dropped my towel on the hook above it, and lowered myself in.
"Holyshit," I breathed.
The water was hot. Almost hot enough to be uncomfortable, like that perfect razor's edge where your body has to decide whether to fight it or surrender. My body chose surrender immediately. I sank down until the waterline kissed my collarbones and let my head fall back against the cool stone of the rim. The heat went into my shoulder like a slow, deliberate thumb pressing into a knot, and I made a sound I was glad nobody was close enough to hear.
Marco, you absolute genius. I owe you a beer. I owe you a case of beer. And possibly a blowjob.
For a long stretch I didn't think about anything. That was new. My brain had been running hot for three days straight about the medical bills, about whether the contractor would hold my spot, about the stupid hairline crack in the bathroom tile that I couldn't fix one-handed, and about all the small humiliations of being a man whose whole identity was built on his body and whose body had decided to file a grievance. And now, all at once, that whole noisy machine just…quieted. The steam curled up past my face. The red light moved on the walls. Somewhere on the far side of the bath, a low murmur of conversation rose and fell.
I didn't notice the water shifting at first.
It was subtle, a slow displacement against my chest, the kind of current you'd get from someone wading in a long way off. I cracked one eye open. The surface across from me was glassy, undisturbed. I closed my eye again.
Then it happened a second time. Closer.
This time I opened both eyes, and I sat up a little straighter on the ledge, and I scanned the bath properly.
At the far end of the pool was a werewolf, this one white from head to toe. He was large, muscular, and a little intimidating. The water only came up to his thighs, meaning I got a good view of his heavy balls and his sheath with just the pink tip of his cock poking out. And I couldn’t help but stare. He was beautiful.
Those golden eyes of his found mine and he smiled. I returned it automatically and he started making his way toward me. The silent contract between us had been signed.
He moved through the water with surprising grace for something his size, those powerful thighs cutting through the surface without a sound. I watched him approach, my pulse picking up despite the heat making me languid. Up close, hiswhite fur was even more striking. It wasn’t the dingy off-white of old snow, but pure as fresh powder. Water beaded on it and rolled off in silver droplets.
"Rough day?" he asked when he reached my corner, settling onto the ledge beside me with maybe two feet of space between us. His voice was deep, roughened by the wolf, but gentle.
"Rough couple weeks," I admitted. Something about the steam and the anonymity made honesty easier. "Work accident."
His golden eyes dropped to my shoulder, taking in the ugly sprawl of bruising with a soft rumble that might have been sympathy. "Looks painful."
"Getting better." I shifted slightly, testing the space between us. He didn't move away. "You come here often?"
It was such a cliché line that we both smiled at it, and the tension devolved into smirks.
"Pretty often," he said. "Been stressed out a lot this past week. Seems like its been rough for both of us lately." His gaze was direct but not pushy, reading my face with the kind of attention that made heat pool low in my belly. "I'm thinking you could use some taking care of."
The words sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the temperature. I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He moved closer, closing that careful distance until his thigh brushed mine under the water. His hand came up to hover near my good shoulder, a question in the gesture. When I leaned into the touch, his palm settled against my skin with surprising tenderness.
"Taking care of someone really helps me unwind,” he said, moving closer. “So just let me work my magic.”
“Sounds good to me,” I nodded. It wasn’t every day you found a selfless werewolf looking to blow off some steam.
