His t-shirt is in his hand—he must have peeled it off coming up the stairs—and as I watch he tosses it on the counter and reaches for the button of his jeans. His pupils are blown so wide his eyes look black. His mouth is doing the slow devil curve I have learned to be afraid of and want at the same time.
He doesn't say anything yet. He just looks at me through the steam.
I yank back behind the curtain so fast I hit my elbow on the tile.
"Zero—"
"Yeah."
"What are you—I'm—"
"In the shower. Yeah. I see."
His belt clinks. The denim hits the tile. Bare feet on the bathmat.
The bond between his sternum and mine flares—the bright filament going from steady to aurora, alive in a way I haven't felt it in days. It runs straight down my spine and pools in my belly with the rest of the heat I was already carrying, and a small involuntary sound escapes me before I can swallow it.
He hears it.
The soft predator laugh comes through the steam.
"That's a fun new toy, isn't it."
"Zero, oh my god, you’re supposed to—"
"What, knock?"
"Yes!"
"Knocking's for people who you don’t owe a big, generousthank youto."
I press my forehead against the tile. My heart is hammering. I am painfully, embarrassingly hard, my cock heavy and wet between my thighs, and I am still half in shock from going zero-to-Zero in the span of fifteen seconds, and the bond between us is singing, and I am also—god help me—grinning against the wall.
"You can't be in here," I manage. Mostly to the tile. "If anyone—"
"They left. I watched them leave. Boat doesn't dock until two."
"What if they forgot something—"
"Then I'll be in the shower. With you. Won't be the first family scandal."
The curtain pulls back.
Cool air. Steam billowing. Zero standing there absolutely naked, all lean lines and ink and that low predatory grace he does, his cock already hard and rising against his stomach and his eyes raking over me like he's been starving for this for weeks.
My hand drops to cover my cock before I can stop it.
Like that does anything. Like he hasn't seen all of me before, like he wasn't the first one to see all of me, like a wet shower curtain and a sore body and a hard cock are something to be modest about with the man who flushed my pills and read every page of my journal.
He sees the hand. He sees the flush on my chest. He sees what I'm standing in the middle of trying not to do.
His grin breaks open.
"Oh, baby," he says. Soft. Wrecked. Already moving. "Hand over your dick?Now? After everything that’s happened between us?"
He steps into the shower.
The water hits him. His hair goes immediately dark against his skull. The rivulets trickle down his hard body, every muscle and ridge straining against the heat and my mouth goes dry.
