The kiss went deep. His mouth was hot, his stubble rough against my jaw, and I could feel his heart hammering against my chest through the thin cotton of my shirt. One of his hands slid up my back, fingers spreading between my shoulder blades, pulling me closer like he was afraid I might change my mind and step away.
I wasn’t stepping away. I was just getting started.
I walked him backward until his shoulder blades hit the wall. The towel slipped lower. His bad leg buckled slightly—not enough to fall, just enough that I felt the shift in his weight, the stiffness in his right hip that he’d been pretending wasn’t there for two weeks—and I braced my forearm against the wall beside his head and held him there with my body, my mouth still on his, my hand still in his wet hair.
He made a sound. Low and rough and entirely involuntary, the kind of sound that comes from somewhere behind your sternum when you’ve stopped censoring yourself. I felt it vibrate through his chest into mine, and something hot and possessive uncoiled in my gut.
“Fuck,” Sterling said against my mouth. His voice was wrecked. Two syllables, and he sounded like he’d been running.
“Eloquent,” I said. “Very you.”
“I don’t—” He stopped. Swallowed. His eyes were darker now, pupils blown, and the expression on his face was one I’d never seen before—not the flat green stare, not the almost-smile, something rawer. Something that looked dangerously close to want, undisguised and urgent and a little bit terrified.
“You don’t what?” I asked, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw. “Don’t want this? Because your mouth says one thing and the rest of you is saying something entirely different, and I’m inclined to believe the rest of you.”
“I don’t do this,” he said. Quiet. Rough. Like the words cost him something.
“I know.” I kissed him again, softer this time, letting my mouth linger against his. “That’s why I’m doing it for you.”
Soft footsteps from the hallway. I knew the cadence before I turned my head—light, unhurried, the particular rhythm of someone who moved through the world taking up exactly as much space as he needed and not a centimeter more.
Caleb stood at the end of the hall. One hand on the wall, his strawberry-blond hair catching the low light from the bulb overhead. His eyes moved from me to Sterling—Sterling pinned against the wall, my hand in his hair, both of us breathing hard, the towel hanging by a thread—and something shifted in his expression.
Not surprise. Warmth. A slow, steady recognition, like he’d been waiting for this particular train wreck and was pleasantly surprised by how it had arranged itself.
“Hi,” Caleb said. Soft. A little breathless.
“Hi, yourself,” I said.
I looked at Sterling. His eyes were on Caleb now, that same raw expression, like he was seeing something he’d been trying very hard not to want. I made a decision. The kind that lives in your chest and your gut and doesn’t ask your brain for permission.
I turned Sterling. Pivoted him so his back was to my chest, my hands on his hips, and faced Caleb down the hallway. Sterling between us, solid and warm and vibrating with something that felt like restraint stretched to its breaking point.
“Come here,” I said to Caleb.
He came. Not fast. Not slow. Just steady, the way Caleb did everything, his eyes on Sterling’s face the whole time, reading whatever was happening there with the attention he brought to things that mattered.
He stopped in front of us. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, could smell the bread on his hands and the faint sweetness that was just Caleb, the scent that lived in the bunkhouse like it belonged there.
“Hey,” Caleb said to Sterling. His voice was so gentle it almost hurt to hear. One hand came up, hesitated for a half-second, then settled against Sterling’s chest, palm flat over his heart. “Is this okay?”
Sterling looked at him. Really looked—the kind of look that stripped away every defense he’d ever built, every wall, every careful calculation about what he deserved and what he didn’t. His throat worked. His jaw clenched, then released.
He nodded. One sharp movement, like the word was too expensive to spend.
Caleb smiled. The small one, the one that lived in the corner of his mouth and reached his eyes, and then he was moving. His hands found the towel—not yanking, not demanding, just easing it loose with a gentleness that made something in my chest tighten—and it dropped to the floor between us.
Sterling was naked against me. All of him, every inch of that disciplined body pressed against my chest, and I could feel him shaking. Not from cold. From something deeper, something that lived in the space between want and fear, and my arms tightened around his waist, holding him steady.
Caleb looked up at Sterling. His eyes were warm and steady and entirely unafraid. Then he dropped to his knees on the hardwood floor.
I felt Sterling’s breath catch. His whole body went rigid against mine, his hands finding the wall, fingers splaying against the pine boards like he needed something to hold onto.
“Easy,” I murmured against the back of his neck. My mouth found the damp skin behind his ear, and I felt him shudder. “I’ve got you. Let him.”
Caleb’s hands were gentle. One on Sterling’s hip, steadying, the other wrapping around him with a confidence that shouldn’t have surprised me, but did.
Caleb, who moved through the world taking up less space than he was entitled to, who spoke in a voice so soft people routinely mistook it for weakness—Caleb knew exactly what he was doing.
