I need a shower. Need to wash off the pub smell, the residue of conversation, the feeling that I'm standing on the edge of something and can't decide whether to jump or step back.
The water runs hot, steam filling the small bathroom, curlingaround me like it can provide some kind of answer. I let it pour over my shoulders, my neck, trying to relax muscles that have been tense for days.
And then, because I'm only human, because she's so close and so far away all at once, because the want has been building all day until it's physically painful, I let myself think about her.
Really think about her.
I'm going to hell for this.
I know I am.
She's engaged. Wearing another man's ring. And I'm about to jerk off in the shower thinking about her.
But I can't stop myself.
Those fucking shorts.
The way they ride up just slightly when she reaches for something, exposing the curve of her thighs—thighs I know intimately, thighs I remember wrapped around my waist, trembling against my shoulders, soft and warm and perfect.
The memory hits me like a punch to the gut.
The way she used to look at me when I'd drag my hands up those thighs, slow and deliberate, watching her breath catch. The way her hips would lift, seeking more contact, more friction, more of me.
The curve of her neck when she tilts her head, the same curve I used to trace with my lips, my teeth, until she'd gasp my name and grip my hair so hard it hurt.
The freckle on her collarbone I'd memorize in the morning light before kissing my way down, down, until she was arching off the bed.
The way her waist dips in, soft skin I used to grip when she'd roll her hips against me, when she'd ride me slow and deep while I watched her come apart, watched every expression cross her face, committed it all to memory like scripture.
Heat pools low in my stomach. My cock hardens instantly, achingly.
The need is unbearable.
Seven years of wanting her. Seven years of denying it, burying it, pretending I could function without touching her.
And now she's here. Sixty feet away. In those shorts that are driving me insane.
Engaged to someone else.
Fuck, I'm definitely going to hell.
But I can't make myself care.
I want to peel them down her legs slowly. Want to hook my fingers in the waistband and drag them down while she watches me with those green eyes, pupils blown wide with want, that little gasp she always made when she knew what I was about to do.
Want to kiss every inch of skin I expose—hip bone, inner thigh, higher—until she's gripping my hair and begging me the way she used to. Until she's trembling and breathless and saying my name like a prayer.
God, the sounds she used to make.
The way she'd gasp when I'd kiss her there, when I'd use my tongue exactly how she liked it, when I'd make her come so hard she'd shake.
My hand wraps around my cock, already hard and aching.
This is wrong. I know it's wrong.
She belongs to someone else now.
But in this moment, in this fantasy, she's mine.
