Slade Rhodes without a shirt is something else.The thick biceps, the broad shoulders, the back muscles that shift and move under his skin when he reaches to set the thermal on the counter. But it’s the ranch work layered on top of it that makes him something else entirely.
His forearms are corded and veined, suntanned from where he keeps his sleeves rolled up. His chest is broad and his stomach is hard, rigid with muscle all the way down. There’s a line of dark hair below his navel that disappears into his waistband and I want to trace it all the way down with my tongue.
He has scars. The surgical one on his shoulder, thick and still pink, that I know the story of now. The thin one along his ribs he’s never explained. His knuckles, which I’ve traced in the dark. A body that has taken hits and kept moving, that has been pushed to its absolute limit season after season.
I’ve seen him shirtless before. Namely, the honeymoon hot tub, when I spent the whole time telling myself I wasn’t staring.
But there’s something different about this. About standing two feet away from him in his bathroom with the steam rising and nothing fake between us anymore. I’m allowed to look now. I’m allowed to want.
And what I want is standing right in front of me, those green eyes of his watching me with pure hunger.
My gaze runs down his body. He’s built like a god, with those thick muscled thighs from years of playing hockey. That thick, hard cock jutting up between those thighs.
I realize I’ve stopped undressing.
“You have a lot of mud on you,” I say faintly.
“Hm.” His eyes move over me slowly, those green eyes darkening as he takes in the sight of me in nothing but my bra and panties. “So do you. Better get in the shower.”
I follow him into the spacious stone-clad space. It’s an open shower, no door, with an incredible view of the mountains out the window beside us.
He reaches past me for the handheld shower, turns it on, and runs it slow and warm over my shoulders, my collarbone. Steam rises around us. His other hand follows the water, unhurried, spreading the warmth across my skin.
He hands me the shower head.
I run it over his chest, his stomach, watching the mud rinse away in rivulets. He stands completely still and lets me until the water runs clear.
His thumb finds a streak of mud along my collarbone and drags slowly across it.
“Missed a spot,” he says. Low. Almost a murmur.
“You missed a few yourself,” I say.
My hands find his stomach.
I let my palms skim up slowly. His muscles shift under my touch, hard and warm, and he watches me with those green eyes and doesn’t move.
If I didn’t know him, I might think he was unaffected. But I do know him now. I catch the the almost imperceptible clench of his jaw, the way his breathing is just slightly too controlled. The way his hands aren’t hanging loose at his sides but curled into fists.
I trace the long scar along his ribs with my fingertips.
“Puck,” he murmurs.
I press my palm flat against his chest, feel his heartbeat. Faster than his usual metronome, a hard pounding beneath my hand. This man who doesn’t flinch at anything, who rode out into the pitch black during a windstorm without hesitating, who faced down my family without blinking, is standing in his shower with his heart hammering just because my hands are on him.
My hands drift lower. His abs contract hard under my fingertips as I move down, a small shudder moving through him as he lets out a controlled breath.
Perfect self-control on the outside. Stone-cold Slade. Ice in his veins.
Only his eyes give him away.
There’s a naked hunger there that makes my stomach drop. Raw and dark and barely leashed, his green eyes almost black.
He’s going to have me now, finally. We both know it.
I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
Chapter 36
