Page 25 of Slapshot Bride

My lips fall open, and I taste the water on my tongue. But it’s different. It’s laced with something sweet and tangy.

Like she’s on my tongue. The taste of her skin, my tongue tracing the dip of her back, my lips on the strap of the dress, an inch away from her breast.

I let myself have the image. The green dress falling. Her bare shoulders. The hot, surprised gasp she made when my knuckles grazed her spine, and what that sound would have been if I had not stopped, if I had pressed my mouth to the back of her neck instead, if she had leaned back into me, if her hand had come up over mine to keep it where it was.

I think about her pulling that dress down and stepping out of it and the look on her face in the mirror. I think about the freckles. I think about the way she would say my name if she meant it the way I want her to mean it.

The water is loud. My breath is louder.

I work my hand, stroking my hard cock to the point of pain, but the pleasure is all I feel. Her standing over me, my knees on the ground, tongue tasting her soft skin. I jerk my hand once. Then twice. The third time, a deep throaty groan follows and my head falls back.

The warmth of my water slides down my body, igniting every nerve ending.

Her name is on my lips, but my teeth seal it in, closing on the supple flesh of my bottom lip.

I tell myself it's a release. A physical necessity. Something my body needs so my head can do its job tomorrow, so I don't look at her at breakfast like a man who has not slept and is one good morning away from making a mistake he can't take back.

It's also half a lie.

The other half of me wants her exactly the way I'm imagining her, wants to know what her hands feel like, wants to know what sound she makes when she's tangled with me, hands around my shoulders, needing all I can give.

I lose the rhythm of my thinking. My legs tremble, and my abs spasm.

I come hard. Forehead pressed to tile, water sheeting down my back, her name halfway in my throat and never spoken.

The shame arrives within thirty seconds, on schedule.

I stand there with my eyes closed and let the water run over me for a while.

I think about Maya, because I make myself think about Maya. The party, six months ago. The suggestion, and the trap I’d fallen for. The way she filmed me. The way she still calls. The way I've spent the last six months becoming, very deliberately, a man who would never be that careless about a woman again.

And then this woman walked into my car.

And here I am, jerking off to her in a shower while she stays in my guestroom, innocent to my thoughts.

I'm not going to be careless with her.

I make the promise to the tile and the water and to the man I'm still trying to become. Whatever I just did, I did to myself, in my own bathroom, with the door closed. She isn't going to know. She isn't going to feel any of it.

Tomorrow morning, when she comes into my kitchen, I'm going to be a man who is keeping his hands to himself and his head where it belongs.

I’ll only be the stranger who helped her. That’s all I need to be. That is the deal.

I shut the water off.

I dry off, and pull on sweats. I run a hand through my wet hair and walk back out into the bedroom feeling somewhere between cleaner than I was and worse than I was, in a combination I'm not going to examine.

When I come downstairs to lock up for the night, she’s back on the couch. Her hair is wet. She's in one of my t-shirts, again, because her new pajamas are apparently still in a bag somewhere she has not unpacked. Bare legs. Bare face. The book is closed on her lap.

I drag in a deep breath.

She looks up.

“Hey, do you have a phone charger? Mine is in one of the bags and I don't feel like archeology tonight.”

“Yeah.” The word is like gravel scratching my throat.

I cross to the drawer in the kitchen where I keep the spares and pull one out. I bring it over. She holds her hand out.