Page 89 of Wings of Destruction

My mouth goes dry.

I know the hair and the shoulders. I watched him enough on the battlefield to understand the play of tension in his limbs as he moves, even something as slight as washing his hair. The growling baritone of his voice sends horrible skitters of awareness along my spine.

Kieran is naked and showering.

Kieran under the pulse of water, unaware that he’s being watched.

I can barely blink, let alone look away. Water cascades along the carved muscle of his legs. He shifts, flexes. From this angle, only a sliver of his chest is visible, decorated with another smattering of dark hair. Water spills across his face and his closed eyes, around full pink lips.

A layer of stubble decorates the angles of his jaw and the corners of my lips twitch. My fingers curl above the tiles. I clench my teeth and tense on reflex.

Stop looking.

I shake my head and my eyes refuse to tear away from Kieran and the quiet of the moment. His walls are down.

Because he thinks he’s alone.

My breath catches and my lungs shrink to a tenth of their size when Kieran angles away from the wall, ducking his head to wash the suds from his hair. I catch a flash of his hipbones, the tightness of his thighs⁠—

I shoot my eyes to the floor.

I shouldn’t be here. I need to get out instead of watching, instead of leaning into the tightness in my chest and tipping back on my toes to get a better view. Instead, I turn back to the shower and drag my pained eyes over his calves.

Kieran hums to himself under his breath and turns again before I catch a glimpse of his front. His back straightens. My eyes track the movement. How would it feel to wash those muscles, to rub the knots in his neck, replacing my gaze with my hands?

To feel something beyond anger or forced indifference?

I go still.

Not with him. Never with him.

Those desires belong to someone worthy of respect, not a man who’d look more appealing with steel through his ribs.

It’s ridiculous to stay, to place him into a category where Kieran becomes someone desirable. My lungs groan and I start breathing again. I squeeze my eyes shut. The nervousness moving my muscles disappears bit by bit and my stomach turns but not in a bad way.

My hands shake.

Something small and soft flutters low in my belly.

The fantasies threaten to carry me away. They need to disappear and never resurface. I have no business wondering how he’ll react to my trailing touch along his bicep.

Shame immediately replaces the nerves.

He should pull the shower curtain all the way closed and I should disappear while I can, before he finds me. Cut a hasty escape.

Kieran is an attractive man. All right? I admit it.

We don’t like each other.

He threatened to rape me in the cave and brought me here to this scorched heinous place. That alone makes us enemies, if his father’s identity did not.

I shake my head and scoot forward. I make it about an inch before Kieran’s humming stops and I flinch.

Busted.

He switches to a whistle, heat from the spray belching puffs of steam underneath the edge of the curtain. Eyes averted, teeth grinding, I crawl away from the shower and into the main locker space.

My mop bucket and scrub brush are still nestled to the opposite side of the bench.