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“What do I owe you?”

“It’s my building.” He latches the toolbox. “Broken shower’s my problem.”

I don’t mention that I’m sub-letting from Gus, and he’s supposed to be taking care of this. I don’t want to lose the excuse to have Aiden here.

“The stove’s also your problem, then. It’s going to kill me. Tommy has August in the pool, but I’ll be dead before he can collect.”

That gets me a look. Not a smile. Adjacent to one, maybe, in the same zip code, gone before I can confirm it.

“Don’t have anything with me to fix the stove. I’ll talk to Gus.”

Well damn.

He collects the light and whistles low for Diesel, who lifts his head off my floor, thinks about it, and puts his head back down.

Aiden stares at his dog. His dog does not stare back, on account of his eyes being closed.

“You said until Monday,” I remind him.

“I know what I said.”

He steps past me in the doorway. Close, because everything in this apartment is close. I smell salt and hot metal. The heat coming off his bare skin reaches me through my damp shirt as his eyes drop to my mouth and hold.

Not a fraction of a moment. A whole one. Long enough for my lips to part all on their own. Long enough for one insane, roaring second where I want to wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull his mouth to mine. Find out exactly what happens to all that control of his then.

Before I can make a complete fool of myself, he’s gone, out the door and down the stairs, without a goodbye. Leaving me standing in a wet shirt with a working shower and a want so big I’m going to have to do something about it.

Diesel watches me lock the door.

“Not a word,” I tell him.

I peel my damp clothes off and open the shower. Finally. Hot water Aiden Cole personally restored. I stand under it until the little room is shrouded in fog, and I last about ninety seconds before I stop pretending that’s all I’m doing in here.

Eyes closed. Forehead against the cool tile. It’s his hands I give myself. Those rough, certain fingers that closed over mine for half a second and branded me.

In my head they take their time, soap-slick, sliding down my belly with all the unhurried confidence he puts into everything else, and when my hand follows the path his would take, I gasp out his name.

I build my fantasy out of everything I stole tonight.

The flex and roll of his back, the low scrape of that one sworn syllable, the way he looked at my mouth like a man considering a bad decision.

In the fantasy he doesn’t walk out the door.

He backs me into this exact tile, lifting my ass and taking my weight like it’s nothing as he growls something filthy and hot against my throat. My fingers move faster, and the heat winds tight, tighter, tighter, and then it snaps.

I come apart with my other hand pressed over my mouth, shaking under water he fixed for me, his name dissolving on my tongue like the finest Swiss chocolate.

It takes a while for my breathing to level out.

Then the other thing arrives, right on schedule, sliding in under the afterglow like cold water to my sternum.

He doesn’t know who I am.

I just climaxed with his name in my mouth, and the man has no idea what my signature did to him.

When I come out of the bathroom, Diesel’s back in his spot by my bed like the whole evening never happened.

Only one box hasn’t been unpacked.