I didn’t, of course, but God, how my body wanted me to. Exhausted from the laps, further wrung out from the heat and steam, my limbs felt languid and liquid. Like my arms and legs might just blend into the scuzzy old tile that lined the inside of the room.
I lifted my arms to the towel on my head, gently squeezing across my breasts as I did. My legs shifted. I needed to get out of here, take a cold shower. The place was always empty this late into the evening, but still, it wouldn’t do for Lily Spaulding, daughter of Grayson Spaulding, political consultant extraordinaire, to be caught diddling herself in a steam room.
Hmmm…but maybe in the shower?
I rose from the bench, the hard tile having made little dents in my ass and thighs, even through the towel.
I wrapped the towel from my head—not as sweat-and steam-drenched as the towel I’d worn—around my body. I took the other two, and my swimsuit, and left the room, careful to turn the room off at the control panel. Nobody seemed to mind—or notice?—that I was here this late, but leaving a steam room on all night would probably curb that.
I walked out of the room, turned toward my locker, and froze.
Lucas was staring straight at me. He seemed as startled as I was, but recovered faster. A slow—God, so sexy—smile spread across his face.
“I’m here to collect the towels,” he said. Then the smile turned just a little deadly and I wondered if I was about to get whacked by some fictional Ukrainian mafia boss. He nodded at my body, at my hand that clung to my barely closed towel.
“Hand it over.”
Chapter2
“What are you doing here?”I asked, my hand clutching a bit tighter. Not so much to hang on to the towel, but as if I could cover how my body was reacting to seeing him here after I’d just been thinking about him. And about touching myself. And about how much better it would be if he were the one doing the touching.
“I’m gathering up the towels,” he said. He pointed in the general vicinity of my boobs. “And I needthatone.” The smirk was gone from his face now, but it was still in his eyes.
“Are you supposed to even be in here?” I thought about the situation, about my options. I was in a locker room—in atowel—by myself with a strange man. I should be thinking about exit strategies, where was the nearest door, could anybody hear me scream, that sort of stuff.
But I wasn’t. Somehow I knew on some gut level that I wasn’t in any danger from Lucas. At least notthatkind of danger. Because—let’s be real—Lucas was dangerous, all right.
“What’s your last name?” I asked, because it seemed important to know that right now. Not that standing wrapped in a towel in front of someone I’d just met (and barely, at that!) wasn’t important stuff too. But…yeah… “What’s your last name?” I repeated. “Is it Bell?”
There was a flash in his eyes that I couldn’t read…something that made him pissed off. He grunted and broke eye contact. Broke the spell I’d been under, and I was able to move toward my locker, a row over from where we stood.
He didn’t follow me, and as I turned the corner around the aisle I looked back to see him, indeed gathering up the dirty towels that hadn’t quite made it in the large laundry cart.
“No. Not Bell,” he said. “Bad enough that that asshole’s name is something Andy has to live with.”
I opened my locker and gathered my clothes, setting them on the bench, not really knowing how this was going to work. Should I just quickly throw them on and hope Lucas stayed in the next aisle over? Keep the towel on until he left? What if he had a bunch of work to do in here and I’d be sitting in my towel for an hour?
What the hell, why wasIthe one working aroundhim?
“Shouldn’t you have to wait until everyone’s out before you clean in here? Isn’t this…I don’t know…against the law, or the rules, or something?” I hitched my towel up higher around my chest, even though he was still on the other side of the lockers.
“I yelled in. There was no answer. When I saw the light on in the steam room, I was about to leave. That’s when you walked out.”
“Oh.”
“Are you near your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead, I won’t bother you. I need to do some measurements in the steam room, but I wanted it to cool down a little bit first. Thought I’d help out with the towels while I waited.”
“Ummm…”
There was quiet, then he said, “I’ll step out. Just yell when it’s okay to come back in.”
This was stupid. The man was just doing his job.
Ah, now I got why he was wearing a Bribury polo. Not so much out of collegiate pride as, well, a uniform.
