My jaw locks. Molars grinding. Teeth ready to crack.
“Too bad.” The words scrape out like broken glass. “Diego doesn’t exist anymore.”
A beat. Two.
“Liar.” The word lands like a bullet. Quiet. Precise. Dead center.
I close the door harder than necessary.
Her laughter filters through the wood—warm and real and entirely too pleased with herself.
The water is hot. I let it pound against my shoulders like punishment. I think of last night. Of the line I crossed. Of the way it felt to stop fighting myself.
I tell myself it won’t happen again.
I tell myself a lot of things.
But my body isn’t listening. I look down. I’m hard. Painfully, undeniably hard. It’s an ache that runs from my groin to my chest, a physical demand for release.
It’s just biology, I tell myself. Friction. Stress. Adrenaline.
I wrap my hand around myself.
I stroke, fast and efficient. Rough. The friction is good.
But it doesn’t work. I close my eyes, and I don’t see blank darkness. I see her. I see the way she looked in the woods, wild and dirty. The way she looked in the bed this morning, soft and sleep-warm.
I groan; the sound lost in the steam. I stroke faster, desperate to purge the need, desperate to get back to zero.
Click.
The bathroom door opens.
My eyes snap open.
Awareness hits first—pure instinct. The shift in the air. The change in pressure. The quiet certainty that I’m no longer alone.
Steam curls around her as she steps inside the bathroom, already stripped of hesitation, hoodie gone, jeans undone. Her gaze flicks once—to my face, to my hand, my cock—and something feral sparks in her expression.
She sees me. Exposed. Needing.
“Cassie,” I warn. My voice is wrecked.
The shower roars. She ignores me. She pushes her jeans down, kicks them away. She’s naked.
Gloriously naked.
I close my eyes, lock my jaw, and brace against the tile like it might hold me together if I lean hard enough. My hand is still wrapped around my cock, throbbing, leaking, betraying me.
“Cassie,” I say again. Sharper this time. Command, not plea. “Go.”
Silence.
The glass door to the shower slides open, and the sound slices through me.
“I said go,” I snap.
She steps into the shower. My eyes snap open.
