As soon as the door clicked shut, I reached down to the end of the bed and pulled my boxer-briefs out of my duffel.
I stood, dropping my towel on the bed, and quickly slipped them on before stepping around to the end of the bed to dig through my bag for the clean t-shirt.
Bent over my bag, the click of the bathroom door opening suddenly had my gaze whipping in that direction.
Ash reappeared in the bedroom, this time shirtless, with the top button of his jeans undone.
“Just gotta grab my stuff,” he said as he mirrored my position at the end of his bed, digging through his own bag.
I froze at the sight of his exposed skin, my gaze locked on his upper body like I could memorize every dip and curve of muscle.
I couldn’t stop my eyes from devouring how toned and virile he looked. He easily had twenty pounds of well-earned muscle on me, and it was stunning in its perfection.
His biceps and shoulders flexed sinuously as he rifled through his belongings. His abs were a clearly defined six-pack, straining as he bent over.
My face heated as I traced the trail of dark hair that ran below his belly button into the top of his gray boxer-briefs, left exposed by his undone jeans.
Does his dick match the rest of him in size?That one look hadn’t been long enough to tell.
The stray thought had an electric current zinging through my veins, and my own dick thickening in response.
No, no! Now was not the time for my body to wake up and consider its attraction to a guy for the first time in years. Things were already a mess. Think of anything else other than Ash out of those clothes, naked, and looking back at you with the same intent swirling around inside you right now.
I kept myself from making any sounds that would betray my voyeuristic thoughts, but I couldn’t stop my goddamn skin from flushing from my chest upward.
Just as my face reached the pinnacle of heat from embarrassment, Ash straightened, glancing over at me.
Instead of walking in the direction of the bathroom with his clothes in his hand, he left them in a small heap on the end of the bed and took several steps toward me until we stood a foot apart.
“Cade, are you okay?” His assessing eyes scanned the hot skin of my face, looking for answers.
Thankfully, his perusal stopped before he caught a glimpse of my lower half. My dick was still making its presence known.
All the things I couldn’t say rushed through my mind: how much he meant to me; how he made me feel important in ways that no one ever had before; how I hated that nothing was going to be the same after this because he was going to distance himself from the rookie with too much drama going on in his life.
I couldn’t let those words escape.
My baser instincts took control of my body. I took a step forward, bringing us within an inch of our skin making contact. I could almost feel the scrape of his smattering of chest hair against mine.
“Cade, what. . .” Ash didn’t finish the sentence as I reached up to touch the scruff on his jaw, stopping my hand just before making contact with his face.
“Can I?” I whispered. I didn’t even know what I was asking for.
All I knew in this moment was that I wanted to touch Ash just once. To feel fully surrounded by the intoxicating warmth he gave off. To move toward that comfort instead of away from it, like I had the day I’d woken up on his shoulder in his office.
I’d been busy staring at his lips so I couldn’t tell if I’d spoken loud enough for him to hear me. After watching him lick his full lower lip, I chanced a quick glance up at his eyes, hoping I wouldn’t anger at my reckless behavior.
Even if he wasn’t attracted to me in return, I knew that Ash was the type of man that I was safe with. He would never hurt me on purpose.
The inch or so difference in our height gave me the perfect vantage point to catalog the richness of his deep brown eyes, his pupils large in the low light of the room, as I waited for his reaction.
In response to my request, he brought his own hand up to mine, which still hung suspended near his jaw, pressing so that my palm cradled his cheek.
The sensation of his two-day-old stubble on my palm and fingers sent delicious prickles of sensation up my arm, causing it to tremble.
Before I knew it, my hand slid along his defined jaw, brushing his ear and through the hair at the nape of his neck, letting its thick waves tickle the skin between my fingers.
I lifted my left arm to wrap around his shoulder and set my foot between where his stood on the floor, bringing our bodies flush together.
