Lean muscle. Water droplets tracing paths down his chest. The way his waist tapers into his hips, the faint trail of hair disappearing below?—
My brain short-circuits.
“Christ, Phoenix. You scared me.” Mason grabs a towel from the rack, yanking it around his waist with lightning speed, but the damage is done. The image is seared into my retinas like a flash photograph, every detail preserved in high definition.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were?—“
“No, it’s fine, I should have locked?—“
“The door didn’t have a?—“
“It’s an old place, the locks are?—“
We’re both talking over each other, voices climbing in pitch and speed, and from the other room I hear Atticus absolutely losing his mind with laughter.
“Stop laughing!” I shriek toward the closed door.
Atticus’s voice is muffled by the closed door, but still clearly audible.”Then stop being so damn funny.”
Mason’s face has gone from pink to red to something approaching purple. The towel is clutched around his waist with white-knuckled hands, and water is still dripping from his hair onto his shoulders, onto the floor, onto my feet.
The bathroom is tiny—barely large enough for a clawfoot tub, a toilet, and a pedestal sink that’s seen better decades. Steam still hangs in the air from Mason’s shower, curling around us.
His scent practically saturates the air, a mix of chamomile and peppercorn that is unlike anything I’ve smelled before. I find myself shifting closer, breathing him in more deeply.
Stop it, girl.
I step backward so fast I nearly trip over my scattered toiletries. My heel lands on the shampoo bottle and I pinwheel, arms flailing, before catching myself on the doorframe.
“Are you okay?” Mason reaches for me instinctively, then remembers he’s holding up a towel with one hand and jerks back.
“Fine! I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’ll just—“ I gesture vaguely toward the main room, toward freedom, toward anywhere that isn’t this tiny bathroom where I can still see the outline of things through that inadequate towel. “I’ll wait. Outside. In the room. Where there are clothes.”
“Okay.”
“Great.”
I stumble backward through the doorway, yanking it shut behind me. My heart is hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to escape, and my face feels hot enough to cook an egg on.
Atticus is sprawled across the bed now, fully dressed but somehow looking more indecent than Mason did naked. He’s grinning like the cat that got the cream, the canary, and the entire dairy farm.
“Don’t,” I warn him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“I’m thinking many things.” He stretches, arms above his head, shirt riding up to reveal a strip of golden-brown skin. “For instance, I’m thinking about how long you stared at Mason’s junk before you remembered how to blink.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m guessing five seconds. Maybe ten if that gasp you made was anything to go by.”
“Enough.”
“Mmmhmm.” He sits up, patting the space beside him on the bed. “Come sit. You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your own skin.”
“I’m not sitting on that bed.”
