I’m standing in the hallway like an idiot trying to decide if I’m invited or if this is the kind of moment where a gentleman gives a woman her privacy.
I’m about ninety percent sure I’m not a gentleman, but I’m trying to be one for her, which is?—
“Johnny.” Her voice cuts through the steam already spilling into the hall. “You’re turning blue. Get in here.”
That settles it.
The bathroom is small enough that the heat gathers fast, fogging the mirror and softening the light. She stands just inside the door, soaked and shivering. For one long second, she doesn’t move. Her fingers catch at the hem of her tank top, then still, like the reality of me seeing all of her has finally landed.
I stay where I am and let her have the space to decide.
Then she reaches for the hem of her tank top and pulls it over her head.
There’s nothing practiced about it. Nothing slow or seductive. Her hands are shaking. The wet fabric clings stubbornly, catching at her wrists and elbows until she finally wrestles it free. Her sports bra follows. Then she pushes her leggings down with quick, clumsy movements, still cold, still trembling.
She doesn’t look at me while she undresses.
I try not to stare. That lasts maybe half a second.
Heat climbs up the back of my neck so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
I’ve touched her before. I know how soft her skin is. I know the sounds she makes when I put my mouth on her, how she arches when I drag my hands over her body.
But I’ve never seen all of her.
AndChrist.
The sight of her hits me so hard it strips every thought straight out of my head.
She glances up and catches me staring. Color rises to her cheeks, warm and pink and shy in a way that makes something in my chest pull tight.
“Are you just going to stand there?” she asks.
Her voice is soft, but there’s a challenge tucked into it, too. I strip out of my shorts so fast it’s almost embarrassing and step in after her.
The water borders on too hot after the ocean. It needles across my skin and pulls a rough gasp out of both of us. For a few seconds, that’s all it is.
Heat. Steam. Relief.
Two half-frozen bodies thawing out under the spray.
Her shoulders slowly loosen. Mine do too.
Water slides down her face and neck, tracing over skin I’m suddenly near enough to study. Freckles scatter across her collarbone, faint and delicate, like they were put there for me to discover. A drop catches at the curve of her breast and keeps going. My hands flex at my sides.
Her eyes are closed.
I tell myself not to touch her.
Then she opens them.
And just like that, the cold is the last thing either of us is thinking about.
I close the distance. My mouth finds hers, warm and wet and still a little salty from the ocean. She opens for me, and the sound she makes against my tongue sends a current straight down my spine and into my cock.
My hands find her waist. Her hips. The small of her back, pulling her flush against me so there’s nothing between us but steam and skin.
She gasps when she feels how hard I am against her stomach, and her fingers dig into my shoulders as I press her back against the tile. She arches off the cold surface and into me, and I trace a path down her throat, that spot below her ear that makes her breath stutter every single time.
