“Fine.” My cheeks burned so hot I was amazed the steam didn’t sizzle. “Next time I’ll let you bleed out, then,” I muttered, even though we both knew I wouldn’t.
I backed out of the bathroom, fumbling for the handle without turning around, and pulled the door shut behind me. My pulse was still racing when I crossed back through his bedroom and out into the cooler hallway, slamming that door, too, for good measure.
Only when I was in my own room with the door firmly closed did I sag against it, pressing the heels of my hands to my flaming face.
Fantastic. Less than a week into our roommate experiment and I’d already seen my landlord’s dick.
And no matter how hard I tried to scrub the image from my brain, what stuck with me more was the look on his face—pain, stubbornness, and the kind of vulnerability that made my chest ache.
I slid down the back of my bedroom door until I hit the floor, knees bent, heart still thundering like I’d sprinted the length of the dunes.
I pressed my palms over my face and tried to breathe.
He was not just Hayes’s grumpy best friend anymore. Not just the surly, former Delta Force operator who’d glared at me across bar tables and grocery aisles. Now my brain had a full-color, high-definition image of him—scarred and solid and so very, very male—filed underDo Not Think About This Ever Again, which of course meant it was theonlything I could think about.
But it wasn’t just the naked part.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the way he’d been braced against the tile, muscles shaking, jaw locked. The way his hand had white-knuckled the wall like letting go wasn’t an option. The way that residual limb ended too soon, skin stretched and angry, working twice as hard to keep up.
The unfairness of it punched through me all over again. That someone could go from running jobsites and creating beautifulhomes to nearly wiping out in his own shower because the floor was slick and he was too stubborn to sit. That a man who’d probably walked into firefights without flinching now had to plan his every step in a goddamn bathroom.
My mind replayed his body, but it lingered longer on the limb than on his dick. On the ugly-beautiful mix of what he’d survived and what it cost him every day. On the panic in my own chest at the idea of him going down and no one finding him in time.
Sorrow twisted through the attraction until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I’d barged in. I’d seen more than I was supposed to. I’d made an already humiliating moment worse, then snapped back at him like I hadn’t just walked straight into his worst nightmare.
And under all that, coiled tight and hot, was the part I really didn’t want to look at too closely: I’dlikedwhat I saw.
Not the pain. Not the fear. But the rest of it.
The broad shoulders, the carved lines of muscle, the way his body still looked capable and strong even when he was off-balance. The way just being near him in that tiny, steam-drenched room had lit me up like a live wire.
I dropped my hands to my lap and stared at the wall, my pulse finally starting to slow.
Living with Wes Vaughn had already been complicated when he was just a grumpy landlord with a broken hero complex.
Now I’d seen exactly how stubborn he really was and exactly how dangerous he could be to my peace of mind.
Across the hall, his bedroom door opened and shut, and footsteps moved slowly back toward the stairs. I held my breath without meaning to, listening to the creak of the floorboards as he passed.
This was supposed to be temporary. A favor. A little cosmic karma cleanup.
Instead, it felt like I’d just stepped into the deep end without checking how far the bottom went.
And for the first time since I’d dragged my suitcases over his threshold, one thought cut through the noise, sharp and clear:
I am in way, way over my head.
