He simply smiled.
Then it hit me.
That wasn’t surrender. It was reconnaissance.
Ethan only said “okay” when he planned to come back with reinforcements.
I watched him for a second before looking away. The conversation should have been over.
For some reason, it didn’t feel over at all.
Luka
Steam swallowedthe showers almost immediately, thick enough to blur bodies into movement and noise.
Voices bounced hard off tile and metal while water hammered down from every direction. Somebody near the far wall was laughing loud enough to dominate the room, another conversation dissolving into arguments about snowboarders and hookups and whether the Village had improved its condom supply this year.
I walked in anyway before hesitation could take hold.
Routine. Shower. Leave.
That should have been manageable.
Then I saw Dean Foster standing three showerheads away from me, dragging both hands through damp hair, water running down the broad line of his back, tracking slowly to?—
My gaze snapped away instantly.
Too late.
The image stayed in my head anyway.
I moved farther into the steam and fixed my attention downward while skaters talked around me as though none of this required thought. Their conversations seemed easy and effortless. Nobody guarded their movements. No one measured where they looked or how long they looked for.
I had never felt so… different.
The water struck hard against my shoulders when I stepped beneath the spray, cold at first before heat followed. I braced both palms against the tile and concentrated on breathing while noise blurred together around me.
In. Out.
Simple.
Even without looking at him, I knew exactly where he was.
I forced my shoulders to loosen again.
Normal. Act normal.
Water streamed down my face while I kept my eyes shut for several seconds longer than necessary. The heat helped. By the time I finally looked up again, Dean had turned sideways talking to another skater, relaxed beneath the spray, no caginess anywhere in him.
That struck me harder than his body did.
He stood there laughing while water traced down his chest and stomach in slow lines. Confidence looked effortless on him.
That was the part I couldn’t stop staring at.
I watched the easy set of his shoulders, the complete absence of self-consciousness in the way he occupied the space, feet apart, waterrunning down his shaft in a single stream, catching on the tight black curls there, his cock soft.
Then he turned toward me.
