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The hall is dark. No sound that I can hear. I reach for the bathroom door handle.

It opens before I touch it.

Paul. Hair slicked back. Chest damp. Water shining in the hollow of his throat. Heat rolls out from behind him, warm and clean and smelling like soap. Towel hitched loosely at the waist, like he wasn’t expecting me.

“This shower gets better pressure,” he says.

I stare at him. My brain has gone blank except for towel, chest, wet, move.

Also, I still have to pee so bad I might drown in it.

Paul’s gaze catches on the front of my underwear, where my dick is making its stupid morning announcement. For half a second, he looks like he’s walked up on a rattlesnake.

My cock pulses, because it hates me. Paul’s eyes jerk away to the doorframe. Or the wall. Or somewhere on the other side of the ocean.

“Man,” I say, because speech finally returns in its grittiest form, “I really gotta go.”

“Oh.” He blinks. “Right. Sorry.”

He shifts to move past me.

The doorway is not narrow enough for what happens next, which means one of us causes it.

“I’ll just…” Paul says. “Slide through.”

His shoulder brushes mine. His bare arm grazes my chest. The towel knot brushes close enough to make a spark.

Neither of us breathes—and then he’s past me.

I step into the bathroom and grip the edge of the door. The air is still warm from his shower. My skin is hot from everything else.

“Paul.”

He turns.

I should say something funny or flip. Some kind of reset language to bring this temperature down.

“Thanks. For last night, I mean.”

His face softens. “You’re welcome.”

Then he escapes toward his room like a man fleeing a small, uncontained fire.

I shut the door before either of us can make it worse.

Peeing with a hangover and a half-hard dick... I manage it eventually. Mostly by bracing one hand against the wall, aiming with surgical focus, and refusing to think about Paul Benton brushing past me in a towel.

I wash my hands, then I just stand there.

Paul is outside this door. Probably in the master bedroom putting on clothes—classy, mature stuff—because nothing just happened outside my own spinning head.

My bed would feel so good right now. Another run-in with Paul would not.

I turn on the shower. I stink like a mule.

The first blast is too warm. I step in anyway and let it hit the back of my neck. My head pounds less when I close my eyes.

Pieces of last night float up through the steam.