Boy in the Club a boy & billionaire novel - Rachel Kane Page 0,59

The man never questions himself.

I wish I could be like that.

Now he’s shedding his shirt, hanging it on a hook near the towels.

I turn away. “Can you see what sizes the trunks are? I usually wear a—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

My throat is suddenly very, very dry.

“What?”

“I said, don’t worry about it. Trunks? We’re not tourists. We practically own this place.”

“You mean…you’re going to…I mean…you’re not wearing…”

A sharp laugh. “God, Finn. It’s just a bathhouse, okay? Or a sauna. Whenever hot water or steam are involved, you don’t really want to be overdressed for it.”

“I haven’t really been to one of those.”

“You spent too much damn time at that club,” he says, and the fact that the club hasn’t really come up in conversation means that when it does, it cuts through me like a knife. “There’s nothing sinful or dirty about soaking in a tub. There’s nothing raunchy about it.”

Yet knowing that somewhere behind me, he’s bare, his skin basking in the steamy heat of the room, is making my heart beat somewhere up in my throat. I’m thinking about this morning, about how he looked concealed by that shower door.

How scared I was…and how much I wanted him.

How he didn’t stop when he saw me.

How seeing me made him come.

Or maybe it was just perfect timing, and had nothing to do with you, and anyway, this isn’t some sex bath, it’s something rich people do to relax, so get your mind out of the gutter, he isn’t offering anything to you.

That more than anything helped me put my head back on straight. He hadn’t said a word to me that was inappropriate. Clearly these springs were a big feature of the mansion. It’s not like he just made them up. The tubs were right here.

It’d be different if he’d connected a sprinkler to a garden hose and then said, okay, we gotta jump through this naked, like tradition says.

He has turned on a valve. The room fills with loud splashing. I hear a hiss from him, then a sigh.

“Look, I’m completely concealed underwater. Happy? You can have the one over there, as far from me as you like. We can just glare at each other over the edges.”

When I turn around, sure enough, he is in one of the deep tubs. Steam is already rising from it, and he leans back, already more relaxed than I have ever seen him.

“Does it…hurt? Is it hot?”

“It’s so hot,” he utters in a whisper I can barely hear over the water.

I can’t see his body.

And that…is something like a tragedy, to me.

Because as much as I’m nervous, as much as I don’t want to cross any lines…I wish I could see him.

Like, if I could just peek over the edge of the tub.

No, no you don’t want that. You’re escaping all that, okay? He’s offering you the chance for safety. So you won’t be at the mercy of rich men and their desires.

It’s true. The whole point of this job was to get me away from Jimi, away from the club, away from that whole atmosphere of rich men taking what they want.

But what about my desires?

I don’t even think about it.

I can’t.

If I think too hard, I’ll hurt myself.

I pick a tub across the room.

“You took me seriously, I guess,” he says.

“Close your eyes.”

“Really?”

“C’mon! I turned around when you undressed.”

He laughs. “I’ve already seen you, remember?”

Of course I remember. I remember it every five minutes, it’s on a loop in my head, our first night together, and if I don’t stop thinking about it, I’m going to have a huge hard-on here in the tub, and nobody wants that.

“Why, Mr. Raines, I thought you could be professional about this,” and maybe there’s a hint of frost in my voice.

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry, Finn, that was rude of me. Look. My eyes are closed.”

I check. I’d get closer, to get a better look at his eyelids, but then I might accidentally see his body in the tub, and things might escalate, and things can’t escalate, they just can’t.

I’m so confused.

How can you want something and not want it at the same time? It’s like the little angel and the little devil on my shoulders are duking it out. I know what I want, and I know exactly why I can’t—shouldn’t—have it.

I try to be quick about undressing, at least. I don’t want to stand here naked where he can see me. My fingers fumble, like I’ve got sausages where they used