the stream,” Connor said sheepishly. “I was trying to pull out this old car engine someone had dumped in there, but it was really lodged into the bank.” He lifted up an armpit and sniffed himself surreptitiously, then made a face. “Wow. Did not realize it was that bad. I’ll go home and clean up. Back in a few.”
“Just shower here.”
Connor gave me a sidelong glance. “I, uh, don’t have any clean clothes to change into after.”
“Just borrow some of mine,” I said quickly. “You’re not that much bigger than me, and I’ve gotten so many free t-shirts and things from school over the years, something’s bound to fit.”
Connor raised an eyebrow. “And if nothing does?”
I cleared my throat forcefully. I was getting good at that. “I’m sure something will.”
“I see. Well. If you say so.” The smile Connor gave me said he knew this was just as dangerous as I did, and that he cared just as little. “Guess I’ll go take care of that, then.”
I watched him saunter—and I do mean saunter—out of the kitchen and my throat went dry. Forcing myself to swallow, I turned back to the stove and tried to concentrate on cooking for the next few minutes.
Do not think about Connor being naked in your bathroom right now. Do not think about soap suds running down his body, do not think about water dripping off his muscles, do not think about—
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck?”
Connor’s yell echoed through the house, and sent me sprinting down the hall to the bathroom.
13
Connor
Julian’s bathroom was small, with white subway tiles on the wall, and black and white hexagonal ones on the floor. There was a window out to his side yard, covered in jasmine, and a wooden shelf with fluffy towels beneath it. The shower itself was all glass, the walls running floor to ceiling, with a giant rainwater showerhead that I couldn’t wait to get underneath.
I stepped out of my clothes, leaving them in a somewhat dusty pile on the floor, and stepped into the flow of hot water. The entire bathroom was steamy within seconds, and I felt my muscles unknot as I sluiced away the dirt and scent of river water. It didn’t take long to rinse off, but I was in no hurry to get out.
I felt like I was doing something secret, using Julian’s shower, even though he’d sent me here himself. I flicked open the cap on his shampoo bottle and poured a pool of it into my hand. It smelled like him—like citrus and sun-warmed clover.
I lathered it into my hair and rinsed, then opened his bottle of conditioner curiously. I didn’t usually bother with that, but it smelled like Julian too, like pure sunshine, and I was smoothing it through my hair before I even realized it. The back of the bottle said to let it sit for a few minutes, so I grabbed a bar of lemony smelling soap and worked it into suds on my skin.
I wasn’t sure if it was just my baseline desire for Julian—a constant thrum in the background like a bass beat—or the transgressive feeling of using his shower, or maybe just the ache of wishing this thing we were doing, playing house, could last forever, but I found myself growing hard.
I say growing, but if we’re being honest, I’d been hard most of this past week. But I’d been trying to be good. Or trying not to get my hopes up, I suppose.
I knew it was reckless, what we were doing. Julian hadn’t actually promised me anything. He’d asked for more time, but he hadn’t said how much, or what he planned to do when it ran out. But when he’d looked at me that night, his eyes so full and honest, there wasn’t a chance in the world I was going to say no.
I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to.
But dammit, it was hard being around him, his eyes bright, his lips so quick to quirk into a smile, his skin only inches from mine every night we shared his bed. I just wanted to touch him. No—more than that. I wanted to be as close to him as possible. I wanted to wrap myself around his lithe body until you couldn’t pull us apart.
And now here I was, standing in his shower, his scent on my skin, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned, braced myself against the slick tiles with my left arm and let my right