He held her gaze, and the moment drew out and became weightier with what he wanted her to hear.
She heard him. Her throat ached too much to swallow over, and she blinked and looked at the floorboards. The wide scarred planks spoke to the age of the building, its history and its value.
She’d like to own a floor like that. To have her name on an apartment like Winston’s. She’d like to see more of New York, and own a piece of it for herself.
But more than that, she wanted to go home.
“I’ll just hop in the shower.”
He turned his attention back to his phone. “Of course.”
The chill in the words followed her across the room, a gust that prickled her nipples and raised goose bumps all down her arms as she stripped and stepped naked into the bathroom and over the threshold of the shower.
It was one of those showers she’d only ever seen in magazines, far removed from the curtained fiberglass booths back home. It was more like its own room, the floor pebbled with river stone, the walls tiled. There were two rainfall showerheads, and the first time she’d used Winston’s shower she turned them both on, but tonight she stood at the back under one of them, wishing she could turn a dial to make the spray hard and mean and tight, a cheap and punishing shower to go with her mood.
She didn’t want to be spoiled. All it did was remind her of how much she
would be taking from Winston when she left, and how little she seemed to be able to give.
She didn’t want to disappoint him, but she didn’t want to be alone in this bathroom, either. His shampoo smelled like something you’d find in an ampule at a crowded shop in a Parisian cobbled alley. It made delicious rich suds that piled up on her head and fell with audible plops to the floor around her.
There was a soft knocking, and the bathroom door opened a crack. “May I join you? Feel free to say no. There’s no pressure.”
“The more the merrier.”
“You think?” He wore a thin bathrobe, which he took off as she watched—so much more casual about his naked body than should have been possible between them when they’d only met a few days earlier. But she didn’t begrudge the view. He bent for a towel, and she ogled the muscles of his thighs and ass, wondering how many hours a week he normally spent at the gym to keep fit.
Some part of it had to be genetics. His brother was killingly handsome, though she preferred the way Winston looked, his darker eyes and mellow smile and that rakish eyebrow trick.
“You could fit an entire group sex party in this shower,” she said. “Everybody slipping and sliding around in their juices.” He turned on the other showerhead. It was such a big shower, his skin had yet to brush against hers anywhere, which she was interested to discover disappointed her.
“You make that sound entirely unappealing.”
“Blow jobs and anal galore.”
He grinned. An enterprising runnel of water sluiced over his pectoral muscle. She liked him too much. Way too much. “Surely no one would have anal sex in a shower. It wouldn’t be safe.”
“I think the kind of people who have group-sex anal in a shower are more, like, caught up in the moment. Not so much with the thinking about safety.” Instead of soap, he had shower gel in a wall-mounted dispenser. It didn’t have a label, but the soap it dispensed was the rich dark color of Baltic amber beads, which required her to pretend the soap was in fact made from pulverized Baltic amber mixed with frankincense and volcanic ash from Pompeii.
It smelled divine.
She lathered it over her skin, lingering over her stomach and breasts just to make sure Winston would be paying attention when she made doe eyes at him from under her lashes.
He was, with more than one part of his anatomy. “Perhaps I should have handholds installed.”
“I think that would be advisable. For when you’re ready to cut loose. And you could get another soap dispenser, except it would be for dispensing lube.”
“And a condom machine, I suppose.”
“Safety first.” She soaped her feet and legs, and then between her legs, quite thoroughly, for some time, as she watched the water run down Winston’s calves and waited for him to touch her.
It was so interesting, the way water moved over skin, how it split into channels and rejoined, changed direction abruptly, so enticed by gravity that it moved fast, almost too fast to keep track.
Also interesting how her cupped fingers slipped so easily through her labia, her arousal to Winston’s presence so automatic, so interesting, her fingers, the water falling on the back of her neck, and his eyes on her, the way he was breathing, Jesus.
“Allie.”
And then he was on her, his skin touching her skin everywhere, his weight moving her into the wall, his hands at her shoulders, skimming over her arms, cupping her breasts, his mouth on her neck. “This is okay.”