Boiling Point

Chapter 5: Boiling Point

Hunter Conner

"Stop pushing my hands away. You can barely hold your own head up."

Cody's hand shoved weakly at my forearm anyway, more reflex than actual resistance. "I can wash my own hair, Hunter."

"With one arm." I caught his wrist mid-swat and guided it back down to his side, careful, deliberate, even though careful cost me something every single time I touched him. "Hold still."

Steam curled thick around both of us, fogging the glass, filling my lungs with wet heat that did nothing to cool the fire already banked low in my gut. His soaked shirt clung to his good shoulder, and I peeled it back with both hands, slow, working around the brace, working around every place that might hurt him.

"You don't have to be gentle," he muttered, jaw tight, eyes anywhere but on me.

"I'm not being gentle for you." My voice came out rougher than I meant it. "I'm being gentle, so I don't break something and have to explain it to Atlas."

He huffed something that almost passed for a laugh, and the sound of it did something dangerous to my chest.

I got the shirt off him. Water hit his bare skin and ran in thin lines down his collarbone, over the darkening bruise blooming there, and I had to lock my jaw hard enough to ache just watching it.

"Turn," I said.

"Bossy."

"Turn, Brennan."

He turned, slow, careful of the brace, and I picked up the soap and worked it into my hands before I let myself touch him again. I started at his good shoulder, working down over smooth wet skin, memorizing the shape of muscle under my palm like I hadn't already memorized it from a hundred locker rooms and a hundred games I had no business watching that closely.

"You're staring," he said, breath catching slightly.

"I'm working."

"You're staring, Hunter."

I didn't deny it a second time. My thumb found his collarbone, traced along it toward his throat, and I felt his pulse jump hard and fast under my touch, frantic in a way that had nothing to do with his injuries.

"Look at me," I said, low.

"I am looking at you."

"Look at me." I tipped his chin up with two fingers, forcing those wide eyes to mine, and something in his breath just — stopped. I felt my own control fraying at the edges, one thread at a time, until I'd backed him against the tile without fully deciding to do it, my forearm braced beside his head, my body caging him in without a single inch of room to slip out.

"Hunter, don't—"

"Don't what." My voice had dropped somewhere past reason. Water ran down between us, and his chest rose and fell too fast, too shallow, his lips parted like he'd forgotten how to close them.

I leaned in. Close enough to feel his breath hitch against my mouth, close enough that one more inch would have ended this entirely.

His eyes were huge, dark, terrified, and not backing away.

I forced myself back first. Barely. My hands were shaking when I reached for the towel instead of him.

"We're done," I said, voice wrecked. "Get out before I do something we can't take back."

I wrapped him in the towel myself, hands rough with restraint, and guided him out into the hallway on legs that weren't entirely steady under either of us.

Atlas was already there.

He stood in the dim hall exactly where the light didn't reach, arms crossed, watching us both with an expression carved from stone. He'd seen it. I didn't know how much, but I knew Atlas well enough to know he never stood still unless he'd already gathered everything he needed.

Cody went red from his collarbone to his hairline. "It's not— we were just—"

"Go rest, Cody," Atlas said, voice smooth, unbothered, like he hadn't just watched me nearly put my mouth on him. "Your bed's already turned down."

Cody fled toward the bedroom fast enough that his bare feet slapped against the hardwood door, clicking shut behind him a second later.

The silence that followed had teeth.

I turned on Atlas before the latch even finished settling. "You get a good look?"

"Enough of one." He didn't move, didn't flinch, just watched me with that same infuriating calm while I crowded into his space, chest to chest, close enough that most men would have stepped back by now.

"Stay out of that bathroom next time," I said, teeth locked.

"So you can finish what you started?" Atlas's voice stayed level, cold, cutting straight through my anger like it was nothing. "You had him pinned against the wall, Hunter. Another five seconds, and you'd have kissed him whether he was ready or not."

"That's none of your business."

"Everything about him is my business." He stepped closer instead of back, unbothered by the fact that I had six inches and forty pounds on him. "You're not the only one who wants him, Hunter, and you're certainly not the only one who gets to take him."