He walks into the changing room, and I almost walk into the door.

I wait nervously outside, then I see him step out in nothing but a tiny towel and a shit ton of muscles, ignoring me as he heads into a large private sauna. I hesitate for a second, then forge ahead and pry the door open, peering in through the smoke.

I hear his voice from the far end. He seems to be the only one here. “If you plan to be here, go change.”

Nodding even though he might not be able to see me through the mist, I head into the women’s changing room.

I undress quickly, wrap a towel around myself, and head back into his sauna.

I walk inside as the door shuts behind me, sealing us in heat and steam. I’m so nervous that I continuously ensure that I’m firmly wrapped in the white towel.

“You’re quite a little bulldozer, aren’t you, Bryn?”

Christos sits on a bench at the far end. His hips still wrapped in a white towel. His eyes gleaming in the misty shadows.

He sounds amused and, though his words are playful, I can see a spark of respect in his gaze. Smoke fills the cabin as I find a place to sit across from his large, barely clad body.

My eyes fall on a large figure shaped by his towel and, with a kick of my heart, I realize what it is.

His cock imprint.

Breathless in an instant, I glance away because that’s not really my business. His cock is not my business. The fact that it is so noticeable and large?

Not my business.

Not my problem.

“I do my best thinking sweating,” he says, leaning back and planting his arms at his sides and Bryn, really! Stop gaping at his tattoo.

I retrieve my gaze as quickly as possible and gaze at the floor. But it’s such a lovely tattoo. Running up his shoulder, spreading out into a part of his pec.

I pat the sweat on my face with a small towel, already breathing hard but trying not to be too obvious.

“I find that very inconvenient,” I huff, patting my face with the small towel again. The towel around my chest sort of loosens a fraction with the movement—and his eyes fall there.

And stay there.

Right on the edge of my towel, where my cleavage is.

His voice is the opposite of silky, rough and low. “Your towel’s on the edge.”

I’m mesmerized by the change in his voice.

And the heavy, lazy-sexy look in his eyes.

“On the edge of what?”

His lips curve. So devilishly my heart skids. He reaches out to tuck the towel back in, his index finger brushing against the top swell of my breast as he does.

I gulp. Hard.

Aaric withdraws his finger.

The air is hot inside the sauna, but no part of my body feels as hot as the part of skin he just touched.

“Thank you,” I breathe as I nervously retuck the towel.

He grins, crosses his arms behind his head. “You’re welcome.”

I exhale, not even knowing where to put my eyes, trying to ignore his magnetic pull. The way the sweat starts to glisten on his chest, coating his tanned skin and muscles.

The steam keeps coming, and Aaric just looks at me.

He just looks at me.

“I knew you were different, when we were kids,” I don’t know why I admit, but I feel like maybe if I put this out there, the tension I feel when I’m around him will ease. This will put us in friendly mode, and I need friendly mode with him. “You made me feel different. I had to be careful with you. But even with the guys that I dated that seemed more harmless, it was bad news in the end. The good times aren’t even really that good. I didn’t want that to happen with you too.”

He frowns then, leaning forward, his expression unreadable but at the same time, his eyes sharp with interest. “Any particular reason they weren’t worth it?”

“Because the guys don’t get me. It’s like every time I blurt out the wrong thing I want to shove something into my mouth. I feel mortified when I see them get embarrassed. I feel odd and like I just don’t fit. I just don’t fit as the second part of a relationship, I’m just too guarded. Maybe I’m too independent. My friendship with you was more important to me, I realized. At the time.”

More silence.

More nerve-wracking green-gold stare. “Is there a reason you’re telling me this?”

“Yes. I wanted you to know why I never wanted to go there with you. I was scared that you were too valuable to me.”

I fall silent, and Aaric says nothing, and there’s still so much I want to say that I can’t seem to find the way to as he keeps waiting…for me to say more. There’s all this tension in my body—the opposite of what I thought would happen happened. Our naked bodies are sweating underneath two mere towels.

I’m fully aware of every inch of this man, of every inch of my own body and what his nearness does to me.

I want to steal my hands under his.

Climb them up his muscled thighs, and touch him, and make him hard for me as I kiss and caress him. Make him want me like he once did.

Make him try again because this time I won’t even hesitate, I’d go for it—recklessly and without restraint because I never want to go to bed with my what if to dream up a thousand kisses from him that never came because I said no. So one kiss has turned into a thousand, and the way I wanted him has multiplied by those thousand kisses, and none of them are real, but they’re real enough to haunt me, to make me want it, to make me wonder how he would kiss me.

If he’d have been gentle and sweet to me, or rough and a little crude and dirty, or maybe some way I couldn’t have even imagined.

“So did you let me in here to listen to more of my plan, or are you planning to discourage me from wanting to do business with you?”