“No,” he says sternly, slipping her a bill. “Go to dinner on your own, she’s busy.”
I hope he means to talk to me when he suddenly makes a right turn and disappears into a gym. Ooops. I have to backtrack when I realize I was heading in the wrong direction.
I hurry into the gym after him. He signs in and gives me a stern sideways look, but then he motions me in with a jerk of his chin and scribbles down his signature again. Silently, I walk behind him as he heads into an area of private saunas.
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?”
“I let you in here for reasons I can’t even comprehend.” He shoots me a vexed look, his expression bleak and dire.
I laugh, figuring he’s playing with me. “I can’t lose this chance, Aaric. I really want this. It’s easy for you to string me along when you’ve never lost anything at all.”
“I’ve lost something.”
It’s not just the words, but the tone he uses that makes me sit up straighter. I’m too surprised to do more than drink in the stormy, shadowed look in his eyes. Shit. I hit a sore spot. Way to go, Bryn. Nice way to endear yourself to him.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Fuck. I’m sorry too.” He scrapes a hand down his face, sweat glistening all across his gorgeous body.
“So what was it? That you lost.” Suddenly—belatedly—I remember his mother and I want to slap myself for speaking so abruptly.
“Somebody,” he says.
Your mom, I think. “You loved her.”
“Aside from my mom,” he adds. “Yes, but I never got the chance to love her. She died when she was born.”
Shock makes my eyes flare wide open. Whaaat? “You had a daughter?”
He meets my gaze and I see everything I need to see in his eyes.
“And your wife?”
“Not wife. Friend.”
“What happened?”
“She got depressed, left my life, fell in love later, got married. We talk occasionally.”
“Oh. I’m glad.” I glance away, then back at him. “I’m sorry about that.”
He nods as he looks at me.
I just stare back at him, suddenly understanding more.
My heart is doing weird things in my chest. I want to embrace him. I want to
run away from him. I want to open up and talk more about our losses. I want to pretend we’ve never lost a thing.
I swallow.
He leans back, the move sort of implying he doesn’t want to speak more about it.
Patting my face with the towel, my breathing fast as my body keeps on sweating and I keep spewing out feelings as if they’re attached to my sweat.
“See, sometimes I’m feeling lonely like nothing will ever turn out my way. I feel different, like a red ink stain on a page full of gold dots.”
“I know what you mean. I used to feel like I was a tear on a page, not a red ink stain though.”
“Why? Like you tore the page?”
“Yep.”
“Like you’re the tear on a page?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, that’s awful. Are you okay?”
“Obviously I’m not.”
“Yeah. Sigh.” I laugh.
“Go on. You were saying,” he prods.
“Oh nothing, only that all these feelings go away when you’re close.”
Shadows darken his eyes, as if my comment gets to him.
“Why is that.” His stare becomes intense enough to singe me to my bones.
“Because another feeling comes in when you’re close and it’s all I can feel. Like a glass of oil is overflowing with water until the oil overflows and then it’s just the most fresh and hydrating water.”
“I’m the water in your glass.” He starts to smile in bemusement, but his gaze doesn’t lose one single bit of its intensity.
I laugh. “You fill my glass. I suppose you’re the water too.”
He grins even more, like this is the best compliment he’s ever gotten.
He leans forward, his gaze level with mine. We’re both glistening with droplets of steam and sweat, but his stare is the most heavenly thing I’ve ever seen look at me. So serious, so sure. “I had no idea,” he says, the green in his eyes more vivid than ever, “how much I missed you, bit.”
It’s so intense I drop my gaze and pull it back to his, my stomach sort of turning in on itself. “Why. Do I fill your glass too?”
“Not sure.” He winks, smirking. “Maybe you just fill my well, girl.”
I laugh, and he chuckles, and we sort of spend the next minutes in silence, our smiles lingering on our faces.
By the time we leave the sauna, I feel good. Physically, I’m relaxed, but emotionally, I’m in a bit of chaos/confused mode. Christos offers to drive me home, but I decline. An hour later, a message appears on my phone.
Tomorrow. Next appointment. 8 p.m. @ Peasant (Nolita). Be there.
I’m so there.
Midnight text to BFF:
Do you remember when you stole into the guys’ locker room to chase after Lyle?
Becka: No. I promptly forgot that when the coach found me before Lyle did and called my parents about what a perv I was.
Me: Okay, forget that part. Imagine that you’d found Lyle. In nothing but this tiny towel. Like a fig leaf, that small.
Becka: Okay, what’s going on?
Me: It’s Christo’s fault. We went to a sauna and…we went to a sauna.
Becka: And? Dish out!!!
Me: And…muscular man. Tiny towel! Heat and sweat? Ugh. I’m still squirming inside.
Becka: Baby girl, that’s hot! I vote you go impale yourself on Christos. I sure as hell remember he’d like that.
Me: Not anymore. He’s taken, okay.
Lucky bitch
Becka: All is fair in love and war.
Me: It’s not love.
Becka: What is it?
Me: Terrible
Terrible lust
Becka: Was he really muscled? He was skinny before. No?
Me: You have NO idea the muscles he packs. And I won’t even get into the SHAPE of what was under his towel.
Becka: Now who’s the perv! HA!
Me: Lucky I don’t have a principal after me. (But maybe an angry girlfriend if she ever found out her man was with me in a sauna? I’d be jealous out of my mind!)
Becka: Me thinks you’re in trouble, bestie…
Me: Nooooo. I just needed that off my chest. I’m good now. I’m going to work!!
Really.
No, really.
Not thinking of Christos’s sweaty, tattooed bod in a tiny towel at all!
I dreamed of him. He was hugging me in his office, and I was crying on his shoulder because my parents had just died. It makes no sense. He wasn’t there when my parents died, flowers sent in his absence. The only time he ever hugged me was when we said goodbye. And maybe…well, it wasn’t exactly a hug, but when he tried to kiss me. Still, he didn’t hug me in his office yesterday. But when I wake in the middle of the night, my face is wet and I can’t go back to sleep.
It feels odd to see him, remember the girl I used to be—he reminds me of my childhood. He reminds me of my dreams, my parents, myself before my heart broke into pieces, one for each person I’ve loved and lost.
Maybe, even, including him.
I’m distracted with Milly, Natchez, and the rest of my dog tribe the next day. Then Milly’s owner, Mrs. Ford, invites me to join her for tea when I drop Milly off that afternoon.
“Brynny! You’re back just in time for tea. Come sit with Milly and me.”
“Oh, Mrs. Ford…I couldn’t…”
“You can and you will,” she declares in moody New York fashion.
So I grudgingly agree, “Five minutes,” and sit in her European-style sitting room, drinking tea.
“Tell me about yourself, Brynny. How are you finding New York?”
“I’m finding it,” I say, and she laughs. I admit, “It’s a jungle, Mrs. Ford, but I suppose I’m learning the ropes of how to survive around here.”
“Like what?”
“Like if I stand at the pizza line and don’t know exactly, exactly, what I’m having when it’s my turn, I get skipped.”
We laugh, and she tells me of the days when she moved into Manhattan seven years ago.
“At my age, you can imagine what a shock the city was. It’s why I’d rather look at the city from up here.” She motions to her lovely view, and I say, “If you ever want to go out, I’d be happy to walk with you or ride with you anywhere.”
“Thank you, but I do have family who visits occasionally. But thank you for offering, Brynny.”
I feel relieved that she’s not alone in the city—mainly because I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met Sara when I got here—so I smile, make her a new pot of tea, and head out, not before petting Milly. “’Bye, girl,” I whisper in her ear. “Wish me luck tonight.”
I rush to get ready for my meeting, more nervous than I care to admit.
Christos
12 years ago
She finds me out on the roof while the party disperses inside. I’m staring at the lake in the distance, an empty bottle in my hand.
Bryn walks forward, her steps tentative. It’s as if she thinks I’ll ask her to leave. No. I’d never ask her to leave. I crave her too much to want her anywhere but near me.
“Are you out here all alone because you’re avoiding saying goodbye to me?” she asks.
Her mouth drives me crazy when she speaks. I try to pull my head on straight and shake it. “Nah.” I smile.
She frowns at me. She’s always told me I’m very elusive and stubborn, the one man she can never read. “I’ll leave. Really. If you don’t want me here.”
“Don’t leave. Come here, bit.” I scoot over.
“Bit?”
“You’re a small little thing. Much more trouble than you look.”
“I’m not trouble.”
“The places you take a guy’s thoughts…pure trouble, bit.”
She smiles happily, and takes a seat next to me, and thanks to the wind, her hair flies across my face. I brush it back, trying not to snatch it between my fingers. “You going to miss anything about here?” she asks me.
“I’m going to miss
you.” I smile. “Hey, you sad?”
Her eyes shadow, but she shakes it off. “What? You think I’d miss you?” she scoffs.
I nod soberly. “I’d take you with me if I could.”
“I wouldn’t go.” She wrinkles her nose.
“You would if I asked you to.” I smile, and she laughs, then we fall silent.
“I guess this is the last time I see you, huh,” she says.
I look at her closely. If anything in this goddamned world would prompt me to stay here—it’s her. But there’s a job for me in Dallas, an opportunity for me to grow. “Don’t change, bit.”
“I’ll try. And you. Be good, Aaric. The line you walk is far too fine.”
I laugh. She glances at the skyline, as if realizing it’s too late. People have already left the party.
“Have a good life,” she says, clapping her hands once. As if that’s that.
I frown. “Jesus. I might see you one day.”
“Really? I’m not sure you will.”
“I might look you up one damn day.”
“Why?”
“To prove to you that I can. To show you how far I’m going to have come.”
“You’ll want to show off what a big shot you are.”
“That’s right.” I wink. “Bye, bit.”
Her eyes water and when I rise to my feet and draw her into my arms—for the first and last time, really—she sobs into my shoulder and can’t seem to say it back.
Bryn
I meet him at Peasant as instructed, my pulse a little rapid as I walk inside, even with the two glasses of wine I guzzled down to help with the nerves as I changed. It’s as if my nervousness keep amping up with every meeting. I don’t know if it’s because I’m nervous that one final NO, and this will be over. Or if it’s because I really crave to spend time with him and look forward to these…meetings. Stressful as they are.
Anyway, I wanted this to go well. So I pulled out the minidress Sara calls the “tiny sexual bomb” that I designed myself, and I headed several blocks from our apartment down to Peasant.