Page 152 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Most of the locker actually was black or charcoal, with tactical pants folded beneath a few plain shirts and a couple of gray pieces that seemed to represent the full range of his personality. Gear sat along the lower shelf, organized into pouches and cases I recognized well enough now to know what belonged to his belt and what belonged to the plate carrier.

Wolf pulled out a clean black t-shirt and held it toward me.

“Change.”

I took it and looked around the room.

Then I turned back to him.

“Where?”

He checked the door, then me.

“I’ll turn around.”

I looked at the shirt in my hands.

“This is weird.”

“We showered less than two feet apart the other day.”

My eyes lifted to his.

“There was a curtain.”

“Barely.”

Wolf turned his back to me and faced the desk. The broad line of his shoulders filled more of my attention than the decision required.

“Tell me when you’re done.”

I stood there holding the shirt against my stomach.

The shower had been different. At least that was what I told myself while I hooked my fingers beneath the hem of my wet sleep shirt. The curtain between us that afternoon had been thin enough that I could see the shape of his body through it, and I knew he had been able to see mine in the same blurred outline. I had known when he lifted his arms to wash his hair. I had known when he turned. We had both known exactly how little separated us.

But there had still been something. Now there was only open air and the back of a man who could turn around whenever he wanted.

I pulled the wet shirt over my head.

Cold air moved directly across my breasts. My nipples tightened immediately, sharper now without damp cotton covering them, and goosebumps spread over my arms before running along my ribs and stomach. I folded one arm across myself on instinct even though Wolf was still facing away.

He did not move.

Across from me, I could smell the faint residue of cigarette smoke in his shirt beneath the clean detergent, mixed with the dry woody scent I had started recognizing before I saw him. The fact that I knew what Wolf smelled like had become information my brain stored with considerably more care than it deserved.

I stepped back and pushed the wet sleep shorts over my hips.

The air reached the backs of my thighs first. I stepped out of the shorts and stood in my underwear, suddenly aware that the room had become very quiet. Wolf’s hands rested loosely at his sides. He wasn’t looking, but every second he kept his back turned made me more aware that he was choosing not to.

I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my underwear and hesitated. Keeping damp fabric on under a dry shirt made no practical sense. Unfortunately, practicality had very little control over what the situation was doing to me by then.

The air was already cool against my chest. Heat sat lower between my legs, made more noticeable by the cold moving over the rest of me and the memory of yesterday’s car ride still close enough to surface whenever Wolf spoke in that particular tone.

I could feel my own pulse everywhere I did not want to think about as I slid the underwear down.

The damp fabric moved over my thighs and dropped around my ankles. I stepped out, then draped my wet shirt and shorts over the open locker door so the metal could take the dripping instead of his floor. My underwear went behind them, tucked out of sight. For several seconds I was completely naked behind him.

There was no curtain now, no steam or translucent plastic giving either of us a technical excuse to pretend we could not see if we looked. Wolf stood only a few feet away, and I knew exactly what he would see if he turned around.