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He reached out and barely caressed his knuckle along my chin.

It felt so nice that I nearly came out of my skin.

“Think I do know, Lena. Think I know you better than anyone.”

Then he turned, his big body moving across my new bedroom. Muscle flexed and bowed beneath the fabric of his shirt as he strode through the bathroom door, shoulders so wide he seemed to fill the entire space.

He didn’t look back as he clicked it shut.

The second he was locked behind the door, a gush of air rushed from my lungs.

I threw myself back onto the mattress.

Stared at the blank ceiling like I might be able to find something more interesting than the sounds that echoed from the bathroom.

I should have known that would be a faulty endeavor.

Because I was hooked on the screech of the old pipes and the rustle of clothing and the faint thud of his feet as he stepped into the tub beneath the spray.

Visions assaulted me.

It wasn’t like I didn’t fantasize about Trevan Niles constantly. It was my own dirty little secret, even though it wasn’t as close to being as dirty as the one that he held for me.

This one didn’t feel so wrong.

It didn’t make me feel like I was a vile, awful person. That thing that haunted my spirit and tainted my conscience. The mistake I had made led to tragedy.

I squeezed my eyes against the intrusive thoughts.

It only intensified the visions.

The spray of steamy water over slicked, drenched skin.

The ripple of corded muscle beneath tattooed flesh.

Grooves and angles and chiseled edges.

His hand around his⁠—

The sound of the faucet being shut off and the screech of the shower curtain being dragged back over the metal rod clipped off the thoughts, though it was already too late.

My body was burning up, my stomach tight and my thighs tingling.

Trevan must have taken that three minutes as a challenge since he’d been in there less than two.

Talk about an overachiever.

Then the door was being ripped open and he was standing there, clad in nothing but a towel around his waist.

Like my wish from earlier that he hadn’t been wearing a shirt had been mercifully granted.

Or maybe I was only being meted a punishment.

Because I’d never once seen him without a shirt before, not since we were kids, at least, and my eyes tracked the way rivulets of water dripped from his hair and weaved a path down his chest and to his abdomen.

Black tattoos swirled and wound to cover nearly all of his chest.

A murder of crows taking flight in a grim night sky.