Page 1

Chapter 1

Mark

Who knew Satan made towels?

Not the idea of a towel. A specific towel.

One handed to me by a pink-haired kid at the front desk. The cloth was folded into a tidy little square that unfurled into what I could only describe as a washcloth with delusions of grandeur.

I held it up, looked at it, then looked at the kid.

He blinked and smacked his gum, utterly disinterested.

I am six-foot-three. I spent decades lifting things most people would call a two-man job. My biceps are thicker than pink-boy’s waist, and somewhere across my chest and shoulders, beneath a mane of graying hair, is the accumulated architecture of all that lifting. My last boyfriend described me, fondly, as “aggressively mammalian.”

“This is a napkin,” I said, holding the towel with two fingers like it might be diseased.

“It’s the size we have.” Pinky blew a bubble and popped it. “This is a bathhouse, not the Four Seasons.”

I let out a breath and made my way into the locker room, stripped, and somehow got the towel around my waist. Its pseudo-knot sat at my left hip like a threat. When I stood, the two edges met with maybe a quarter inch to spare. That quarter inch had to do the work of about eleven inches. It knew it, too. I could feel it resenting me already.

I took a step.

The whole arrangement gave a soft, disappointed sigh and let go.

I caught it.

Barely.

One hand shot down and pinned the failing edge to my thigh, and I stood there, half crouched, gripping my own hip like a man who’d pulled something, while a slim, completely naked guy three cubbies down watched the entire performance over his shoulder with open, delighted interest.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

“I need a bigger towel,” I growled.

“They don’t have a bigger towel.”

“So I’m learning.”

“You could go without.” His eyes made an unhurried trip down and back up, taking inventory in no rush at all. “From what I can see, you’d be doing us all a favor.”

“Thanks. I’ll make it work.”

“Pity,” he said, turning back to his locker like a man who’d made a reasonable offer and could afford to wait for my surrender.

I re-wrapped the napkin, this time aiming the knot dead center, figuring a symmetrical load would distribute the stress better. This was genuine construction logic. It should have worked.

The towel disregarded it entirely.

That particular towel was not built to code and had no interest in physics.

My brain spun. I can cover my front or my back. Those were my only options the geometry allowed, so I chose front on the theory that a man should meet a room face first. Also, I figured if my lower front was uncovered, nobody would be looking at my face anyway.

I know gay men. We are a singularly focused species.

Towel repositioned, I stepped into the main corridor with one hand hovering at my hip like a gunslinger who’d forgotten what a gun was for.

And then the hallway got hold of me.