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She shook her head and lifted her gaze from his lower back, catching him staring at her in the mirrored doors of her closet.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I called your name.” She rubbed her lips together, feeling the slide of her lip gloss. “You didn’t respond,” she added lamely. Of course he didn’t respond. He knows that.

Her eyes dropped to his chest in the mirror, and his pecs flexed in reflex. She assumed it was reflex.

It was rude to stare, but she couldn’t stop, and he wasn’t stopping her. Why wasn’t he stopping her?

Trailing her gaze down his torso in a slow descent over chiseled abs and a deep V, she sucked in a sharp breath when her gaze reached his towel.

Tenting his towel in an obscene manner, his cock pointed right at the mirror.

His eyes followed where she looked when he heard her intake of breath and he pivoted his hips away from the mirror, cursing to himself. “It’s not what it looks like.”

She spun around to face the kitchen to give him a modicum of privacy. What she should have done to start with. “It’s,” she started, but her voice sounded pitchy, so she cleared her throat. “It’s normal. If you just got out of the shower, I mean. Hot water does that, right?”

She could have sworn she heard something about hot water making men’s penises thicker. Did the heat give them erections? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to Google it right then.

It wasn’t like she made a habit out of seeing men fresh out of the shower—or in the shower under hot water. And certainly not Aiden in the shower. Ugh, don’t think about him in the shower now! Even with her ex in high school, she never saw him like that. The couple of times they went all the way weren’t in the best situations to follow up with a shower.

She rationalized it with the phenomenon of morning wood. Guys woke up with erections, why couldn’t hot showers trigger the same? They taught them as kids in sexual education classes that rogue erections weren’t uncommon in males.

Aiden made a grunting sound that she wasn’t sure meant an acknowledgment of truth or a denial of her assumption. It didn’t matter either way.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed in peace.”

“You look… nice today,” he said as she stepped away.

What a weird thing to say, all things considered. Though it made her feel more confident in her choice of attire.

A few minutes later, Aiden came around the corner into her living room in a new pair of medium-wash jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt that stretched snug over his biceps, shoulders, and chest. It fell loose from the ribs where his torso tapered in to his waist and came to rest above his pockets. His wet hair looked longer, smoothed back as he ran the fingers of both hands through it to finger comb the hair into place.

“Hey,” he said, dropping his arms at his side. His chuckle sounded uncomfortable.

“Hi?” She unlaced the ribbon around her ankles and slid the sandals from her feet, groaning in relief as she wiggled her toes. Beautiful shoes, hell on the feet. “Sorry for walking in on you. I really didn’t know you were here.”

A faint hint of pink on his sharp cheekbones at her words didn’t escape her notice.

“Nah, it’s fine. You’ve seen me in either boxers or shorts at bed time. Not like you haven’t seen everything, anyway.”

“Not the tattoo,” she said, tactfully choosing not to address the fact she’d never seen his cock before. Well, she didn’t see it then either, only the estimated size based on how far out the towel looked in the mirror. She didn’t even see the thickness or shape. Stop thinking about his dick.

“Huh? You’ve never seen it?”

“No, you sleep on your back, and I looked away before I saw it at Tybee Island.”

He walked over on bare feet to sit next to her on the loveseat. She turned to face him, drawing her knees up onto the cushion.

“I would have figured you’d have seen it when we got ready for bed or something.”

At night, she was either already in bed or trying not to look at him until they were both beneath the safety of the covers. In the mornings, she either got up and left before him, or he was up before her and dressed before she got out of bed. More often than not, if she didn’t have classes, he got up and left for about an hour.

She had no idea where he went, but he always came back with a ton of energy compared to how he seemed to drag at night if they were up late.

She suspected it had to do with his nightmares. Although she hadn’t witnessed any, he told her he sometimes woke up with them. She knew that already from their video calls and late-night chats before he ever came to visit.

“Do you want to see it?” His brows drew in. “I mean, a closeup. I don’t mind.” He chuckled. “I remember you like tattoos,” he said, explaining why he offered likely in response to the confusion she knew was written on her face.

“Well, yeah. If you don’t mind.”