I had bruises of my own. Fist welts on my ribs, my jaw, my back. They didn’t hurt, or maybe they did and I liked it, and I was as fucked up as him.
You are. You know it. Cam knows it. But he still thinks you’ll be better at this than him.
Nowthatwas fucked up. I needed Cam. Craved him. The bathroom felt empty without him filling the space, drawing us both close and whispering dirty, loving shit in our ears.
But he needed a minute, and Alexei needed me.
I toed off my boots. Discarded my socks and shirt, leaving me in just jeans too, though mine were a mess of mud and rips. I’d spent all day hiding emergency vehicles in the undergrowth around Devon. Securing my home in case I never made it back after whatever deadly battle we were about to face. I was tired. My body ached.
But my heart hurt more.
I stepped closer to Alexei. He was staring at the cascading water as if he’d forgotten I was with him, so I moved slowly, making more noise than my weird brain could usually cope with, reminding him I was there.
“You do not have to be clumsy, wingman. I know you don’t like it.”
Relief pummelled me. I eviscerated the distance between us and pressed my bare chest to his back, moulding my torso to his. I didn’t speak. Not with words. I slid my mouth along his neck instead, tasting his cool skin, warming it with my tongue.
Alexei shuddered, lips breached in a moan that made no sound. I tiptoed my fingers up his mottled ribcage, not avoiding the scrapes and bruises, but skating them, letting him know I felt his pain. That his pain was mypain.
Fuck that. As I sensed Cam’s presence in the doorway, it wasours.
Alexei closed his eyes. I found Cam’s again and he nodded.Make this about him.
It fractured me to know he wasn’t okay either, but Cam’s mental health would keep. Somehow, it always did.
I unbuttoned my jeans and kicked them away. For once, I was wearing underwear. Cam’s. He made a low sound behind me as I stripped them, and gathered my clothes, waiting for me to pass him Alexei’s.
Steam began to choke me. I stripped Alexei of his jeans and handed them over. Then I turned him to face me. Cupped his jaw, my fingers in the beard he managed to keep neat and tidy while the rest of us looked homeless.
I waited him out. If he needed what I thought he did, he was gonna have to look at me first. Hold my gaze andtellme so. For a man that didn’t speak much, maybe it was hypocritical to ask that of him. But I was asking it anyway. Him and Cam could fuck all night long on their terms.
These were mine.
Cam disappeared. I heard the bedroom door open and close. He didn’t leave, I’d have felt it if he had, but the sound jerked Alexei back to awareness.
His eyes flew open and found mine.
“He didn’t leave.” I stroked his cheekbone with my thumb. “Get in the shower with me.”
I stuck my hand beneath the spray. It was scalding hot and felt like napalm to my skin. “Trying to boil us alive?”
Alexei shrugged. “I like distractions and I did not want you to be cold.”
“Just flayed?”
“That is dramatic.”
I’d heard him say that before, at Cam’s expense or mine, I couldn’t remember. Only that his dry humour then bewitched me as much as it did now.
I turned the heat down and tugged Alexei under the water. He wasn’t grimy like me, but I reached for the shower gel anyway and rubbed it into his skin, letting my slippery palms roam his body.
He was hard.
So was I. But that was par for the course for being naked together. When my mood was right, the live wire between us ran at full voltage 24/7. I couldn’t control it.
I skimmed a hand over his abdomen. His cock jumped and another silent moan shimmered in the humid air. God, I wanted to touch him, but not yet. I needed him back in the room first, not grasping for a temporary fix that would hurt us both in the end.
Since when did you become a shrink?