My thighs press together before I can stop them.
He sees it.
I know he sees it because his breath changes and he suddenly goes very still.
“And when there's no one,” he continues, quieter now, rougher, “there are websites. Cam things. You find someone. You watch each other. Both of you, at the same time, on screens. Nobody's skin ever gets involved.”
“Mutual—” My voice cracks. I clear it. “You watch each other.”
“Yeah.”
“While you both?—”
“Yeah.”
I'm breathing too fast. I can hear it, shallow and high, and I can't fix it, because I'm picturing that too—Rowe lit by a laptop screen, henley off, hand wrapped around himself, watching a woman touch herself for him—and every one of those imaginary women has my face.
The bulge in his jeans is unmistakable now. He's not hiding it. Maybe he can't. His knuckles are white around the bottle, and his chest is rising faster than it was a minute ago, and the four feet between us has stopped being distance and started being an inferno.
I set my beer on the floor because my hands aren't trustworthy anymore. I’m shaking too hard.
“You could do that now.”
The words leave me before my courage can file an objection.
His head comes up.
“I mean—” Blood roars in my ears. My face is on fire, I can feel it, cheeks and throat and the tips of my ears. “Only if you wanted to. Obviously. I'm not—I just—no screens. I'm right here. I wouldn't touch you. I wouldn't move from this bench. You could just…” I make myself hold his eyes even though it costs me everything I have. “And I could watch.”
Rowe doesn't move.
For five seconds. Ten. The lamp hums and my pulse slams and I start composing the apology, theforget I said anything, the graceful exit where I collect my bag and drive home and change my name?—
“You'd want that?” His voice has dropped to the pitch of crumbling gravel. “That's not—you're not offering because you feel sorry for?—”
“I've thought about you every hour since we met.” It comes out in a rush, honest and mortifying. “I couldn't sleep. Paige thinks I've lost my mind. I amnotoffering out of pity, Rowe.”
Something crosses his face that I've only ever seen on animals—that moment when a wary creature decides, against all its history, to come closer.
He sets his beer on the table.
His hands go to his belt.
I stop breathing entirely.
He works the buckle loose, and I watch his fingers—those careful, scarred, capable fingers that hold monkeys like glass—pop the button of his jeans. He pauses there, eyes lifting to mine, giving me one last off-ramp.
I don't take it.
He drags the zipper down, lifts his hips, pushes denim and black boxer briefs down his thighs, and his cock springs free, heavy and flushed andhard, curving up toward his stomach.
The sound that comes out of me is not dignified. It's a moan, small and involuntary, and I clap my hand over my mouth a second too late.
Because it's beautiful. That's the only word my scrambled brain can produce. Thick, long, and covered in ink. An intricate gothic design climbs the shaft, black filigree and thorned lines wrapping the length of him like ivy on a column, the artistry so fine and deliberate it steals whatever air I had left.
“You—” I have to swallow. “You got it tattooed.”
“I tattooed it.”