24 - Kayla #2
Michael stood there, the condensation gleaming off his bare chest, looking like something carved from granite and lightning. His gaze was a physical weight, dark and molten, tracing the line of my throat down to the damp cotton of my shirt.
"Your turn," he murmured.
The words were low, a rough vibration that seemed to bypass my ears and strike directly at my pulse.
There was no masked performer in his eyes now, no guarded veteran, just a man who had finally stopped fighting a war against himself.
The juicy, unfiltered desire in his expression made my knees feel like they were made of the very vapor surrounding us.
My hands went to the hem of my t-shirt, my fingers trembling as I gripped the fabric. I started to lift it, the cool air of the room hitting my stomach for a split second before the heat swallowed it back up. But I stopped, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"You're sure?" I breathed, my voice barely audible over the hiss of the steam. "You're sure nobody’s gonna barge in here? Landon, or the trainers..."
Michael didn't blink. His gaze flicked toward the heavy glass door, then back to me, the hunger in his eyes intensifying. Without a word, he moved. He crossed the small space with a predator’s grace, his bare feet silent on the wet tile.
He reached the door, his hand closing over the handle, and with a sharp, decisive click, the lock engaged.
He turned back to me, and the air in my lungs simply vanished.
He raked his eyes over my body, from my messy hair down to my damp jeans, with a possessive intensity that made me shiver in the sweltering heat.
The electricity of being wanted like this, of being the sole focus of a man who usually held the weight of an entire franchise on his shoulders, sent a violent tremor through my frame.
"Looks like it’s still your turn," he said.
He didn't wait. He strode back to me, the distance disappearing in two long steps. Before I could even finish the motion of lifting my shirt, his hands were there, large and searingly hot, reaching under the fabric to help me make quick work of discarding it.
In one blurred, high-velocity motion, the shirt was gone, tossed into the mist, and I was being moved. He didn't just lead me; he claimed the space, his palms flat against my skin as he pressed me firmly against the cool, tiled wall.
The impact wasn't hard, but it was sudden, stealing my breath away as the cold tile met the heat of my back. He caged me in, his heavy forearms bracing on either side of my head, his bare chest inches from mine.
The certainty in his movements was staggering.
There was no hesitation, no second-guessing, just the raw, focused intent of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how he was going to take it.
The way he looked at me, like I was the only prize that had ever mattered, made my head spin.
I had spent so long being the one in control, the one protecting, the one holding everything together.
And in the roar of the steam, letting Michael take that power felt like the first breath I’d drawn in years.
There wasn't a pocket of air left that didn't taste like the two of us. My back was flush against the tile, the heat of the wall seeping into my spine, but it was nothing compared to the furnace of Michael’s body caging me in.
He leaned in, his damp chest grazing my sensitized skin with every heavy, stuttering breath he drew. The dark strands of his hair, freed from the tie, brushed against my shoulders like wet silk. He looked down at me, his eyes dark with a predatory kind of playfulness that made my pulse erratic.
"You know," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that seemed to echo in my very bones. "Management makes us use this thing after every practice. It’s a requirement. It’s supposed to be relaxing after a hard workout."
He moved closer, his weight settling against me, the rough fabric of his gym shorts a stark contrast to the denim of my jeans. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then lower, tracing the racing beat of the pulse in my throat.
"But you," he whispered, his hand sliding down my side, trailing a path of fire over my ribs. "You seem... tense, Kayla."
Before I could find the breath to retort, his hand dropped lower, his palm flattening against the denim between my thighs. He applied just enough deliberate, steady pressure to send a lightning bolt of friction straight to my core.
I gasped, my head thumping back against the tile, my eyes fluttering shut as a wave of heat that had nothing to do with the steam crashed over me. My fingers dug into the hard, damp muscle of his biceps, anchoring me as the world tilted.
But I wasn't going to let him have the final word. Not when I could feel the way his own control was fraying at the edges.
I shifted, my hand sliding down the carved expanse of his stomach, past the ridged muscle of his abs, until my fingers found the heavy, unmistakable hardening bulge straining against the thin fabric of his shorts.
I didn't pull away; I traced the long, rigid line of him, my touch light but purposeful.
Michael’s breath hitched, a broken sound that was half-groan, half-surrender. I felt the violent shudder that racked his massive frame, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as his grip on the wall beside my head tightened until his knuckles cracked.
"I'm tense?" I whispered into the humid air, my voice smoky and emboldened by the way he vibrated under my hand. "That's funny, Cap. Because from where I’m standing, you seem to be the one struggling with the 'relaxing' part of the program."
He let out a low, tortured laugh against my skin, his teeth grazing the curve of my neck. "God, Kayla... you're going to be the death of me."
“Prove it.”
The words were a direct challenge tossed into the thick, sweltering fog.
Our eyes locked, and the last tether of restraint snapped with a sound I could practically hear over the roar of the steam. Michael didn't just lean in; he surged forward, his mouth crashing into mine with a ravenous, desperate hunger that tasted of salt and years of unspoken wanting.
We became an urgent tangle of limbs and damp denim.
I reached for the button of my jeans, but his hands were already there, his large fingers clumsy with an uncharacteristic urgency that made my heart hammer against my ribs.
We were fighting the fabric and each other, our hands colliding and fingers twisting together in a furious, fumbling knot as we both tried to shove the heavy, wet denim down my hips.
We refused to break the kiss. It was an awkward, beautiful struggle, our noses bumping, our breaths hitching in sync, a muffled groan lost between our lips as we hopped and kicked, desperate to shed the last barrier.
My underwear went with the jeans, dragged down in the chaotic rush, until I finally kicked the sodden mess into the corner of the steam room.
The sudden coolness of the air on my skin was instantly replaced by the searing heat of his body as he pressed me back against the tile. We finally broke apart, the silence of the room filled only by our frayed, synchronized gasping.
Michael took a deliberate step back, his chest heaving, the steam curling around his sweat-slicked shoulders like a cape.
His gaze, dark and molten, traveled slowly down the length of my body.
It didn't just linger; it burned, finally dropping to the dark, damp shadow between my legs.
He watched the way I trembled, the way the heat made my skin flush, and then, with a slow, agonizingly deliberate motion, he ran his tongue over his lower lip.
I wasn’t ready for the way his hands reached for his waistband, wasn’t suspecting the enticing way he slipped his fingers into both his shorts and underwear, or for the slow graze of his clothing against his deliciously tan, glistening skin.
I was NOT ready for the way his cock sprang free of its confines after way too long an entrapment, to be entranced by the way it glistened with his evident excitement in the yellowing sauna lights, the thickness and length, the delightful arch and veins it had…
I wasn’t ready for this. But I was nothing if not ambitious.
I took my time to stare, barely holding back a moan as Michael averted his eyes shyly.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Or what?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but stopped. Then he simply nodded, shakily slid his hand back up and over his torso once more, bringing it up to the head of his cock. “Nothing.”
As his fingers gripped his shaft, I felt that pang between my legs once more.
I practically groaned along with him as he finally began to rub his thumb along the head of his cock, smearing his precum over it and guiding it down as far along his length as it would go.
I was in awe of the way his skin pulled tight, causing the sexy sounds that escaped his throat.
I loved it. It made me want to touch him.
Touch his chest, tangle my hands in his messy hair, run them over the ripped planes of his abdomen until I finally reached his erection and. ..
My legs moved of their own volition. Michael stopped what he was doing and looked into my eyes with slight confusion.
I took three long, slow strides toward him as if possessed, and finally dropped down to my knees.
Desire burned in my veins at the sight of him.
He looked flustered behind his enticing, dripping cock that was as of right now, directly in my face. I committed this to memory immediately.
“You don’t have to…” he murmured as he moved his hands away to watch me in apprehensive anticipation.