Chapter 3
I bend down too fast and almost slip. My knee bumps the tile. I grab the bar of soap and right myself and Zero's hand catches my elbow before I can fall, his other hand still on my ass—the steady and the smack from the same body inside thirty seconds, which is just Zero in a single image.
"Easy, Carter."
"Don't Carter me right now, you're naked in my shower."
"Our shower. Common bathroom. Communal property."
"You smacked my ass a minute ago—"
"With affection."
"With your hand—"
"Wash."
I straighten up. Soap in my fist. Water running down my forearm.
He is standing two feet from me with his arms loose at his sides, that long lean cut of him on full display, and there is a deep dark hunger underneath the mockery in his eyes that I know better than to look at directly.
The bond between us pulses under my collarbone like a second pulse.
"Where do I start," I manage. Mostly to the soap.
"Anywhere you want. Start somewhere safe if you have to. Work your way down."
"What's safe?"
"My chest. My arms. The rest of me's gonna make you nervous and we don't have all day."
"I'm not nervous."
"Baby. Your hand is shaking."
I look down. My hand is, in fact, shaking.
"That's the steam."
"Mm." His grin is slow. "That's the steam."
"Shut up."
"Make me. Or wash me. Pick one."
I press the bar of soap to his chest.
He hums. Low. Pleased. His eyes close, but only halfway—I can still see the dark gleam under his lashes, the way he is watching me even when he's not.
I work it in slow circles. Across his pec.
Down the cut of his sternum. Around the dark ink that wraps over his collarbone and down his bicep—a tattoo I've seen the edges of for months but never been allowed to look at like this, and now I can take my time with it.
A line drawing of something that might be antlers, might be a knife, might be both. He sees me looking.
"You've been wondering."
My fingers slow at the curve of his bicep. The ink runs from his shoulder down past his elbow in a loop I can't quite read.
"For months," I admit.
He flexes for me. Not flashy. Just turns his arm forward into my soaped palm so the line catches the light, the muscle shifting under my hand.
"What is it?"
I tilt my head. Trace it with my thumb. Two long curves like horns, but a blade running between them, the whole thing wrapped through with something that might be smoke.
"...something with horns. A knife? Goat skull?"
"Mm. Close. Keep guessing."
"Devil?"
"Warmer."
"Zero, just tell me—"
His free hand comes up and catches my wrist. Guides my hand back down off his arm, onto his stomach.
"Lower."
"I'm getting there."
"You're stalling."
I let the soap drift down to his hip. Circle the cut of bone there.
"I've never done this," I say. Quiet.
"Done what."
"...this."
His thumb stops moving on my hipbone. He waits.
"Showered with anyone." I am pink to my hairline. The water on my face hides exactly none of it. "Never. Not even—nothing close. I don't really know what I'm doing here."
He is quiet for a beat.
Then his other hand—not the one on my hip—comes up and cups the side of my jaw, his thumb at my lower lip, and the smirk has gone somewhere I can't see.
"Yeah, baby. I figured."
"...you figured."
"Mm. Easy thing to figure."
"Why didn't you—"
"Because watching you work it out is half the point."
I work the soap down, slow, mapping him.
The dip below his ribs where his stomach starts.
The faint scar on his side I have never seen out of clothes.
The hard flat plane of his abdomen. The fine dark line of hair below his navel that I have seen the top of a dozen times when his shirt rode up and have studiously not stared at.
"What's this scar," I ask, palm passing over it.
"Sixteen. Knife fight."
"You—what?"
"Long story. I won."
"That's not a—"
"Lower, Carter."
"I'm asking about a knife wound—"
"Ask me about it later. Right now my cock is two inches from your hand and I have been waiting fourteen hours. Lower."
Heat punches through me.
It is not the words. It is the casual of them—knife wound and hard cock all wrapped in one. He's so sexy and untouchable and yet, I'm touching him. And he wants me too. My breath catches in my throat. My cock jerks against his thigh hard enough that he feels it.
His pupils blow wider. The smirk flattens into something hungrier.
"Don't go soft on me now."
"I'm not going soft."
"Hmm. Hand says otherwise."
"Zero."
"Yeah."
"What are we doing."
"You are washing me."
"That is not—"
"And then I am going to suck your cock in this shower until you can't see straight. That's the deal. You do a good job, I do a good job."
"Did you actually rehearse that sentence?"
"On the stairs."
"Oh my god—"
"You're stalling again."
I lower my hand.
I let my soaped palm close around him.
His head tips back against the tile. His throat works.
The teasing slips off him the way water sluices off skin—gone, all at once—and what's underneath is a kind of stillness I have never seen on Zero.
His chest rises and falls. His jaw is locked.
He is holding himself absolutely still while I feel him in my hand for the first time.
He is heavy. Hard. The skin hot against my palm even through the spray. My thumb finds the head and he twitches in my grip and the sound that comes out of him is closer to a growl than anything I have language for.
"Don't move," he says. Quiet. Through his teeth. "Don't move yet, just—fuck. Just hold me. Yeah. Just like that."
"Okay."
"You have no idea how long I have wanted your hand on me."
"Tell me."
"Every fucking day. Since the terrace."
"...the terrace."
"At the wedding. You were standing at the railing pretending you weren't hiding.
Tie crooked. Arms wrapped around yourself like you thought if you held on tight enough nobody would notice you.
I came out for a smoke and you tried to scold me about it.
" A short rough laugh. "Twenty seconds. Twenty fucking seconds with you and I knew I was going to be a problem. "
"...I didn't know that."
"I know you didn't. You called Margot your mom and corrected me when I said stepmother and your whole face went hard, and I thought—Christ, this kid is going to ruin my life.
" His thumb keeps stroking my hipbone, slow, almost not aware he's doing it.
"I went back inside and drank my way through the rest of the reception and all but fucked up my dad’s wedding. "
"You—you're kidding—"
"I am not kidding, baby. I have been sick about you since last June."
I move my hand, then. Slow. One stroke up. Soap slick easing the slide. His eyes squeeze shut.
"Christ, Max—"
I stroke him again. Slower. He grips my hip with both hands now, hard, his forehead lowered to my shoulder, breath hot against my skin.
He is making small involuntary sounds into my collarbone with every pull of my fist, and I have never in my life been the source of those sounds out of anyone, much less Zero, and I am drunk on it.
"Tighter, baby. Use your hand."
I tighten my grip.
He groans. Hips rocking forward into the slide. His mouth at my throat—open, wet, teeth grazing the pulse point. He is shaking against me.
I stroke him three more times. Four. Slow. Watching his face. Watching what each motion does to him. I am doing this to him. I am Max Carter and I am doing this to Zero Graves and he is letting me.
The thought is so loud I almost laugh again.
He hears it in the bond. Lifts his head. His eyes are black.
"What's funny."
"I'm—nothing—I'm—"
"Tell me."
"You. You're funny. You walk around like you invented sex and right now you're—you're—"
"I'm what."
"Coming apart in my hand."
His grin is slow. Filthy. Proud, almost—like I have just earned something from him.
"Yeah, baby." His thumb traces my lower lip. "I am. Whose fault is that."
"Mine."
"Yours. Say it again."
"Mine."
"Good."
He kisses me.
It is not gentle. His hand fists in my wet hair and he pulls my mouth to his and his tongue pushes past my teeth and his other hand has moved to my ass, kneading, holding me hard against him so that my cock and his cock are pressed against each other under my hand.
I keep stroking him. I am stroking us both, now, his cock against my belly with my fist around it, and his teeth catch my lower lip and his hips are rocking and the bond between us is so loud I cannot tell which of our heartbeats is which—
He pulls back hard.
Both hands on my shoulders. Holding me at arm's length.
"Stop," he gasps. "Stop, stop, stop. Hold."
I freeze. My hand falls away from him.
"What—Zero—did I—"
"No. No. Don't apologize. Look at me."
I look at him. His pupils are blown out. His mouth is wet. His chest is heaving and his cock is flushed dark and twitching against his stomach and he looks like a man holding the end of a leash he is about to drop.
"You did nothing wrong. I am—I am going to come on your stomach in about ten seconds if I keep going, and I made a deal. And I am a man of my fucking word."
"...the deal."
"You wash. I suck. You did your part. More than your part. Get against the tile."
"Zero—"
"Tile."
He guides me by the hips. The cold ceramic hits my shoulder blades and I hiss and he laughs, low, against my collarbone, and presses an open kiss into the hollow of my throat that goes straight to the base of my spine.
"Spread your legs a little. There. Like that."
He kneels.
The image of it lands in my head before any of the sensation does. Zero. Zero. On his knees in front of me. Black hair plastered to his skull, water running down his shoulders, his hands wrapped around my thighs holding them apart, his face turned up to look at me through the spray.
He looks like a fucking dark God. My own personal demon.
He sees me staring.
"What."
"...you."
"What about me, Carter."
"You're—you're on your knees."