Chapter Fourteen #2
Wolf remained quiet through all of it. He stood several feet away with his arms folded, listening while everyone slowly eliminated the building around him.
Then he spoke up. “My room.”
The hallway went still enough that I heard water dripping inside my room.
“No.”
“I have the biggest room.”
“Really? Congratulations,” I said sarcastically.
“There’s enough floor space for two people, Mercer.”
I looked toward Bear, expecting somebody with sense to object.
Bear glanced down the hall toward Wolf’s door, then back at me. “He’s right.”
“You could have lied.”
“You asked where you can sleep.”
Raven gave me an apologetic shrug. “It is probably the least inconvenient option.”
“For who?”
“Everyone,” Viper said.
I glared at him but he was already turning toward his room.
Jackal watched Viper leave. “Love the support team. Go us!”
Bear looked at him. “Go back to bed.”
“I was literally doing that before her room exploded.”
“Then continue.”
Jackal gave me a small salute with two fingers and disappeared inside. Wolf pushed away from the wall.
“You take the bed. I’ll take the floor.”
“Absolutely not.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because it’s your bed.”
“I’ll survive.”
“You’re not sleeping on concrete because my sprinkler committed suicide.”
“I’ve slept on worse.”
“That is not the compelling argument you think it is.”
Raven looked between us. “He actually has.”
I turned toward him. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side that gets me back to sleep quicker.”
Bear picked up the remaining wet towel. “It makes sense, Mia. His room has the space. He’ll be fine on the floor for one night.”
Hawk nodded once.
One by one they had arrived at the same conclusion, leaving me with nothing to fight except Wolf himself.
I looked back at him.
“You’re all very comfortable deciding this for me.”
“Then choose the couch,” Wolf said.
“You are exhausting.”
“And dry.”
I looked at my room. Water was still dripping steadily from the ceiling onto what used to be my bed.
Wolf opened his door.
“Mercer.”
He used the same clipped tone he always did when he expected me to stop turning a simple decision into an argument.
I hated that it worked.
“Fine.”
Raven immediately started toward his room.
“Coward,” I hissed at him.
“Absolutely.”
Bear stepped in my room, taking one of the industrial towels with him. Hawk disappeared into his room without another word, leaving me alone in the corridor with Wolf.
I glanced toward Wolf’s door. His room and his office had been two of the few places in the compound I had never seen inside.
Raven had pointed them out during my first few days, along with the warning that I should not go in there unless Wolf asked.
Apparently defective German plumbing counted as an invitation.
He waited beside the open door as I walked past him.
His room definitely was larger than the others, though only by the strange standards of a building where a few extra feet of concrete qualified as luxury.
There was enough open space between the bed and the wall for someone to lie down without putting their head beneath the desk, which explained why everyone had surrendered so quickly.
The rest of it was exactly what I should have expected.
A narrow bed sat beneath the window. The desk held a closed laptop and his metal lighter beside a pack of cigarettes.
Two lockers occupied the opposite wall instead of one, with a black duffel on top.
Boots had been lined beneath the second with enough precision that I resisted the urge to move one slightly out of place just to see whether he noticed.
Nothing personal had made it into view. There were no photographs or books, and nothing had been tucked into the mirror or left gathering dust on the desk. Even the charger cable had been wound neatly beside his phone.
I turned in a slow circle.
“This is depressing.”
Wolf shut the door behind us. “You’re welcome.”
“I haven’t thanked you.”
“I noticed.”
I looked at the lockers. “Do you own anything that isn’t black?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Not in here.”
“Very convincing.”
He opened the first locker.
Most of the locker actually was black or charcoal, with tactical pants folded beneath a few plain shirts and a couple of gray pieces that seemed to represent the full range of his personality.
Gear sat along the lower shelf, organized into pouches and cases I recognized well enough now to know what belonged to his belt and what belonged to the plate carrier.
Wolf pulled out a clean black t-shirt and held it toward me.
“Change.”
I took it and looked around the room.
Then I turned back to him.
“Where?”
He checked the door, then me.
“I’ll turn around.”
I looked at the shirt in my hands.
“This is weird.”
“We showered less than two feet apart the other day.”
My eyes lifted to his.
“There was a curtain.”
“Barely.”
Wolf turned his back to me and faced the desk. The broad line of his shoulders filled more of my attention than the decision required.
“Tell me when you’re done.”
I stood there holding the shirt against my stomach.
The shower had been different. At least that was what I told myself while I hooked my fingers beneath the hem of my wet sleep shirt.
The curtain between us that afternoon had been thin enough that I could see the shape of his body through it, and I knew he had been able to see mine in the same blurred outline.
I had known when he lifted his arms to wash his hair.
I had known when he turned. We had both known exactly how little separated us.
But there had still been something. Now there was only open air and the back of a man who could turn around whenever he wanted.
I pulled the wet shirt over my head.
Cold air moved directly across my breasts. My nipples tightened immediately, sharper now without damp cotton covering them, and goosebumps spread over my arms before running along my ribs and stomach. I folded one arm across myself on instinct even though Wolf was still facing away.
He did not move.
Across from me, I could smell the faint residue of cigarette smoke in his shirt beneath the clean detergent, mixed with the dry woody scent I had started recognizing before I saw him.
The fact that I knew what Wolf smelled like had become information my brain stored with considerably more care than it deserved.
I stepped back and pushed the wet sleep shorts over my hips.
The air reached the backs of my thighs first. I stepped out of the shorts and stood in my underwear, suddenly aware that the room had become very quiet.
Wolf’s hands rested loosely at his sides.
He wasn’t looking, but every second he kept his back turned made me more aware that he was choosing not to.
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my underwear and hesitated. Keeping damp fabric on under a dry shirt made no practical sense. Unfortunately, practicality had very little control over what the situation was doing to me by then.
The air was already cool against my chest. Heat sat lower between my legs, made more noticeable by the cold moving over the rest of me and the memory of yesterday’s car ride still close enough to surface whenever Wolf spoke in that particular tone.
I could feel my own pulse everywhere I did not want to think about as I slid the underwear down.
The damp fabric moved over my thighs and dropped around my ankles.
I stepped out, then draped my wet shirt and shorts over the open locker door so the metal could take the dripping instead of his floor.
My underwear went behind them, tucked out of sight.
For several seconds I was completely naked behind him.
There was no curtain now, no steam or translucent plastic giving either of us a technical excuse to pretend we could not see if we looked. Wolf stood only a few feet away, and I knew exactly what he would see if he turned around.
Another draft moved beneath the door and across my bare skin.
More goosebumps tightened along my thighs and over the curve of my ass.
My nipples stayed hard in the cold, and the air between my legs made the warmth there feel embarrassingly obvious even though nobody could possibly see it.
My hair brushed across my bare back when I reached for his shirt.
Wolf’s shoulders rose with one slow breath.
I stopped.
“You still facing the wall?”
“You can see me, Mercer.”
“I can see your back.”
“Then you have your answer.”
Even now, the asshole could find a technicality. I pulled his shirt over my head.
His scent caught around me before the fabric had even settled.
The shirt was warm from the locker, heavier than my sleep shirt and far too large through the shoulders.
The hem fell to the middle of my thighs, but when I lifted my arms to pull my hair free from the collar, cool air slipped underneath and moved over skin that was still completely bare beneath it.
I tugged the hem lower.
“Done.”
Wolf turned, looking at my face first before his attention drifted toward the open locker. One edge of my underwear had slipped out from beneath the wet clothes, and his eyes paused there just long enough for me to realize what he was putting together.
When he looked back at me, the understanding was already there. Warmth rushed into my face, then settled lower beneath the shirt.
His eyes dropped to the hem brushing my thighs.
He didn’t stare. That would have been easier to fight. His attention simply registered the length of the shirt, the bare legs below it and the absence of anything hanging anywhere else that could plausibly be under it.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
His eyes returned to mine. “Didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“You hung them on my locker.”
I looked toward the underwear and immediately regretted the decision to place them there.
“They were wet.”
“I gathered.”