Chapter 2 #3
I braced one hand against the tile and tipped my head back, letting the water run over me while my imagination filled in the things I would never allow myself to ask for.
His voice and hands. The weight of his attention.
The way he might say my name if there were no people outside, no rules, no history, and no reasons this could become a disaster.
The fantasy built too quickly, too sharply, and too completely for me to stop it. My fingers traveled between my thighs as I got myself off. I was moving fast, tweaking my nipple with my other hand.
Oh, I was going to come. Thinking of his wet body in the shower was my undoing…
Then the bathroom door opened. At first, my brain did not understand the sound.
It was too small and ordinary, a soft push of air, a faint shift of the door, a presence where there had been privacy.My eyes opened.
Hunter stood in the doorway. The whole world stopped.
My mind cut out so completely that for one suspended second, I did not understand that he was real.
He was not the fantasy. He was not the thought I had been chasing under the hot water.
He was there, damp from the pool, towel in one hand, shoulders tense, eyes fixed on me with a shock so violent it looked almost like pain.
I didn’t move or scream or attempt to cover myself.
I also didn’t turn away. I stood beneath the water with one hand braced on the tile, my fingers between my thighs, my chest rising and falling too hard, my breath coming in uneven pulls that seemed louder than the shower, louder than the party outside, louder than the blood rushing in my ears.
Hunter didn’t move either. He stood frozen in the doorway, one hand still on the door, his entire body locked in place as if his muscles had stopped obeying him.
His lips parted, but no sound came out. His gaze held mine, and the shock between us became something heavier, something neither of us was ready to name.
The party outside vanished. The music, the kids, the laughter, my parents, the team, the elective, the entire careful structure of my life disappeared until there was only Hunter and me and the terrible, impossible knowledge that he had walked in at the exact wrong moment.
My body had not caught up to reality. It was still inside the fantasy, still hot and aching, still breathing hard under the force of wanting him.
The shame had not arrived yet. Neither had common sense.
For a few heartbeats, I was trapped in the space between imagining him and being seen by him, unable to do anything except stare back.
His throat moved as he swallowed. That small motion broke something.
Reality rushed in so hard I almost swayed.
I was naked. He was in the doorway. I had not covered myself or attempted to move.
And he had seen more than my body. He had seen my face, my breathing, the truth of the moment he had interrupted, and the possibility of who had been in my head when he opened that door.
Color burned up my chest and into my cheeks. Hunter blinked hard, like he had snapped out of a trance, and his eyes jerked away from me so fast it was almost violent.
“Jesus,” he rasped, the word rough and broken. “CC, I—shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
He stumbled back a step, still not looking at me, one hand lifting as if he could somehow erase the last ten seconds by refusing to see me now.
“I didn’t know you were in here,” he stuttered. “I thought I heard the water, and I thought one of the kids left it running. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I still couldn’t speak. My hand finally moved, but it felt distant, like it belonged to someone else. I reached for the towel hanging beside the shower and pulled it against me with shaking fingers, my body still struggling to understand that the moment had ended.
Hunter backed out of the bathroom, his gaze fixed firmly on the wall, his jaw tight enough that it looked painful.
“I’m leaving,” he said hoarsely. “I’m gone. I’m sorry.”
The door shut between us. For several seconds, I stood beneath the water with the towel clutched to my chest, even though it was already getting soaked. My knees felt weak, my face burned, and my pulse was still hammering as if I had run across the entire ranch.
Then I turned off the shower. I stepped out slowly, wrapped the towel properly around myself, and gripped the edge of the sink while I stared at my reflection in the mirror.
Wet hair clung to my cheeks and shoulders.
My eyes were too bright. My mouth was parted from breathing too hard.
My whole body looked like evidence. I looked like a woman who had been caught wanting the wrong man.
A woman who had not moved fast enough to hide it.
A woman who had just blown a hole straight through the professional, responsible version of herself before her elective had even begun.
Hunter had seen me naked. I pressed a trembling hand to my stomach and closed my eyes.
This was terrible timing. I had to keep it professional with the team.
Daddy always said I deserved better than a hockey player who would be on the road most of the time, and he wasn’t wrong.
Even worse, Hunter was my father’s captain.
The man I was supposed to see in a professional setting for the next several months while I shadowed the team doctors and tried to prove I belonged there. There were too many lines I couldn’t cross. So much that could go wrong.
But my body was still trembling with need, and beneath the humiliation, beneath the panic, beneath the crushing awareness of everything we could ruin, something dangerous sparked to life.
I was still hot and bothered, so I locked the door this time and slipped my fingers between my thighs, getting myself off to a fantasy where Hunter stripped off his clothes and came into the shower with me.
Where he took me against the wall. I came so hard my legs gave out, and I found myself on the floor.
That’s when I understood how royally screwed, I was. I would not pass up the opportunity to work with the team. Not after I had spent years of my life sacrificing for my goals. Whatever I was feeling for Hunter would have to end. I had a job to do. And I planned to do it right.