Half an hour later, my irritation has vanished into the dry heat of the sauna. I breathe in the scent of wood and coals, and when I exhale, tenseness eases out of me. The room is small but beautiful, with a perfect temperature, and sweat dampens my skin. I’ve been coming here for years. I like the combination of luxury and comfort.

I lean back against the wooden bench and look contemplatively at the opposite wall. Usually, my thoughts bleed away in here, my focus on nothing more complicated than the tiny bronze tiles on the walls. It’s my form of zen with sweat and silence, and I always come out refreshed. Today my thoughts are tumbling over themselves. I can’t grab a coherent one, but they all seem to centre around Laurie.

The door opens, and the man himself appears. “Blimey, it’s hot in here.”

“Who would have thought it, Laurie? A hot sauna. Whatever will happen next?”

He rolls his eyes. “Maybe you not attempting sarcasm.” He enters the room, the door shutting behind him, and looks me up and down. “Oh, so it’s that kind of a sauna.”

“You shouldn’t wear clothes in a sauna. It’s unhealthy,” I say serenely. “Like wearing your clothes in the bath.”

“That’s the Danish in you. We English would insist on wearing a woolly jumper even on a trip to hell.”

“Hopefully, one of the jumpers that you seem to like so much. They could do with a good burning.” I look down at my naked body. “Are you okay with me being nude?”

He smirks. “Of course. You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before.”

“It’s what you do with the apparatus that counts.”

But, as he comes closer, I immediately realise the drawbacks to my nudity. He’s wearing a towel wrapped around his narrow hips, and so much of his body is free for me to gaze at. He isn’t plucked or toned like any of the men I usually pick up. They typically have abs like supermodels. Laurie lacks that definition and has a scattering of hair on his chest. He’s wiry and still far too thin and utterly unlike my type, but his olive skin glows in the low light, and when he moves, the muscles in his biceps flex. For some odd reason, everything about Laurie makes my heart beat faster.

I breathe in unobtrusively and will my cock to behave. My gaze slides down over his long legs, and I immediately lose my semi. “That’s a nasty scar,” I observe.

He approaches the bench and looks down at the raised purple-coloured scar. “It looks a lot better now,” he says. “When my mother first saw it in the hospital, she cried.”