God, his voice.

Turn around.

She felt him move closer. His heady smell enveloped her. Dear Lord, he’d been in the shower.

His breathing was right behind her. The heat of his body. Tears streamed down her face. Her eyes were probably swollen. Her hair was still wet inside her bun; she had meant to dry it at home.

All that walking had left her skin slick with sweat. She probably smelled like a skunk.

“Ash? Sweetheart?”

It was the stupidest thing, but the way he turned both words into questions sliced all the way through her. A sob made her shoulders jerk, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

His hands were on her arms, so gentle it only made the tears worse. He turned her. Despite everything swirling inside her, the sight of him punched her in the center of her chest. A seventy-mile-per-hour kick she blocked with her whole body.

He leaned forward, his eyes meeting hers. The mossy green centers pushing out the gold all the way to the edges, the mismatch in size magnified. They drank her in before he spoke. “I thought opening the door in a towel might be a bit too obvious.” His hair was down, and it fell in damp waves around his face down to his shoulders.

“So you pulled on middle-school-boy shorts?” Through her tears a smile escaped. He was wearing bright yellow basketball shorts that hit his knees and covered his scar.

Other than the shorts, his entire body was as bare as the day he was born. Every inch of him was tanned and ripped and gorgeous. Exactly the way all those YouTube videos of him working out promised. But all Ashna saw was a leaner, softer version. An eighteen-year-old body that had held her exactly right. So right that nothing had ever matched up.

She closed her eyes.

Hands cupped her face. His released breath at the touch sounded as ragged as her own.

She opened her eyes and took in the full blast of his relentlessly focused gaze.

“Do you mean it?” Her voice was a whisper.

He swallowed, his thickly stubbled jaw tightening. “Mean what?”

“Everything you say to me with your eyes?”

He groaned, the depth of his soul bared by the sound.

Then he was bending to her and she was stretching up to him.

The first touch was feather light, the barest skimming of lips against lips. Then a zing so powerful strength drained from her legs. She reached for him, clutching his arms, his shoulders like a lifeline. His hands angled her face, fitting her mouth exactly so. Invading and cajoling and opening. All at once. Everything at once.

Hunger rose inside Ashna like a tidal wave. She gnawed at his lips, pushing-pulling, met his tongue. Sweet relief, wet and thick in her mouth, filling her up all the way to the back of her lungs. No air, no breath, just the taste of him everywhere. Everywhere.