Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1)(34)

Certainly it increased the danger for her. She saw a lot of things she didn’t mean to when he turned and started back toward the locker rooms. His shorts, for example, which were very small and very tight over the high, well-rounded shape of his perfect ass. She could practically see every shift and flex of them, even in this meager light. And if he turned back around— “Letty, I was just talking to you. Are you cool with that?”

Pringles can, she thought, then wanted to kick herself.

“Yeah, totally. I’m totally cool with it. Totally fine.”

“Really? Because if you want I can go back and look for the switch.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m okay…with this.”

She smiled and nodded.

But probably wouldn’t have done if she’d paid the least bit of attention to what he had just said. He had told her what she then discovered: the women’s locker room was still in darkness. The men’s was the only one lit up, and that meant she’d just agreed to go in there with him. To shower with him and dry herself off with him and get dressed with him—or at least to do those things with him extremely close by.

Too close by, if the locker room was anything to go by. Everything was completely open plan and brighter than the surface of the sun. No banks of lockers partitioned off the place. They just lined the walls and left shy people to fend for themselves.

And the showers…

“I can probably go without a shower.”

He turned as soon as she spoke, brow crumpled in a cross between incredulity and confusion.

She had no idea why, however. He couldn’t even look at her below the chin, never mind anything as intimate as getting under the spray and soaping himself up right next to her.

“Seriously? You don’t want to get all the chlorine out?”

“No, I’m good. You go ahead. I’ll just wait here.”

“I’m not going to look if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, god no, of course not. I mean, why would you?”

“Right. Exactly,” he said, then seemed to pause, considering. Like he knew he’d just done something wrong. And after a second, he got it. He got an implication even she hadn’t really thought about. “Unless you think that I…it’s not that I don’t want to look. Anyone would want to look at those…well you know. No, I just meant I would be a gentleman about it, obviously.”

Those, she thought.

Then had to fight not to panic.

“Oh yeah, yeah I know that. I know that you would be.”

“Cool, okay. I guess…I should just get you a spare towel here and some clothes you can put on…they’re not ideal, but they have to be better than putting on your wet things.”

Or being half naked in front of you for a second longer, she thought.

But of course she didn’t say. He was being so good about not looking at her. There really wasn’t anything to worry about—not even when she slipped her panties off behind the makeshift shield of his draped sweatpants. He was still pretty close by, but he never once gave the impression that he was sneaking a peek at her thighs whenever they edged around the corner of the material.

Oh no, no, no.

No, it was her who wound up doing the peeking.

Though she had no idea how. She thought she was completely occupied with tying knots in the material in order to make the waistband fit her apparently not-so-huge middle. Her eyes weren’t anywhere near him. In fact, she even turned her back to him once the sweatpants were on.

Though maybe that was the problem. She didn’t know where he was when she glanced up again.

She imagined him behind her, with his shorts still firmly on his body.

Instead of completely naked, under the spray of a shower she was now facing.

Of course, she immediately whipped back around. But it was just too late. She had seen Tate Sullivan without any clothes on, no matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise. It was just an elbow and a foot, she told herself, while the image of his bare ass flashed up at the forefront of her mind a thousand times. In fact, it was still flashing up by the time she’d pulled the T-shirt on.

She closed her eyes and it was all she could see—the soap suds slowly trailing over those taut curves, making everything glossy and golden. The glimpse of the dark shape between his legs when he turned a little, heavy looking and as shocking as he had suggested, and most important, f*cking private. She was intruding on his privacy in the grossest possible way—a realization that made her cheeks heat. Somehow she was the one who hadn’t behaved like a decent person, both in the swimming pool and here. She had touched him in inappropriate places and ogled his naked body when he assumed she wasn’t looking, and man, that hit her hard in the humiliation center.

Doing all of this was bad enough.

But doing it to Tate, of all people.

She didn’t find him gross at all, but she also didn’t find him attractive. So what was going on here? Was it just curiosity? Surely anyone would wonder about that thick, dark shape between his legs. And his butt was pretty spectacular. It was probably just natural to find yourself hypnotized by it.

Everything was fine here.

Apart from how high she jumped when he suddenly spoke too close to her ear.

“You sure you don’t want to go in?”

“Oh. Yeah. No. Cool. No. No.”