Chapter 5: The Bathroom Between Seven Years

I step in.

The water is hot and the pressure remains exactly as I remember it. I feel my shoulders come down gradually. I raise my face to the water and allow it to soak me while I breathe in and out. The steam thickens around me. The rest of the house and everything within it feels distant from where I am.

I have been here for five minutes when I hear it.

Or should I say I do not hear? That is the problem. I am not even sure. But I know I do not hear the door. I do not hear footsteps. I do not hear anything at all until the curtain shifts.

I spin around with the rapidity of a fan, nearly slipping.

And I nearly scream at what I see…

Dominic stands at the edge of the shower, one hand still holding the curtain back. Did he miss his way here? Or has he been stalking me around? Because how do I explain this, that an adult man follows me into the bathroom? To see what exactly? Is it my breasts he has not seen before? I do not understand.

He is staring at me, and I am staring back at him. Neither of us speaks for a long while.

And that is when it happens.

The steam circulates between us. He looks the same way he did seven years ago in this bathroom and nothing like it at the same time. Yes, he is broader and harder now, alongside the sharper line of his jaw. His chest rises and falls like a steady rush, and his grey eyes, the ones Ethan inherited, which I have spent a good seven years avoiding, are fixed on mine with such depth that my skin itches and feels two sizes too small.

“Get the hell out of here right now,” I almost scream. My voice comes out sharper than the dissatisfaction building within me.

But his reaction wastes the effort I put into the shout. He does not move an inch.

“I did not know you were in here, actually.”

“Whatever. Just get your ass out, Dominic.” I look at him. “Please just go. Do not let me do something both of us will regret. You have seen my nakedness again, have you not? I think that should make the rest of your day. Now please move out.”

“Sophie.”

“Do not Sophie me. I said, get out.”

He still does not move, and I detest him for it. I have been screaming here, and none of it matters to him. He just remains without flinching, like I am only a noise-maker. He says my name like it costs him a lot to pronounce, which I really do hate. I detest that his eyes have not stopped looking at me, though I notice it is only my face he has been focused on—like it is the only part he is interested in—because that makes it harder for me to stay mad at him.

My wolf crawls within me, hitting my whole body like a punch against a wall.

The sensation hits violently, suddenly. I flinch; I will not lie. It presses through me with a heat I have not felt in years, pushing and pressing like it wants to dissolve the boundary between my skin and his. It feels senseless, because how can my wolf sense him with such intimacy—like the seven years, the silence, and every careful wall I built mean absolutely nothing to it.

The mate bond.

I had managed to curb it and silence it. I had also managed to reduce it to a distant ache I could schedule around. It had become a feeling I felt occasionally at three in the morning, then buried under work, routine, and the everyday act of raising Ethan. I was so good at burying it. I had become an expert.

But I am not burying anything at this moment.

Dominic’s eyes shift slightly, a spark moving behind them, and I know his wolf is already active, doing what mine is doing within me. The recognition, the pull, the quiet roaring at him the same way mine is roaring at me.

“Do not,” I mutter, meaning it as a caution, but it comes out like a plea.

He takes one more step forward. The water bounces off his chest and he does not even blink. He keeps moving slowly in my direction. The steam closes around both of us. My back finds the tiles and I press against them uselessly, because there is nowhere to run from this man in front of me, coming close like I am his prey.

But then, an embarrassingly sincere part of me is not even sure I want to go anywhere at this point.

The fuck.

“You know we shouldn’t, right?” I whisper. “I know,” he responds. “This is a very terrible idea.”

“I know that too.”

“Dominic.”

He stops right in front of me, close enough that the warmth coming off him is inseparable from the heat of the water. He raises one hand and I go completely still as his fingers brush my jaw—just the tips of them. It feels like he is checking again that I am real, like he is answering a question that has been bothering him through this examination.

My wolf goes mute.

And I know it is not because it is satisfied. It is just because it has already won and it knows it.

I close my eyes, and I feel him lean in immediately. And then his mouth finds mine and seven years of conscious distance collapse in a blink and I stop arguing.

What comes next is not like the dream.

The dream was a memory inspired by longing, softened at the edges. But this is nothing like that.

This is fast and immediate, intentional in a way that embarrasses me and undoes me all at once. His hands are in my hair and on my waist, and mine are pressed flat on his chest like I am trying to push him away and pull him closer at the same time. I do not even know what I am thinking right now.

There are no words, no gentleness. Just the two of us, the steam and the water, and the mate bond burning through every nerve ending I have, like it has been waiting for seven years to finally do exactly this.

And suddenly—

His palms slide up my sides, and he knows exactly where they are, not missing a single inch, cupping my breasts. He lifts them as he sucks my nipples hard, drawing a gasp I cannot hold anymore from my throat, and he swallows it with an intense kiss.

I cannot understand why this is so consuming, but I cannot deny that I am enjoying it.

I arch into him, my legs parting automatically as he presses his cock against my thigh, and I feel the thickness of him. He lifts me slightly, pinning me to the tile, the head of his cock nudging at my entrance, slick and ready, almost slipping in as I whimper against his mouth.

“It is everything I have spent seven good years trying to forget.”

Then a sharp sound emerges from the sink, a bird, I think, perched on the bathroom sink, its wings flapping wildly. We freeze, our hearts pounding like they are about to burst, thinking footsteps are approaching, someone is coming.

Meanwhile, it is just a bird.

And afterwards, the water runs cold.

I came back to myself in pieces.

The cold is even helpful in the way it cuts through the heat and the haze, landing me firmly back in reality, which is that I am standing in the east wing bathroom of the Steele family villa on the morning of my stepfather’s funeral, having just made the worst decision of my adult life.

For a good three seconds, I first press my head against the tile. Then I straighten up.

On the other hand…

Dominic is leaning against the opposite wall, watching me. His chest still rises and falls like a tide. His grey eyes track every movement I make like I am his concern. I do not risk looking at him longer than a second because I cannot afford to.

I walk past him and grab my towel off the rail. I reach for my clothes.

Then his hand closes around my wrist softly.

I stop.

The bathroom is completely quiet except for the last drops of water falling slowly from the showerhead. I stare at his hand around my wrist while I wait for him to speak.

His voice comes out low, like a mutter, but not soft at the same time. A heavy mutter.

“Where is he, Sophie?”

I don’t breathe.

Where is my son?