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A diamond pattern of privacy glass cut across the shower window, obscuring Ash’s view. But there was no denying exactly what Nicco’s hand was doing, his tattoos rippling as his forearm moved lower and lower.

Ash yanked off his shirt and tossed it to the floor, before shoving the tux pants down. He’d deal with Jinx tomorrow. But right now, he was high on adrenaline and the broken memories of his sordid past, and everything was just a little too raw and a little too vulnerable and a little too hard to resist. And the truth was that he wanted to see it, the way Nicco’s hand wrapped around his swollen cock, whether he stroked himself fast or slow, whether he kept himself at the edge or jumped over.

Finally, he pulled the shower door open. The steam created a sense of intimacy and closeness, and Ash stepped onto the tile with his heart hammering in his chest, and his cock throbbing and leaking against his belly.

“You’re the one who whispered filthy things in a language I don’t understand,” Ash bit back. He stood under the second showerhead, as if the two feet of space between them was enough to pretend that this was just physical, that they were merely giving into their baser urges.

“You haven’t even heard filthy,” Nicco replied, his voice languid with pleasure.

Ash closed his eyes, not daring to touch his cock. His lower ab muscles rippled as need squeezed his belly, and his balls were drawn and full, the familiar ache for release nearly dragging him under.

“Your sweet little Hanna…”

Ash snorted. No one had ever referred to Hanna Van Rijn as sweet.

“Mmm, what did she say to you?” Ash asked. It might have come out more on a demand. “Or maybe you were all revved up because of that kiss, nothing at all to do with me.”

Nicco chuckled. “She asked me if I had ever crawled before…”

Ash’s heart skittered in his chest, his mind suddenly awash with images of Nicco on his hands and knees, the perfect sacrifice in a man who never gave in.

“And?” The word was choked, hard and demanding. Definitely a demand this time. He grabbed the base of his cock and tightened his grip around it, trying to stem the intense throb of desire that seemed to be consuming him.

Nicco didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Ash just listened as Nic stroked himself, the sound at once depraved and filthy and the most incredible thing Ash had ever heard in his life.

He couldn’t stop himself from bringing his thumb to the slit at his tip and brushing, the sensation so light and so intense that he had to steady himself against the shower wall with his other hand.

“Tell me, Nic. What did you tell her?”

Nicco swallowed hard. “Nothing more than the truth,” Nicco replied, his words spilling harsher and faster. “That I crawled. That I got down on my knees and I begged. That I’d do it again, if the right person told me to.”

Ash felt like he was choking, like desire had become a physical thing around him, narrowing the world to the pinprick of him and Nicco in the shower, their hands on their cocks, their eyes on the wall.

Ash forced himself to turn around, leaning his back against the cool tile. It might be the only time he ever got to see Nicco like this, unbidden, lost to pleasure, so honest it risked bringing them both down to their knees.

“And what did Hanna say?” Ash asked. Demanded. He seemed to be demanding a lot.

Nicco swore under his breath, panting into his pleasure. Ash couldn’t help himself, he matched Nicco’s strokes, pump for pump for pump, until they were riding the shared rhythm of need as closely as they would allow themselves. “She said,” Nicco bit out. “She said she would have very much liked to see me…and I told her I would have much liked her to watch.”

That…that image, of Nicco on his hands and knees as Hanna watched him crawl to some invisible master, that was going to be the death of him. Except, in the next second, Ash did see the man Nicco kneeled for, and it was his own face, demanding and promising, filled with the need to protect, even if that meant pushing, to see just how far Nicco was willing to go.

And that was his undoing.

“Fuck, Nic, you close?”

Nicco turned, and this time, Ash let himself look at the hard, throbbing erection in Nicco’s hand, swollen and a little red at the top, jutting from a nest of dark curls and so incredibly thick. It was memorizing to see Nic’s hand sliding up and down his shaft, and Ash paused his own movement, just for a second, to watch Nicco get himself there.

“Stop,” he confessed into the steam. “Don’t come, not yet.”

Nicco let out a strangled moan, but he stopped moving his hand. “You just wanted to see if I was full of shit, didn’t you?”

Ash grinned. “Maybe I wanted to see just how much you like following orders.”

Nicco chewed on his lower lip. “As much as I like giving them,” he murmured.

“Prove it,” Ash challenged. “Match me.”

Nicco grinned, a real, feral grin, one that Ash had been missing for so many months. But now wasn’t the time for thinking about that, or any of the chasms that lay between them or even what it meant, to want Nicco so much closer in the shower. Now, all he could think about was the rhythm of Nicco’s hand matching his own as they both stroked their throbbing cocks, harder, faster, more desperate, more needy, more, more, more.