“Done,” I stated, entering the cabin and breathing heavy from the climb.
“Thank you for doing that,” he said. “That was a nice thing to do.”
“I kicked a lot of snow from the steps too,” I pointed out. Why not tell him that too? He was giving brownie points away so I wanted to collect as many of them as I could for some reason. I knew the reason but resisted admitting the truth to myself that I wanted him to like me.
With stocking caps on our heads, gloves on our hands, and wrapped up like foil-wrapped turkeys, we stepped into pairs of boots I had. I gave Blake the fur-lined pair, three sizes too big, and with extra-thick wool socks.
At the bottom we were still holding hands and he was showing no signs he was interested in letting go of me. “Look at you,” I praised.
He wasn’t buying my encouragement. “You think I’m weak now, don’t you?” he asked.
I shook my head and smiled. “Of course not. I’m afraid of deep water,” I quickly admitted. “I won’t even go out on a boat. Oh, and guess what? I didn’t attend my parents wedding anniversary on an Alaskan cruise ship last year because of my fear.”
Blake smiled in such a gentle way that my heart expanded. Wasn’t it yesterday that he’d irritated the fuck outta me? All pompous and entitled acting with a nasty streak about him. Where was that person today? He was adorable and anxious to connect with someone. I could easily feel the want in him and recognized his need for connection because I often felt the same way.
“What?” he asked, noticing me staring at him, forgetting to push the shed door open for us to enter.
“I was wrong about you, Blake,” I stated. “Why do you hide this sweet side of you?” He shrugged his shoulders and I was left waiting for an answer he wasn’t able to provide. “I like this version of you, if you care to know.”
He stared at his feet and his cheeks painted a beautiful rose hue, but it was when he lifted his eyes and smirked that I knew there was a kind man inside.
Shit! I had a crush. Or I was horny. Who knew, but I was something for sure.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Blake
Thankfully the toilet was behind a privacy door, but the shower itself was open to the small room where a generator was running, and a water heater sat exposed in the corner. The generator was exhausted to the outside so according to Dirk we were perfectly safe to be enclosed in the building.
There was no curtain or defined space to have a private shower. A nozzle came out of the wall and the concrete floor had a drain in the middle that I guessed was designed to let shower water run into and out of the small space.
“We shower in the open like this?” I asked. “Both of us?”
“Yes,” Dirk said. “And there is one other issue,” he added. I raised an eyebrow and waited. I’d lucked out and not had to embarrass myself by using the toilet in front of him so I was confident things couldn’t get any worse. “We have about four, maybe five, minutes of warm water. That usually works good for one person but there’s the two of us,” he advised. “So…?”
I interrupted him. “So let me guess, we’ll need to shower at the same time.” He nodded. “Naked…both of us…at the same time?” I repeated.
“Yep, and it would probably be wise if we helped each other out with washing backs and stuff,” he added. “There’s only one bar of soap down here.”
“And stuff?”
“Well, you know, you get your front and I get your back and then we switch,” he suggested. “The water heater empties pretty quickly.”
I had two choices. Be embarrassed and skip a shower, or just get it over with. “Can you not look too close at me?” I asked. “I’ve always been gym-shower shy and well…you have such a better body than I do,” I admitted. “And I’ve been having a tough time lately.”
“Promise,” he said, tossing his stocking hat into a corner. He stepped out of his boots and waited for me to catch up. “Once I turn the water on, we wait for like ten seconds for the pipes to eliminate the ice cold water in them. Got it?”
“Got it,” I confirmed, nervous as hell to be naked in front of a man that looked practically like a marble statue.
Dirk turned the knob and water sprayed near our feet, the temperature reminding me that there was four feet of snow outside. He gazed at me, his hand on the edge of the foil near his neck, ready to expose himself to me. I watched as he nodded and mouthed the countdown from three. “And now,” he said, peeling the thermal wrap away and giving me another unfiltered glimpse at his incredible body.
I’d had a brief view when I’d woken up next to him, my shock interrupting a desire to check him out then, but now he was right there, inches away, and he was stunning. Broad shoulders and a massive chest with arms the size of small tree trunks. His narrow waist had chiseled obliques that pointed to the promised land like handles for my desires.
I refocused and yanked my foil protection off, exposing myself to a complete stranger even though he’d carried me naked from my campsite a day ago. I was unconscious then so there were no secrets now. “What first?” I asked.
“I have the soap so I’ll suds up my front and then you can do my back,” he instructed. “There’s no shampoo so it looks like soap for the scalp too,” he added.
Dirk quickly soaped himself up and handed me the bar of soap from over his shoulder. I grabbed it and started rubbing the bar side to side across his back. His back was also solid muscle with the top of his shoulders rounded from either hard work in the gym or another gift from the DNA gods. When I got to the small of his back I was unsure about touching his athletic ass but didn’t have the time for a huge internal battle so I began rubbing the bar along his crack, using my free hand to rub the soap onto his solid ass cheeks.
Being this close to a man that exuded such power was a huge turn-on, something I hadn’t felt in a year. I imagined being pinned under him and used by his strong body. “Three more minutes,” he announced, killing my fantasy. I squatted and soaped the back of his thighs, moving to behind his knees and the smattering of hair below that on his calves.
