Page 5 of Heatstroke
The silence between them deepened, loaded.
Daniel licked the juice from his lip—automatically, without thinking—and hated how his breath caught.
Thierry stepped back as though he hadn't done anything at all. Turned back to the mango pile, casual again.
And Daniel stood there, the fruit sweating in his palm, unsure whether he wanted to throw it at the man's back or follow him deeper into the crowd.
Thierry was already halfway through his own mango and laughing with a vendor like nothing at all had just passed between them. The juice on Daniel's mouth had dried to tackiness. The burn beneath his skin hadn't.
He moved before he could think, jerking backward through the throng of people, catching elbows and apologies as he went. He dropped the mango in the first crate he saw and turned down a side lane choked with spices and the sour stench of fish.
A vendor tried to wave him over, shaking a bunch of thyme in one hand and a toothless grin in the other, but Daniel barreled past, the sound of his sandals snapping against the baked concrete like a warning drum.
Behind him, Thierry didn't call out. Didn't run. Didn't laugh.
But Daniel knew, with nauseating certainty, that the man was smiling. That maddening, sun-drunk, knowing smile that didn't need words to reach the bone.
It was the most frustrating thing Daniel had ever experienced.
By the time he got back to the guesthouse, his shirt was soaked through, his breath uneven, his chest tight with a feeling he couldn't name. He slammed the door shut—not because he felt as if Thierry was behind him, but because the presence clung anyway, like ocean salt on skin after the water's gone.
The air inside was thick, the ceiling fan indifferent as usual. He stood in the middle of the room for a moment, as if the right posture might return him to composure. Then, when it didn't, he tore the damp shirt from his back and flung it at the bed.
The lotus on his shoulder flexed with the motion, its lines dark and clean against olive-brown skin. Below, near his ribs, the pale scar drew itself like a mouth that never quite closed.
He opened the small refrigerator, retrieved a bottle of water, and drained it in three swallows. The cold did nothing to ease his pounding heart.
What the hell was that?
A finger to the mouth. A mango. That stupid, effortless touch.
He paced, barefoot now, the floor warm beneath him. His waterproof watch clung tight to his wrist, as if it too were bracing.It was nothing. Nothing. Dumb, stupid nothing.
Thierry didn't know him. Didn't know the things Daniel had seen, done, held between his fingers as breath slipped away. The man—no,boy—had never worked an emergency shift in a war zone, never watched a man call for his brother with half his face gone. Thierry flirted with life as though it couldn't break him.
And yet.
It was his face Daniel saw when he closed his eyes—those honey eyes lit with mischief, the damp gleam of salt above his navel, the smirk that asked nothing and promised too much.
He stripped the rest of the way down without ceremony and crawled onto the sheets, not caring that the sweat hadn't dried. The fan clacked overhead, a lazy, rhythmic complaint.
He didn't mean to fall asleep. But when he did, the dream took him quick.
It began in darkness, not like night but like breath held underwater. And then a figure started forming. Suddenly, Thierry was there—of course he was—sitting on the edge of the bed like he'd been waiting. He was shirtless again, always shirtless, but it wasn't the bare skin that undid Daniel.
It was the attention. The way those sunlit eyes tracked him. Not possessive. Not pleading. Just... focused. Like Daniel had become the only thing of interest on the island.
He touched him. Not roughly. Not sweetly either. Just real. A hand on the thigh, palm to sweat-damp skin, tracing the long curve of muscle with lazy expertise. The heat pooled fast, impossible to ignore.
Thierry leaned in. His mouth hovered near Daniel's jaw. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
Daniel reached for him. That was the worst part. He reached. Forhim.
And then he woke up with a jerk.
The ceiling fan ticked like a metronome above him. His sheets were tangled. His skin burned. His pulse ran quick and ashamed. His pillow was damp with sweat.
"God damn it," he muttered aloud, dragging a hand over his face.
