Page 2 of Bounced!

The heat came first, wet and close, wrapping around my bare skin like a second body pressing in from every side. Steam rolled through from the pool room next door and hung in the amber light, thick enough to taste, so the whole corridor swam gold and low and dreamlike. The tile was warm and slick under my feet, and the air was heavy with eucalyptus, clean sweat, and the salty musk of men, of skin, of desire made humid and breathable. It settled into my lungs and stayed there.

Underneath it all, a low, wordless pulse thrust through the speakers, more felt than heard, a slow beat I registered somewhere below my ribs and lower still.

I paused at a shut door.

On the other side, a man exhaled, ragged and rough.

Another voice answered him, low.

Sounds rose and broke and settled into a rhythm I recognized in my blood, the oldest rhythm there was.

They grunted and groaned.

One cursed in pleasure.

Their voices rose like some erotic chorus, following me down the hall as I moved on.

Behind another door, skin slapped against skin, a slow, wet sound. Then I heard a murmured, “Yes!” The heat in the air seemed to thicken with it.

My body woke.

I felt it happen, felt the slow, warm drag of it move through me, the way the steam opened my pores and the sound opened everything else. My skin had gone taut and alive, every inch suddenly aware of the thick air crawling over it, of the fur on my chest now damp and flat, of the slick tile under my soles and the towel’s thin edge whispering against my hip.

This was what places like this did. They reached in through the heat and the dark and the sound and turned a man back into an animal, unhurried and hungry. My body was answering the call before my brain had decided anything at all.

More doors lined the corridor.

Some were shut, failing to seal the sounds behind them.

Most stood open.

“Open” was a language.

“Open,” said, “Come in.”

“Open” said, “The light’s low and the offer’s standing.”

The first open door revealed a man reclined on the bench, one knee up, the amber light pooling in the hollows of him. He wore an expression that had clearly worked on a great many men and fully expected to work on me. He was beautiful, with dark eyes, a runner’s build, and one hand resting easy and low on his naked stomach like it might wander any second.

He lifted his chin. That chin spoke in complete, understandable sentences.

I lifted mine back, which meant briefly taking my eyes off my towel, which meant my towel seized its moment and slid a solid two inches south before I got my hand back on it.

His gaze dropped to the newly exposed skin and darkened. “Nice,” he said, making the single syllable do a great deal of work. I felt the word blaze along the length of me.

“Thanks,” I rasped, with all the dignity a man could muster while physically clinging to his only garment and losing a separate quieter battle below the knot.

“Come here.”

He didn’t reach for me, rather let his hand drift lower, slowly, watching my face while he did so. It was an invitation with no pressure, which was its own kind of pressure. “I promise I’ll be nicer to you than that towel is.”

Something low in me answered before my brain got a vote, a deep primal pull that tightened everything and quickened my breath. I let myself imagine it. For one long second, I saw it all: the give of the bench, the low gold light, that clever hand leaving his own body for mine, a stranger’s mouth without conversation, only the heat of the room swallowing us both whole.

My pulse dropped into a slower, heavier gear.

It would be so easy to step through that door.

Instead, I gave him a half smile and kept walking.