Page 2 of Heatstroke (Private Encounters #15)

TWO

BODY HEAT

That instinct proved right by morning.

Daniel found him again—though truthfully, it felt the other way around—lounging barefoot atop the cracked tile of The Breakline's open-air bar, shirtless as ever, with an iced drink sweating beside his elbow and an unread book in his lap.

The reggae from the battered speaker warbled low, mingling with the chatter of late risers and the rattle of cutlery from the tiny kitchen out back.

Daniel had come down only for breakfast, still groggy, still irritable, hoping the sea air and strong coffee might dull the throb behind his eyes.

Instead, he found Thierry already grinning at him like they'd planned this.

"You look like you lost a bet," Thierry called. "Or got bit by a dream."

Daniel slid into the farthest corner booth and made no reply. He ordered coffee and fried plantains from the girl behind the counter—barely glancing up from the menu board, though he knew full well what it said.

Thierry arrived before the coffee did.

He didn't sit so much as sprawl. His skin was gold-bright and damp from the sun, a film of salt still visible in the hollows of his collarbone. He carried with him the scent of the sea—mineral, faintly citrus, and unmistakably human. No sandals. No apology.

"You always eat alone?" he asked, dragging a chair out with his foot.

"I don't always eat," Daniel muttered, then frowned at himself for responding at all.

"Tragic. But today, I come bearing appetite." Thierry reached across the table without ceremony and plucked one of Daniel's fries from the still-steaming plate that had just arrived.

Daniel blinked. "Are you serious?"

"I'm always serious about fries," Thierry said, chewing with infuriating delight.

"You can order your own."

"But yours are here," Thierry replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He reached for another. "And they're hot. The universe delivers."

Daniel forced himself to breathe through his nose, to maintain that crumbling facade of Dutch politeness, the brand he'd worn so long it nearly fit. "Do you ambush every guest who wanders onto this island, or just the antisocial ones?"

Thierry leaned back, his gaze unflinching. "Only the ones pretending they don't want company."

That landed harder than Daniel wanted to admit. He said nothing. Sipped his coffee. Refused to meet the honey-bright eyes staring into him like they had a right to know.

"Eat faster," Thierry said suddenly, standing. "We're going to the market."

Daniel stared at him. "We?"

"Unless you've developed a twin since yesterday."

"I don't need?—"

"You do. You just haven't figured out why yet." Thierry's grin deepened. "Come on. You look like someone who forgot what fruits are supposed to taste like."

The heat had thickened by late morning. At Marché Ti-Flamme, it lay over everything—fruit, skin, metal, spice—making the air taste like cardamom and oil. Daniel walked through it reluctantly, his linen clinging again to his back, his brow damp despite the wide awning strung above the stalls.

Vendors shouted prices in French-Creole, pushing plantains, limes, bundles of herbs wrapped in banana leaves.

Steel drums echoed faintly from some far courtyard, their syncopated clang adding a strange rhythm to the chaos.

People moved easily around him, chatting, bartering, bumping shoulders without apology.

He hated it.

Yet Thierry moved like he was part of it—calling out to vendors by name, tossing greetings like pebbles into the tide of bodies, catching laughter in return.

His dreadlocks had dried now, bleached strands shining under the sun.

He held two mangoes in one hand, inspecting them as if choosing between lovers.

Daniel was about to slip away—feigning phone signal, feigning anything—when Thierry turned, caught him mid-step, and pressed a mango into his palm.

"You're not leaving," he said, low and final. Not threatening. Just certain.

Daniel glanced down at the fruit. "This isn't going to change my opinion of you."

"Not trying to. Just trying to remind your tongue what pleasure feels like."

He held the second mango up and used a small blade— where had that come from? —to carve a thin strip of skin away. The scent hit instantly: ripe, sweet, alive.

Then Thierry dipped one finger in the juice and, before Daniel could react, touched it to the corner of his mouth.

Daniel froze. The contact was fleeting. His pulse wasn't.

"Try it," Thierry murmured.

Daniel didn't move.

Thierry leaned in, his voice quiet beneath the din of the market. "You've got this wall around you. Concrete and glass. But even those get hot enough to crack."

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. For him.

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.

The air reeked of sleep and heat and sweat and something too close to longing. He swung his legs off the bed and sat, breathing hard, like he'd sprinted across the island instead of just across some dream.

He hated this. Hated the crack in his armor, hated how easy Thierry made it all seem. As if desire wasn't dangerous. As if it hadn't cost Daniel pieces of himself before.

He stood, got dressed without turning the lights on. There was a long evening ahead, and he needed solitude like a man needed air. Thierry Batiste could smile all he wanted, but Daniel would not be drawn into this game.

He just couldn't afford to be.