Page 4 of Heatstroke (Private Encounters #15)

FOUR

SHACK SHADOWS

The rain had steadied outside, drumming steadily on the metal awning, a low, insistent percussion that gave no quarter.

The guesthouse was dim, its single lamp casting a weak yellow glow over a room that felt both too small and too large. Daniel’s clothes clung to him, skin damp, hair slicked to his forehead, but he made no move toward the towel thrown carelessly across the back of a chair.

Instead, he paced.

Barefoot on tile, damp shirt sticking cold against his spine, Daniel walked the length of the room like an animal rattling the cage it built for itself.

Four steps to the window. Turn. Four steps back. Again. Again.

Each circuit edged tighter. His jaw ached from how hard he clenched it. Every breath he drew in was loud in his own ears, as if the air were pressing back.

He wasn't going. That was final.

He wasn't that man—not anymore.

Except he was already standing. Except he hadn't sat down at all. His body moved before his mind decided. Again. Like it had on the dock, at the bar, under Thierry's hand. His lips still burned, and no amount of pacing was cooling them.

They ached with memory. Every time he dragged his tongue over the edge of his own teeth, he could still taste Thierry—salt and rain and blood. It made him furious.

He dug his nails into his palms. "This is fucking stupid," he muttered.

He stopped by the window, one hand braced against the frame, the other pressing to the pulse hammering at his neck. Outside, the path that led back toward the water glistened in the lamplight.

Somewhere out there, beyond the palms, was the shack. The surfing shack frequented by those who wanted to learn. Most importantly, it was Thierry's shack. Daniel was familiar with it from the occasional flyer posted randomly. He’d seen it enough times in passing to know the quickest route there.

The quickest route to Thierry. A man who did not coax, did not beg, did not flatter. Thierry did not even flirt. He simply stood in the world like it was built to want him—and worse, it did.

Daniel shut his eyes, exhaled through his nose. His breath came hot, his spine locked tight, the internal debate losing cohesion as something far older took hold of him. Need, that was the simplest word for it. Hunger, maybe. Or the feeling of an absence that had remembered its shape.

He cursed, soft and vicious, then crossed the room in four quick strides.

Keys. Door. Night.

He stepped out before he could change his mind.

The rain was warm now, the sort of tropical downpour that saturated everything without the courtesy of cold. Trees arched overhead, and the path was soft underfoot, mud squelching between his toes. He didn't bother with shoes. He didn't bother with excuses.

He walked fast, head down, breathing hard, the world around him slick and urgent.

Lights blinked faintly across the inlet.

Far off, a boat creaked in its mooring. The night pulsed with the music of insects, water, and that particular silence that only the tropics could shape—a silence that felt alive.

The shack was as exactly as it was in the flyers—half boat-shed, half dwelling, a weathered structure with its windows open and its interior spilling faint yellow light across the sand. The front was the actual surfing school, and around the back was where Thierry’s residence had been placed.

A single bulb dangled above the entrance, swaying slightly with the wind. The rain thudded on the tin roof above in rhythmic punctuation, a sound that seemed to drive into Daniel's bones.

He didn't knock. He didn’t need to.

Thierry opened the door before Daniel's hand reached it.

For a moment, they said nothing. Thierry stood back slightly, bare-chested, a towel around his waist and damp from the same rain, his locs tied back loosely. His eyes were unreadable in the half-light, but his mouth—Daniel's gaze caught there too long—was parted as if in question.

Daniel's throat felt raw.

Thierry stepped aside. A silent invitation.

Daniel entered.

The air inside was dense with something not quite tangible. Not musk. Not damp. Something more human. The smell of wood oil and skin.

A hammock hung loosely to one side, strung between wall beams, a single bottle of dark rum beside it, half-drunk.

Tools lay in orderly chaos along the back wall—ropes, knives, sanded boards, spare rudders.

The place was not clean, but it was arranged in a way that made sense to few. A man lived here. Fully.

The door closed behind them with no ceremony. No lock turned.

Thierry didn't speak.

He simply watched Daniel, gaze slow and sure, until Daniel found he couldn't keep still. The storm outside roared against the shack's roof, and yet it was quieter in here than it had been in Daniel's chest for days.

"Say it," Thierry said at last, voice low.

Daniel frowned. "Say what?"

"Tell me to stop."

It wasn't a dare. It wasn't a game. It was a way out.

Daniel didn't take it.

He didn't speak.

And that silence—sharp, aching, deliberate—was the beginning of everything that came after.

Thierry moved first.

Not quickly, not recklessly—but with the deliberate precision of a man who knew the weight of every motion, every touch.

Who understood that desire, like woodcarving, required patience, reverence, the slow surrender to shape.

His fingers found the edge of Daniel's linen shirt, damp from the night's rain, clinging translucent to his skin like a second, desperate confession.

He didn't ask. Didn't hesitate. He simply took the hem between his fingers, the fabric lifting, dragging achingly slow over the planes of Daniel's torso, catching for a heartbeat on the scar just above his right hip.

A long, pale line.

Thierry paused.

His breath stilled. His fingers followed the ridge of it, tracing the memory of violence, the ghost of something Daniel had tried to bury.

Daniel tensed, every muscle in his body drawn wire-tight. He hadn't thought of that scar in months, but now it returned to him like a blade pressed to his throat—old pain, half-healed rage, a wound stitched shut but never forgiven.

His shoulders hunched instinctively, not from shame, but from the animal urge to protect, to hide.

Thierry said nothing. His thumb brushed the scar's edge, feather-light, before he bent his head and pressed his mouth to it—not a kiss, not quite. Something more dangerous. A benediction. A claim.

Daniel flinched.

Not from pain. Not even from surprise.

From recognition.

He knew what this was. This tenderness. This unbearable softness. It was not what he had come here for.

Thierry didn't pull away. His lips lingered, warm and deliberate, before lifting just enough to speak against Daniel's skin.

"What happened?"

Daniel's voice was rough, stripped raw. "Bad decisions."

A beat passed. Thierry nodded, as if that were answer enough. Maybe it was. He rose then, his gaze traveling over Daniel's bare chest like a man mapping a country he intended to conquer.

His eyes caught next on the tattoo across Daniel's arm, the one he’d noticed the first time they met.

"You picked it?" Thierry asked.

"I earned it," Daniel said.

Thierry's mouth curved, dark and knowing, before he kissed him there too, gently against the skin that was almost healed. Slow, deliberate, his lips tracing the lines of ink like a man reading a story written in a language only he understood.

Daniel's hands stayed at his sides, but his breath betrayed him, turning ragged, uneven, as if the act of holding himself together was beginning to fracture.

He hadn't meant to come here.

Hadn't meant to let it go this far.

But Thierry gave him warmth and certainty, and Daniel felt himself unraveling, adrift in a current too strong to fight.

When Thierry stepped back, gesturing toward the hammock with a look that was both invitation and command, Daniel didn't follow at once.

He watched the way Thierry moved—graceful, effortless.

He settled into the swaying net like he was born to it, bare skin against rough weave, head tilted, one hand resting lazily on his thigh.

Daniel hesitated.

Then his body decided for him.

He stepped forward, knees bending without permission, climbing into the hammock with a roughness that made the ropes groan. It tipped wildly beneath them, unsteady as Daniel's pulse, until Thierry caught him—one hand firm at his hip, anchoring him, stilling him.

"Here," Thierry murmured, voice low, velvet dark. "Stay with me."

Their mouths met again, but where the first kiss had been war, this was surrender.

Daniel's fingers tangled in Thierry's hair, dragging him deeper with the same desperate intensity that had driven him to flee hours before.

The hammock cradled them, rocking in time with the rain, the rhythm of it primal, inevitable.

Clothes fell away like afterthoughts. The air between them burned. Thierry's hands were everywhere, steady, unhurried, relentless. And Daniel—who had always guarded his body like a fortress, who had always been the one to dictate, to control—let him explore.

Gasps replaced words.

Every touch was answered. Every breath met. The hammock creaked beneath them, the sound a counterpoint to the rain, to the thunder rolling low across the horizon like the growl of some ancient beast.

Thierry's mouth moved down Daniel's throat, his sternum, lower—each kiss a brand, a promise, a ruin.

When it came—release, unraveling, the sharp, sweet collapse—it came like drowning in sunlight.

Daniel bit down on Thierry's shoulder to stifle the sound tearing from his throat. Thierry groaned his name, ragged and wrecked, before murmuring something else against his ear, something hot and filthy and devastating?—

" So good for me ."

It shattered him.

The next morning, they lay tangled in the hammock, skin damp, breath slow. The rain had softened to a whisper. Daniel woke to birds taking shade from the rain, chirping in what appeared to be hunger.

He stared at the rafters above, his body humming, his chest hollowed out. Still asleep, Thierry's fingers traced were splayed gently on his thigh, possessive even in stillness.

It should have felt right.

It didn't.

The intimacy of it—the effortless, terrifying closeness—suddenly lodged in Daniel's chest like a knife. Something too sharp to keep. His heart pounded, not from pleasure now, but from panic.

He sat up too fast. The hammock lurched.

Thierry murmured something half-asleep, reaching for him, but Daniel was already moving—stumbling out, grabbing his trousers from the floor, yanking them on with hands that shook.

The rain had stopped. Dawn was bleeding into the sky, pale and unforgiving.

He didn't look back.

He opened the door and vanished into the light.