Page 39 of Reflex

“I do not.”He bit his own tongue, and screwed up his mouth into a sour pout.“Fine, you’re right.But, I don’t want to want her.Ergo I’m not doing a bloody thing.”

“That should be a song,” Xane mused.“I don’t want to want her.”

“Feel free to write it.I’m going in the shower.”

That ought to have ended the conversation and granted him some privacy, but no.No sooner was he under the spray than Xane gate-crashed the bathroom.He took a perch on the side of the bathtub.

Spook glared at him through the misted glass of the cubicle.

“I think we should talk about why.”Xane raised his voice to be heard over the noise of the shower spray.

“You know why, Xane.I’m not rehashing this for your pleasure.Now could you piss off, please?”

“You’re frightened.I get it.It’s a big step.Plus, you’re out of practice.”

“Fuck off,” he muttered under his breath.Keeping Allegra at arm’s length had nothing to do with his sexual prowess and how much practice, or lack of, he’d had recently.Frightened – yeah, he’d accept that one.And with cause.

“You know I’m mithering you over this for your own good.”

And there I was thinking it was to sate your passion for salacious gossip.

He upended the shampoo bottle over his hand, and proceeded to lather.Just fucking leave me alone.

No such luck.Xane was a tenacious bastard.

“Do you really think you can deny that part of yourself forever?”

“Yes, actually.”Maybe…Flashes of how Alle had made him feel last night at the back of the arena left him shivering.He rotated the temperature dial.

Okay, so maybe not.But at least his cock didn’t jerk to attention the way it had last night.Thank God for small mercies.He’d given Xane one display too many already.Although, the room was so steamed up now, he doubted Xane could see much of anything.

As if cued by his thoughts, the extractor fan kicked in.

“Call her,” Xane insisted again.

Spook stuck his head out of the shower.“No!”

“Ask her to get her sexy butt to the gig tonight because you need a blowjob and a damn good fuck.”

He groaned.“Goddamn you, Xane.Don’t you even think about calling and saying that.”

Xane raised his hands.“Dani would kill me if I ever said that to another woman.Also, it doesn’t really work as a pass along message.That’s the sort of request best expressed in person.”

“I don’t want any of those things,” Spook blurted.

Xane cackled, and kept on laughing the harder Spook glared at him, until eventually, when even the misted shower screen failed to block out the offensive baying, he growled, “Fine, you bloody win.I want her.So what?Wanting something and doing something about it are two very different things.I want to kick you repeatedly in the nads at the minute, but it doesn’t mean I’m actually going to do it.Look, I get that you’re so sex obsessed you’re never going to understand, but I genuinely don’t want to go there with her.If we could keep things one hundred per cent platonic between us, then I’d see her tomorrow.But I know that’s not what she wants.Like you, she has sex on the brain—”

“And you don’t.”

“I do not think about sex every minute of the fucking day.”

“No, you think about sex-adjacent things.”

It was as if Xane pushed a flippin’ button, unleashing a montage of erotic images into his brain; rope, cuffs, white palm prints on a beautifully reddened behind.Images sliding one over the top of the other in his mind, like he was flicking through the pages of a scrapbook.

“I’m really going to fucking punch you in a minute.”None of those things belonged in his head.None of them.He didn’t want them there.

“Do that, and we’ll end up somewhere neither of us are prepared for.”