Chapter 2: The Shower Confession
The water was a scalding needle-shower, meant to scour. Teresa stood under the relentless spray, her forehead pressed to the cool, black tile, eyes squeezed shut. Steam billowed around her, a thick, white fog that couldn’t erase the memory of dank metal and his breath. Her skin was pink, sensitive. Every drop felt like a tiny accusation.
She replayed it. The shock of his hands. The unforgiving grate under her palms. The obscene, wet sounds in the dark. The way her own voice had broken on his name.
A shudder ripped through her, part revulsion, part pure, undiluted hunger. Her hand, of its own volition, slid down her slick stomach. Her fingers slipped through the wet curls, found the swollen, throbbing flesh beneath. She was still tender, hypersensitive from his mouth. A single, tentative circle of her fingertip over her clit made her gasp, her knees threatening to buckle. She could smell him on her skin, under the clean soap. A phantom taste of oil and iron filled her mouth.
She pressed harder, her breath hitching. Her other hand braced against the tile. This was hers. A reclamation. A way to wrest control back from the chaos, to reduce what happened to a simple physical reaction she could manage and dismiss. She pictured his blue eyes in the slivered light, the intense focus as he’d watched her fall apart. Her hips began a slow, shallow rock against her hand.
The bathroom door opened. A cool draft sliced through the steam.
She froze, her fingers stilling, buried against herself. Her heart seized. She didn’t turn. She just listened to the soft, definitive click of the latch.
Boots on the tile. Not the careful steps of someone unsure. The steady, deliberate approach of a man entering his own territory.
“Out already?” she said, aiming for sarcasm. Her voice was a ragged whisper, lost in the drum of the water.
He didn’t answer. The shower curtain, a milky plastic, glowed with the shape of him. He stood there, a dark silhouette watching her blurred form. Then his hand appeared, sliding the curtain back on its rings with a slow, metal scrape.
Patrick Jane stood fully dressed in his suit, slightly rumpled. His hair was damp at the temples from the warehouse humidity. His eyes, that impossible blue, took her in with a scorching, analytical clarity that made her feel more naked than the water ever could. They tracked from her wet, tangled hair down her spine, over the curve of her ass, to the tell-tale position of her arm, her hand hidden between her legs.
A smirk, small and devastating, touched his lips.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in the steam-filled space. He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, crossing his arms. A spectator.
Humiliation, hot and sharp, burned through her. She yanked her hand away as if burned, turning to face him, crossing her arms over her breasts. The water pounded her back. “Get out, Jane. This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing.” His gaze was unwavering. “You were thinking about it. About the conduit. Weren’t you?”
“I was washing,” she snapped.
“You were touching yourself.” He stated it as a simple fact, peeling away her lie with infuriating ease. “Trying to rewrite the ending. Make it something you did alone. But you can’t, can you?” He pushed off the doorframe and took a single step into the room. The steam curled around his legs. “Because it wasn’t your hand. It was mine.”
“You arrogant son of a—” she began, but he was moving.
In two swift strides he was at the tub’s edge. He reached in, past the curtain of water, and his hand closed around her wrist. His grip was iron, not painful, but utterly inescapable. He pulled her hand from between her legs, holding it up between them. Water droplets clung to their skin.
His eyes locked on hers. “You don’t get to finish what I started on your own terms, Teresa.” His voice dropped, a husky command that brooked no argument. “If you come tonight, it’ll be because I made you. Is that clear?”
Her mouth went dry. Fear and a dark, thrilling obedience coiled in her gut. She tried to tug her hand free. He didn’t relinquish it. Instead, he brought her fingertips to his mouth.
He never broke eye contact as his lips parted. He took her first two fingers into the heat of his mouth, sucking slowly, deliberately. His tongue swirled around them, cleaning her own scent from her skin. The intimacy of the act, the direct, carnal eye contact, was more violating than anything in the conduit. It was a claiming. A visual and physical promise of what was to come.
A broken sound escaped her. She was trembling.
He released her fingers with a soft pop. They were glistening with his saliva. He let her hand drop. Then he turned, reaching for a large, clean towel folded on the vanity. He shook it out, a crisp snap in the humid air.
“Out,” he said, not looking at her.
For a second, she just stood there, water sluicing over her, stunned into immobility. The part of her that was Senior Agent Lisbon screamed to tell him to go to hell, to wrap herself in pride and show him the door.
The part of her that was still shuddering from the memory of his tongue didn’t move.
She turned off the shower. The sudden silence was profound, broken only by the drip of water and the frantic hammer of her own heart. She stepped out onto the bathmat, water pooling at her feet. She felt utterly exposed, every nerve ending alive and waiting.
He didn’t give her the towel. He approached her with it.
“Turn around,” he murmured.
She turned, facing the fogged mirror. Their blurred forms were ghostly behind the mist. He stood close behind her, the wool of his suit brushing her damp skin. He began with her hair, gathering the heavy, dark mass in the towel, squeezing the water from the ends with a surprising, gentle thoroughness. The rough texture abraded her scalp. He worked in silence, methodically. Then he moved the towel to her shoulders, dragging it in slow, firm strokes down her back, following the line of her spine, over the curve of her ass, down each leg. He knelt behind her, drying her calves, her ankles. He lifted each foot, drying between her toes with a focus that was utterly, maddeningly clinical.
It was an agonizing reverse striptease. A covering up that felt more intimate than any unveiling. Every pass of the fabric was a survey, a rediscovery of her body in the aftermath of what they’d done. Her skin prickled, hyper-aware. Her nipples tightened into aching points. She could feel the heat of him through his clothes at her back.
He rose. His hands, holding the towel, slid around to her front. He dried her collarbones, the slope of her shoulders. He avoided her breasts, moving down her ribs, her flat stomach. The towel grew damp. The air grew cooler. She was shaking, a fine, constant tremor.
His hands stopped at the apex of her thighs. He didn’t dry her there. Instead, he just pressed the warm, damp terrycloth against her, holding it there, a constant, teasing pressure. He leaned in, his mouth at her ear. His breath was hot.
“You’re still wet for me,” he whispered, the words a rough scrape of sound. “Aren’t you?”
She couldn’t speak. She nodded, a jerky, helpless motion.
He hummed, a low, satisfied sound. He dropped the towel. It landed on the floor with a soft thud. His hands, now bare, settled on her hips, his fingers splaying possessively. He pulled her back against him, and she felt it—the hard, unmistakable ridge of his erection straining against his trousers, pressed into the small of her back.
A shockwave of pure desire rendered her weak.
“Look,” he commanded softly, his gaze lifting to the mirror.
He reached up with one hand, swiping a clear arc through the condensation on the glass. Their reflection emerged from the fog, sharp and shocking. Her, naked and flushed, water beading on her skin. Him, fully clothed, looming behind her, a dark portrait of control and hunger. His blue eyes held hers in the mirror.
“Do you see it?” he murmured, his other hand sliding around from her hip, his fingers finally finding the wet, swollen flesh he’d been avoiding. He didn’t enter her. He just pressed his palm firmly against her, his middle finger finding her clit and applying a slow, torturous pressure. “See how ready you are? This is mine.”
He began to rub her, a slow, circular grind of his palm, his finger riding her sensitive nub. Her head fell back against his shoulder, a moan tearing from her throat. Her eyes fluttered shut.
“Open your eyes,” he growled, the command cutting through her haze. “Look at yourself. Look at what I’m doing to you.”
She forced her eyes open. In the mirror, she watched his hand moving between her legs, watched her own body arch into his touch, saw the desperate, slack expression on her own face. The voyeuristic thrill was electric, degrading, and unbearably arousing. She was watching herself be undone, and it was the most terrifyingly erotic thing she’d ever experienced.
“Please,” she heard herself beg, the word foreign and raw.
“Please what?” he murmured against her ear, his finger ceasing its motion but maintaining its devastating pressure. His reflection watched hers, a hunter admiring his capture. “Use your words, Teresa. What do you want?”
She swallowed, her throat tight. The command in his voice was absolute. “I want… I want you to finish it.”
“Finish what?” he pressed, his teeth grazing her earlobe.
“What you started in the conduit.” The admission, voiced aloud in the bright, steamy light, shattered the last pretense. There was no taking it back.
“Good.” He removed his hand, leaving her achingly empty. He turned her by the shoulders to face him. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide with a need that mirrored her own. “Then get on your bed. On your back. I want you laid out for me.”
He released her. The absence of his touch was a physical blow. She stood there, naked and dripping, the cool air raising goosebumps on her flushed skin. Her mind, that brilliant analytical tool, was a blank screen. Every protocol, every reason, every fear was silenced by a deeper, older imperative.
After a suspended moment, she moved.
She walked past him, out of the bathroom, into the dim hall. The wooden floor was cool under her bare feet. She didn’t look back. She pushed open her bedroom door. The room was shadows and muted streetlight through the blinds.
She went to the side of the bed. Without ceremony, she crawled onto the duvet, the fabric soft against her knees and palms. She moved to the center, then slowly, deliberately, laid herself out on her back. She let her arms fall to her sides, palms up. Her knees bent slightly, falling open. It was a posture of surrender, of offering. Her heart battered her ribs.
Patrick appeared in the doorway, a silhouette filling the frame. He entered, his movements economical. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, letting it drop to the floor in a heap of fine wool. He didn’t take his eyes off her.
He stood at the foot of the bed, just looking. His gaze was a physical touch, traveling up her splayed legs, over the dark triangle of curls, the flat plane of her stomach, the rise and fall of her breasts, the long line of her throat. The silence was a thick, charged thing.
He began to roll up his sleeves, methodical, exposing his forearms. The fabric folded neatly above his elbows. The simple, domestic act was absurdly erotic. Here was the man who read minds and manipulated monsters, preparing for her.
“Seven years,” he said, his voice low and rough. “I’ve watched you across desks, in crappy motel rooms, in the bullpen yelling at rookies. I’ve memorized the way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re thinking, the exact curve of your mouth when you’re trying not to smile at one of my jokes.”
He took a step closer, his eyes tracing the hollow of her hips. “I’ve imagined what your skin would taste like after a long day. I’ve dreamed about the weight of your tits in my hands. I’ve fantasized about bending you over your own desk, pulling down your jeans, and finding out if you make the same sound when you’re being fucked as you do when you’re pissed at me.”
Teresa’s breath caught. Each word was a violation and a benediction. Heat pooled low in her belly, a fresh, desperate ache.
“In that fucking conduit,” he continued, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper as he leaned over, bracing his hands on the mattress near her feet, “with your pussy right there, wet and terrified and perfect… that was the closest I’ve ever come to praying. I wanted to devour you. I wanted to fuck you so deep you’d feel it in your throat. I wanted to make you scream so loud they’d hear it in Sacramento.”
He crawled onto the bed, moving over her with a predator’s grace. He didn’t touch her yet. He hovered, his face inches from hers, his body caging her in. She could smell the warehouse on his clothes, see the faint stubble shadowing his jaw.
“And now you’re here,” he said, finally bringing a hand down to rest on her stomach. His palm was searing hot. “Finally. Naked. Waiting. Mine.”
His hand slid up, over her ribcage, to cup her breast. His thumb swept over her nipple, back and forth, until it pebbled into a hard, aching point. “Tell me you’ve thought about it too. Even once. Tell me I’m not the only one who’s been going insane.”
She looked up into his face, all pretense gone. “Every day,” she breathed. “And it terrified me.”
A raw, triumphant sound escaped him. He lowered his head and took her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue lashing the taut peak. The sensation was electric, a direct line to her core. She cried out, her back arching off the bed, her hands flying up to tangle in his hair.
He switched to her other breast, giving it the same ruthless attention, biting gently, then soothing with his tongue. His free hand roamed down her side, over her hip, and pushed her thighs further apart. He settled between them, the rough fabric of his trousers a brutal contrast to her sensitive inner skin.
He kissed a blazing trail down her sternum, over her quivering stomach. He didn’t pause at the junction of her thighs. He nuzzled into her curls, inhaling deeply. “Fuck, you smell even better here. Clean. But still you.”
Then his mouth was on her again. This time, there was no lace, no darkness, no fear of discovery. This was deliberate, luxurious consumption. He licked into her with slow, languid strokes, savoring her. He used his thumbs to spread her wide, opening her completely to his gaze and his tongue.
“Patrick—” she gasped, her hips lifting off the bed.
He ignored her, his focus absolute. He licked and sucked, finding a rhythm that had her trembling on the edge in minutes. He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, stroking that exquisite spot as his mouth worked her clit. The dual stimulation was too much. Pleasure coiled, tight and impending.
“I’m gonna… I can’t…”
“Come,” he growled against her flesh, the vibration tipping her over.
The orgasm slammed into her, a wave of pure, shattering sensation that tore a ragged scream from her lungs. Her body bowed, clenching around his fingers, her vision whiting out.
He didn’t stop. His mouth gentled, softening to barely-there kisses and licks as her body pulsed and shuddered around his fingers. He worked her through the crashing waves with a patience that felt like its own kind of cruelty, drawing out every last tremor until she was a boneless, gasping wreck on the sheets. Her hands fell away from his hair, arms splayed wide, her chest heaving.
A fuzzy, spent peace began to seep into her limbs. It was over. The unbearable tension that had lived in her since the conduit, maybe for years, was finally, thoroughly purged. She could breathe. She could think.
Then his tongue flattened, pressing harder against her oversensitive clit. The kisses became firm, purposeful laps. His fingers, still buried inside her, began moving again with a slow, relentless rhythm, curling and pushing.
Panic, sharp and cold, cut through the haze. “No—wait—Patrick, stop.” Her voice was a thready, exhausted gasp. She tried to close her legs, to squirm away from the renewed stimulation. “I can’t… it’s too much. I can’t come again.”
He pinned her hips to the mattress with his free hand, his grip absolute. He lifted his head just enough to meet her wide, pleading eyes. His own were dark, unwavering, his mouth glistening with her. “You can,” he stated, his voice leaving no room for debate. The cadence was that of a man reading a proven fact. “And you will.”
He lowered his mouth again, his tongue now a ruthless, pinpoint instrument. He sucked her clit between his lips, applying a steady, devastating pressure. His fingers fucked into her with deeper, faster strokes, the wet sound obscenely loud in the quiet room. He was rebuilding the world she’d just left, brick by torturous brick.
“Please,” she sobbed, her body a trapped wire of conflicting signals—exhaustion and a fresh, gathering fire. Her protests were fragments. “It’s too… I can’t… oh, God—”
“You can,” he growled against her, the vibration traveling straight to her core. “Let go. Just let it happen.”
He was right. The coil, impossibly, was tightening again, a savage spring compressing deep in her belly. The pleasure was sharper now, almost painful in its intensity, a blade honed on her own exhaustion. She fought it, her muscles tensing, her fingers clawing at the duvet.
He sucked harder. His fingers pressed deeper, crooking just so.
It broke her faster this time, a raw, searing detonation that ripped a broken scream from her throat. This orgasm lacked the cathartic wave of the first; it was a series of jagged, electric shocks that left her convulsing, utterly beyond thought or control. She blacked out for a second, the world dissolving into pure, screaming sensation.
When awareness returned, he was already moving. He pulled his fingers from her soaked flesh, a soft, slick sound. He surged up her body, his knees pushing her legs wider apart as he settled his weight over her. He didn’t speak.
He simply captured her mouth with his.
It was a devouring. He kissed her with the same focused hunger he’d just used between her legs, his tongue plunging deep, claiming the taste of her own cry. She could taste herself on his lips, his tongue—salty, musky, intimate. Her mind, shattered and blank, offered no resistance. Her mouth fell open under his, submitting completely. A weak, surrendering sound vibrated in her throat as his kiss gentled, turning deep and languid, as if mapping the interior of her.
He finally pulled back an inch, breathing her air. His eyes searched her glazed, vulnerable face. “Mine,” he whispered, the word a soft, definitive seal on everything that had transpired.
He shifted his weight, kneeling between her thighs. His hands went to his belt. The rasp of the leather sliding free, the metallic clink of the buckle, were unbearably loud. He unbuttoned his trousers, shoved them and his boxers down just enough to free himself. He was thick, hard, the head flushed and leaking. He took himself in hand, not breaking eye contact, and gave himself a single, slow stroke.
Teresa’s breath hitched. The reality of what was coming—the final, irrevocable step—crystallized in the space between them. There was no duct, no darkness, no adrenaline to blame. Just this.
He leaned forward, bracing one hand by her head. The blunt, hot head of his cock nudged against her entrance, slick from her own wetness and his mouth. He paused, watching her face. “Look at me,” he said, his voice rough.
Her green eyes, still dazed from the relentless climaxes, found his. She saw the question there, buried under all the command. The last exit.
She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Then she lifted her hips, a silent, wordless invitation.
He pushed inside.
The stretch was profound, a burning fullness that stole the air from her lungs. She was impossibly tight, her inner muscles fluttering around the intrusion, sensitized from his fingers and her own spasms. He didn’t stop. He sheathed himself in one long, slow, continuous push until he was fully seated, his hips pressed flush against hers. They both went utterly still, locked together, breathing in ragged unison.
“Christ,” he choked out, his forehead dropping to hers. A tremor ran through his entire body. “Teresa.”
The sound of her first name, voiced with that particular shaken reverence, undid her last defense. Her hands came up, slidi