Chapter 5: The Solar-Powered Shower
The walk back to the house was a silent parade of three. Zara fell into step beside Sable, her eyes straight ahead. “Your phone has melted down. I’ve fielded seventeen calls from your CFO. The board is scheduling an emergency vote for Monday regarding the Pacific Rim acquisition. They smell blood in the water.”
Sable kept his stride even, his face a mask of bored indifference. “Tell them I’m conducting field research on sustainable operational models. Tell them anything. You’re paid to be creative.”
“I’m paid to keep your empire from collapsing,” she hissed, low enough that Tuck, walking a few paces ahead, wouldn’t hear. “This isn’t a retreat, Sable. This is a dereliction of duty.”
“Noted,” he said, his tone final. He watched the broad back of the omega leading them, the effortless way his boots settled into the earth. Duty. The word felt like a cheap, plastic thing out here.
At the porch, Tuck paused, holding the screen door open. “Zara, there’s coffee inside. Fresh pot. And satellite internet router’s on the shelf if you need to… do whatever it is you do.”
Zara gave a tight, professional nod and slipped past him, already pulling her tablet from her bag.
Sable moved to follow, but Tuck’s hand, gentle on his arm, stopped him. “You first. Shower’s down the hall on the left. Towels are in the cabinet. Might be a bit… rustic for your tastes.”
Sable pulled his arm free, but without heat. “I’ll manage.” He needed the barrier, the ritual of cleaning away the night. He needed to scrub the smell of hay and sex and Tuck from his skin, if only to see if it would just seep back in.
The bathroom was a testament to gentle decay. Peeling floral wallpaper. A chipped mirror over a porcelain sink. A giant clawfoot tub, and beside it, a copper showerhead jutting from the wall with a simple curtain on a ring. It was clean, but worn. Real. He locked the door.
He shed his clothes, letting the ruined silk and wool puddle on the worn linoleum. His body in the mirror was a map of the night before—pale skin marked with the faint red abrasions from straw, a deeper bruise on his hip from the workbench, the ghost of teeth on his shoulder. He looked used. He looked alive.
He stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain. The water, when he turned the creaking knob, was a betrayal. It spat, then hissed out a stream that was barely lukewarm, pattering weakly against his chest. He shivered. The solar-heated water. Of course. The reservoir was likely depleted from Zara’s earlier use.
“Fuck,” he muttered, teeth starting to chatter. He stood under the miserable spray, arms crossed over his chest, feeling ridiculous and small. This was the universe’s punchline. Sable Vance, brought low by inadequate water pressure.
The curtain rings screeched on the rod.
Before he could react, the curtain was pulled aside and Tuck stepped into the tub, completely naked, displacing the air and the water. The space shrunk to nothing.
“What are you—” Sable began, instinctively shrinking back.
“You’re freezing. And wasting water.” Tuck’s voice was matter-of-fact. He reached past Sable, his body a wall of solid, radiant heat, and adjusted the knobs. The water stopped. For a moment, the only sound was their breathing in the damp, enclosed space. Then Tuck picked up a bar of plain soap and a washcloth from a ledge.
“Turn around.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a quiet command, delivered in the same tone he’d used to explain the cisterns. Sable’s alpha instincts prickled, a faint static of defiance. But his body, cold and yearning, betrayed him. He turned, presenting his back to the giant.
He heard the wet sound of the cloth being soaped. Then Tuck’s hands were on him.
They started on his shoulders, kneading the knotted tension with a strength that made Sable gasp. The rough cloth, guided by those enormous hands, moved in slow, deliberate circles down his spine. It wasn’t sensual. It was methodical. Thorough. As if Tuck was washing a prized animal, attending to every inch. The soap smelled of pine and grit, a scent that was purely, essentially Tuck.
Sable’s head dropped forward. His protests died, unvoiced. The heat from Tuck’s front seeped into his back. The hands moved over his shoulder blades, down the dip of his waist, over the curves of his ass, cleaning him with a profound, unselfconscious intimacy. When the cloth swiped between his cheeks, Sable jolted, a shock going straight to his cock, which began to fill despite the chill, despite his confusion.
“Steady,” Tuck murmured, his breath warm on Sable’s wet neck.
The cloth moved down his thighs, his calves. Tuck crouched behind him, a mountain of a man tending to him with unhurried care. He washed Sable’s feet, lifting each one, his thumb pressing into the arch. Sable braced his hands against the cold tile wall, his body trembling for a new reason altogether.
“Okay,” Tuck said, rising. “Rinse.”
He maneuvered Sable back under the showerhead and turned the water on again. It was still lukewarm, but now, with Tuck’s body caging him in, blocking the draft, it felt almost hot. The water sluiced the soap away. Tuck’s hands followed the rivulets, pushing them off Sable’s skin as if shaping him from clay.
Then the hands stilled. Tuck’s arms came around him, not in an embrace, but to take the soap again. This time, he didn’t use the cloth.
Sable felt the bar, slick and direct, glide over his chest. Tuck’s palms, slick with lather, followed. They rasped over his nipples, pinching gently, then swept down the tight plane of his stomach. Sable’s breath hitched. He let his head fall back against Tuck’s shoulder, his eyes closed.
“That’s it,” Tuck said, his voice a low vibration against Sable’s back. One big hand slid down, through the trail of fine hair, and finally wrapped around Sable’s cock.
“Fuck,” Sable whimpered, the word torn from him.
Tuck soaped him slowly, firmly, from root to tip, his thumb smearing precome into the lather. His other hand slid around to cradle Sable’s throat, not squeezing, just holding, a possessive anchor. Sable was utterly surrounded, supported, and manipulated. He was a tool in Tuck’s hands, an instrument being tuned.
“You’re so pretty like this,” Tuck growled into his ear. “All that sharp talk washed away. Just this. Just skin and want.”
Sable could only moan, his hips pushing helplessly into the firm, stroking fist. The pleasure was a slow, deep burn, coiling in his gut. It wasn’t about frantic friction. It was about the unbearable focus of it, the absolute attention.
“Tuck… please…”
“Please what, alpha?” The title was a dare, a reminder.
“I don’t know… just…”
Tuck’s hand left his cock. Sable cried out at the loss, a raw, needy sound. He was spun around, his back against the tile now. Tuck loomed over him, water sluicing through his dark beard, his eyes black with intent. He looked feral. He looked like home.
“I want you filthy,” Tuck said, his voice guttural. “Not clean. I want to smell me on you all day.”
He dropped to his knees in the tub. The sight alone—that massive frame brought low, that bearded face level with Sable’s cock—was enough to make Sable’s knees buckle. He gripped Tuck’s shoulders for balance.
Tuck didn’t tease. He took Sable’s full length into his mouth in one slow, devastating swallow.
“Christ!” Sable shouted, his head cracking back against the wall. The heat was shocking, the wet suction unbearable. Tuck’s mouth was a furnace, his tongue a thick, relentless pressure along the underside of Sable’s shaft. He moved with a languid, deep rhythm, swallowing him down to the root every time, his nose buried in blond pubic hair.
Sable’s fingers tangled in Tuck’s wet hair, not guiding, just clinging. He was babbling, a stream of obscene praise and shattered pleas. “Yes, just like that, oh god, your mouth is a fucking wonder, don’t stop, please don’t stop, I’m gonna…”
Tuck pulled off with a wet pop, his breath hot on Sable’s leaking tip. “You’re not. Not yet.” He stood, water cascading off him. He turned Sable around again, bent him over the edge of the tub. Sable’s cheek pressed against the cold rim, his ass exposed to the cool air and Tuck’s hotter gaze.
He heard the sound of the soap again. Then Tuck’s slick fingers were probing him, not one, but two, pushing into the tightness with ruthless certainty.
“You’re still open from last night,” Tuck muttered, working his fingers in deep, scissoring them. “Still mine.”
Sable pushed back against the invasion, hungry for it. The stretch burned, a delicious reminder. He was raw, used, and he wanted nothing more than to be used again.
Tuck removed his fingers. He positioned himself, the broad, blunt head of his cock nudging against Sable’s entrance. He didn’t ask. He just pushed.
It was a slower, wetter, more visceral breach than the night before. Sable was filled with a staggering, inexorable thickness. The air left his lungs in a punched-out groan. Tuck didn’t pause, didn’t gentle. He sank in to the hilt in one continuous, claiming drive, his hips meeting Sable’s ass with a solid slap.
“Fuck! Tuck! So deep…” Sable sobbed, his fingers scrabbling against the porcelain.
Tuck wrapped one arm around Sable’s chest, locking him in place, and began to move. It was a relentless, piston-like rhythm, each stroke drilling into Sable’s core. The slap of skin on skin, the slosh of water in the tub, Sable’s ragged cries—they filled the small room, a symphony of abandon.
“Tell me,” Tuck grunted, his breath coming in hot gusts against Sable’s ear. His pace increased, brutal and perfect. “Tell me who this belongs to.”
“You!” Sable screamed, the word ripped from a place of pure, unadorned truth. “It’s yours, it’s yours, fuck, it’s yours!”
The admission shattered the last of his resistance. Pleasure, white-hot and catastrophic, exploded up his spine. He came untouched, his cock jerking, painting the side of the tub with violent stripes as Tuck fucked him through it, the relentless strokes prolonging the convulsions into near-pain.
Feeling Sable clamp down around him, Tuck lost his rhythm. His thrusts became erratic, pounding, final. With a raw, guttural roar that was more animal than man, he buried himself one last time and came, pulsing deep inside, filling Sable with his heat.
They collapsed together in the tub, a tangle of limbs and spent breath. The water, truly cold now, trickled over them. Sable shivered, but the core of him was molten. Tuck’s softening cock slipped from him, followed by a slow, leaking trickle.
For a long time, they just lay there in the cooling water. Tuck’s hand stroked Sable’s hip, absently.
The world outside the curtain—the board meetings, the acquisitions, the empire—felt like a ghost story. A distant, meaningless rumor. Here was the only truth: the weight of a man, the smell of pine soap and sex, the dull ache in his body that spoke of possession.
Tuck finally moved, sitting up. He pulled the plug with his toe. A gurgling echo filled the room as the water began to drain.
“Tour’s over,” Tuck said, his voice gravel. He looked down at Sable, who was still limp, staring at the rust stain on the bottom of the tub. “You clean enough for the city now?”
Sable met his eyes in the chipped mirror across the room. His own face looked unfamiliar—flushed, lips swollen, violet eyes stunned and soft. He saw the faint purple mark on his shoulder where Tuck’s mouth had been.
He wasn’t clean. He was marked. He was ruined for anything else.
“No,” Sable whispered, the word a surrender more profound than any from the night before. “I don’t think I am.”