Chapter 2: The Shared Shower
The silence after they left had a weight, a physical presence that pressed down on Ethan’s chest. He didn’t move from where he’d collapsed against the desk. The room stank of them—of sweat and sex and a strange, floral perfume that was now permanently fused with the memory of Mia’s skin under his mouth. He stared at the closed door, half-expecting it to burst open again, for the night to somehow continue.
It didn’t.
Slowly, the world began to reassert itself. The hum of the mini-fridge. A siren dopplering in the distance. The ache in his muscles, a pleasant, deep exhaustion that felt earned. He looked at his bed. The sheets were twisted, damp in patches. He would have to strip them. The thought was bizarrely mundane.
He finally pushed himself upright, his body feeling both heavier and lighter than before. He avoided his own reflection in the dark window. He didn’t want to see who looked back. He cleaned himself up with a towel from his floor, the coarse fabric scratching against oversensitive skin. He pulled on a fresh pair of boxers and fell into the ravaged bed, not bothering with the sheets. Sleep came not as a gentle tide, but as a sudden, black vacuum.
He was awakened not by a sound, but by an absence of light. Something was blocking the grey morning glow from the window. Ethan pried his eyes open, crusted with sleep.
Nate stood beside his bed, completely naked.
Water droplets glistened in the dark hair on his chest, tracing paths down the defined grooves of his abdomen. He smelled of soap and steam. He looked utterly at ease, as if standing nude in his stepbrother’s room at eight in the morning was the most normal thing in the world. His expression was unreadable.
“Get up,” Nate said, his voice rough with morning. “You’re not done sleeping the day away.”
Ethan blinked, the events of the night crashing back with the subtlety of a dropped anvil. His heart gave a painful lurch. “What?”
“Shower. Now.” Nate reached down, his grip firm and unforgiving on Ethan’s bicep, and hauled him out of bed. Ethan stumbled, his bare feet slapping against the cold floorboards. He was naked from the waist up, disoriented, his mind still woolly with sleep and the residual shock of everything.
“Nate, what the hell—”
“Move.” Nate gave him a shove toward the door, his palm flat and hot between Ethan’s shoulder blades. “She’s waiting. Water’s getting cold.”
She. Mia. Ethan’s mouth went dry. He allowed himself to be propelled out of his room and down the hall toward the master suite their parents shared—a space that was mostly unused since the new marriage and their concurrent business trips. Nate pushed open the door to the master bathroom without knocking.
Steam billowed out, rich with the scent of sandalwood and eucalyptus. The room was a monument to outdated luxury. Black marble floors, already slick with condensation. A sunken Jacuzzi in the corner, dormant. And a massive, glass-walled shower stall, currently occupied.
Mia was under the rainfall showerhead, her face tilted up into the spray. Her hair was plastered dark to her skull and shoulders. Through the fogged glass, her body was a pale, graceful blur. She wiped water from her eyes and saw them. She didn’t startle. A slow, knowing smile spread across her lips.
“Took you long enough,” she called, her voice echoing off the tiles.
“He was hibernating,” Nate said, sliding open the heavy glass door. A new wave of hot, wet air engulfed them. He stepped in, pulling Ethan in after him.
The stall was huge, but with three bodies it suddenly felt intimate, crowded. The spray hit Ethan’s back, hot enough to border on scalding. Water sluiced down his chest. Mia moved aside, making space, her eyes traveling over him with a casual familiarity that made his skin prickle.
Nate grabbed a bottle of expensive-looking body wash from a niche in the wall. He squeezed a generous amount into his palm. “Turn around.”
Ethan, shell-shocked and compliant, did as he was told. Nate’s hands landed on his back, slick and soapy. He began to scrub, his movements not gentle, but thorough—working the gel into Ethan’s shoulders, down the line of his spine. It was bizarrely functional. A mechanic cleaning a part. Ethan stood rigid, staring at the black tile in front of him, feeling the twin points of Mia’s gaze on his face.
“Relax,” Nate grunted, digging a thumb into a knot of muscle. “You’re tense as fuck. Nightmares?”
“No,” Ethan managed.
“Good.” Nate’s hands moved to his chest, soaping the planes of his pectorals, his abdomen. The intimacy was staggering, somehow more vulnerable than anything that had happened the night before. This was care, however crude. A claiming. “You reeked. Now you don’t.”
Finished, Nate pushed him under the spray. Ethan rinsed, the water beating down on him. When he opened his eyes, Nate was kissing Mia, a deep, possessive kiss, one hand tangled in her wet hair. They broke apart, and both looked at him.
The silence was filled by the hiss of water. Then Nate nodded toward Mia. “Kneel.”
She went down gracefully on the textured shower floor, the water cascading over her shoulders. She looked up, her gaze flicking between the two men. Nate was already half-hard. Ethan, under the heat and the overwhelming strangeness of it all, felt himself responding achingly fast.
“Show him how grateful you are,” Nate said, leaning back against the tile, his arms crossed. A director setting the scene.
Mia didn’t hesitate. She leaned forward, taking Nate into her mouth first, her hand coming up to cradle him. She worked him with a focused intensity for a minute, her eyes closed, before pulling off with a soft pop. She turned her head, and without a word, took Ethan into the same warm, wet heat.
Ethan gasped, his head thudding back against the glass. Her mouth was incredible, a silken, suctioning pressure that made his knees weak. He braced a hand against the wall.
After a while, she switched back to Nate. Then back to Ethan. It became a rhythm, a shared service. Nate watched, his eyes dark with approval. “See? No jealousy. Just sharing the workload.”
Ethan could only grunt, his fingers finding their way into Mia’s hair, not guiding, just holding on. The steam, the heat, the alternating bliss—it was sensory overload. He was close, too close, when Nate suddenly reached down and tugged Mia’s head back by her hair.
“Enough. My turn to watch.”
Mia sat back on her heels, panting, her lips kiss-bruised and swollen. Nate jerked his chin at Ethan. “Her. Against the wall. Now.”
The transition was jarring, electric. Ethan pulled Mia to her feet. She was pliant, her skin slick and hot. He turned her, pressing her front against the cold black marble of the side wall, away from the direct spray. She shuddered at the contrast, her hands splaying against the tile. He positioned himself behind her, his body fitting against the curve of her back. He entered her in one fluid motion, and this time, the familiarity was there. Her cry was immediate, a sharp, wet sound that echoed.
“Yeah, just like that,” Nate said from behind them, his voice a low hum of appreciation. “Fuck her like you own her. Because right now, you do.”
Ethan set a punishing pace, driven by a raw hunger that hadn’t been sated the night before, only awakened. The water sluiced over them, making their skin slide together. Mia’s whimpers were swallowed by the tile. Ethan buried his face in the crook of her neck, biting down softly, tasting chlorinated water and skin.
He felt a presence at his back. Nate. Close. Not touching him, but watching, the heat of his body a second sun. Then Nate’s hands were on Mia’s hips, steadying her, his touch overlapping Ethan’s. Nate leaned in, his mouth close to Ethan’s ear, his words a rough counterpoint to the slap of Ethan’s flesh against Mia’s. “Harder. She’s not made of glass.”
Ethan obeyed, driving into her until she was sobbing with each thrust. Then Nate’s voice came again, a command that sliced through the steam. “Move over. Just a little.”
Confused, Ethan shifted his stance, widening his own legs. Nate’s hands left Mia’s hips. For a second, Ethan thought he was stepping back to watch. Then he felt it—the blunt, insistent pressure at his own entrance, slick with soap and water.
Ethan froze. His entire world narrowed to that point of contact. He went utterly still inside Mia.
“Easy,” Nate murmured, his breath hot on Ethan’s shoulder. One hand came around to Ethan’s hip, holding him in place. Not forcing. Asking. “Just a little. Just to feel it. She wants to feel us both.”
Ethan’s mind blanked. It was a line he hadn’t considered, a frontier in a landscape he’d just begun to map. He looked down at Mia. Her head was turned, her cheek against the cold tile. Her eyes were open, watching him over her shoulder. There was no fear in them. Only a dark, avid curiosity. A challenge. Can you take it?
A groan ripped from Ethan’s throat, part protest, part surrender. He gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod.
Nate pushed in, slowly, an inexorable, burning pressure that stole the breath from Ethan’s lungs. It was an intense, shocking fullness, a violation that somehow transformed into a terrible, binding intimacy. They were linked, all three of them, a circuit of heat and need. Nate’s chest was flush against Ethan’s back, his own hips beginning to move in a shallow, rocking rhythm that echoed and amplified Ethan’s own thrusts into Mia.
Mia let out a choked scream, her body clamping down around Ethan in a vice-like spasm. The sensation, combined with the relentless pressure behind him, shattered Ethan’s control. He came with a broken shout, his vision whitening at the edges, his muscles locking. He felt Nate shudder against him a moment later, a hot, internal pulse, and then the heavy weight of his forehead between Ethan’s shoulder blades.
For a long minute, the only sound was the rushing water and three sets of ragged, gasping breaths, steaming in the cool air leaking into the stall.
Nate pulled away first. The loss was sudden, leaving Ethan feeling strangely hollow and exposed. Nate reached past him, turning off the shower. The silence was abrupt, deafening.
Dripping, they stumbled out of the stall onto the plush bath mat. The air in the bathroom was cool now, raising goosebumps on their heated skin. No one spoke. Mia leaned against the vanity, her breathing slowly returning to normal. Nate grabbed three thick, black towels from a heated rack and tossed one to each of them.
The silence stretched, thick and awkward. Ethan busied himself drying off, avoiding eye contact. The enormity of what had just happened settled on him, a cold, heavy mantle. He felt Nate’s eyes on him.
Then, a laugh.
It was a genuine, surprised burst of sound from Nate. He was grinning, shaking his head as he toweled his hair. “Holy shit,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “That was… fuck.”
Mia giggled, a soft, breathy sound. She wrapped her towel around herself and walked to Nate, leaning into his side. “Told you he could take it.”
“You were right.” Nate slung an arm around her, his gaze landing on Ethan. The earlier intensity was gone, replaced by something warmer, almost fraternal. “You okay, man?”
Ethan nodded, not trusting his voice. He was okay. He was more than okay. He was unmoored, terrified, and exhilarated all at once.
Nate clapped him on the back, a solid, ringing smack. “Good. You hungry? I’m fucking starving. I could eat a whole pig.” He moved toward the bathroom door, pulling it open. “Come on. I’ll make eggs. Mia burns water.”
“I do not!” Mia protested, swatting his arm, but she was smiling.
They filed out of the bathroom, a procession of damp skin and tangled emotions, padding across the plush carpet of the master bedroom. The domestic normalcy of the suggestion—breakfast—was utterly surreal. As they reached the hallway, the familiar, sterile door of Ethan’s own room came into view. The reality of the past twelve hours seemed to contract and expand simultaneously.
He stopped. Nate and Mia took a few more steps before realizing he wasn’t following.
Nate turned, a question on his face.
The words came out of Ethan before he could filter them, born of a deep, confused wound that had festered since Nate had moved in. His voice was quiet, stripped bare. “I thought you hated me.”
The hallway seemed to get very still. Mia’s smile faded into something more careful.
Nate stared at him. For a long moment, he said nothing. The confident, mocking mask was completely gone. What was underneath was harder, more complex. He scratched the stubble on his jaw, considering.
“Hate you?” he finally said. “Why? Because our parents married each other?” He shrugged, a lazy, rolling motion of his shoulders. “That’s their bullshit. Not mine.” He took a step back towards Ethan, his expression unguarded. “I heard you. Through that paper-thin wall. Every night. Listening. Getting off on it.” He didn’t say it as an accusation, but as a simple fact. “I didn’t see someone I hated. I saw someone… like me. Bored. Curious. Hungry for something real.”
He glanced at Mia, then back at Ethan. “Hate is easy. This?” He gestured between the three of them, a vague motion that encompassed the shower, the night before, the charged air in the hall. “This is interesting.”
He turned and started walking again toward the stairs, throwing the final words over his shoulder, casual as anything. “Now come on. Eggs are getting cold in the theoretical future.”
Mia lingered for a second. She walked back to Ethan, stood on her toes, and pressed a soft, fleeting kiss to the corner of his mouth. Her eyes were clear, knowing. Then she followed Nate, the towel around her hair bobbing like a turban.
Ethan stood alone in the hallway. The house was quiet. From the kitchen downstairs, he heard the clatter of a pan, Nate cursing as he tried to find the spatula, Mia’s laughing correction.
The sterile silence of his old life was gone, shattered completely. In its place was this: a tangled, messy, breathing thing. A thing with the scent of shared soap, the echo of shared laughter, and the terrifying, thrilling promise of more.
He took a deep breath, the air no longer smelling of cheap perfume and desperation, but of eucalyptus steam and, faintly, of bacon Nate had just started to burn.
He followed the sound.