Page 546 of Bad Prince

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Purely for survival.

After that came the steam room, which felt like dying and being reborn in eucalyptus.

We sat side by side on the tiled bench wrapped in white towels and heat, everything soft and blurred and dripping. My body had gone from brutally sore to strangely liquid. My bones felt loose. My muscles had melted down into something that might actually forgive me for being a Division I athlete.

I leaned my head back against the warm stone wall and let my eyes close.

“I am so relaxed and loose right now,” I murmured, “I can’t keep my eyes open.”

Tristan laughed under his breath beside me.

It echoed softly in the steam.

Then I felt his mouth against the top of my head.

A kiss.

Light.

Affectionate.

No heat to it except the kind that comes from being cared for.

“I know,” he murmured.

I smiled without opening my eyes.

And right there, in that soft wet heat, with my body finally unwinding after days of violence and discipline and adrenaline and travel and campus noise, I realized something dangerous.

This—

this right here?—

might be one of the most intimate things we had ever done.

Not sex.

Not the dance.

Not even Newport.

This.

Him understanding exactly what my body was carrying and deciding to help me put some of it down.

By the time we moved to the sauna after, I was basically held together by salt, steam, and devotion.

I curled sideways against him on the cedar bench with my legs tucked up and his arm draped around my shoulders, the heat dry now, the room smelling like wood and sweat and the faint clean trace of him.

I laughed softly against his chest.

“We’re like ninety-year-olds with better abs.”

He kissed my temple.

“Speak for yourself. I’m still in my prime.”

I tilted my head back to look at him.

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