Fit hits the Shan - Chapter Three - a Jake Burbank Mystery Thriller excerpt

CHAPTER THREE

Jake almost fell when the door opened and Gretchen stepped around the end of the shower.

He was sure his mouth dropped because she wore the gold necklace he got her as a gift and nothing else.

“Got room for me?” she asked.

It was a rhetorical question because Jake wasn’t stupid, and neither was she.

He had installed the shower himself.

It was the width of the room, partitioned by a single pane of glass with an entry on either side that led to four shower heads.

There was a giant picture window on the exterior wall, double paned for energy and tinted so anyone standing in the shower could see the width of what once was his empire and now belonged to a developer he no longer called friend.

“Save me some hot water,” Gretchen scooted around the end of the glass partition and turned on a second spray of steamy water.

He still thought of it as her end, he mused as his eyes travelled over the rest of her.

Same Gretchen, same lines, same tight middle, taut muscles lined under thin skin.

Same freckles he had traced a thousand times, same neck he had kissed.

“Is that a hook for my loofah or are you just glad to see me?” she preened and turned her back to him.

“Get my back?”

He squired a dime size bead of gel into the loofah in question and began to slowly massage it across her back.

She leaned into it, and he let her, until her soapy back was against his chest.

Gretchen squirmed, and he felt it like a shot of electricity in his toes.

He wasn’t surprised by that either.

It had always been like that between them, part chemical, he supposed, a pheromone induced reaction when two people just really were into each other.

They called it a spark for a reason.

Just because they were electric together, didn’t mean it was good for him.

For either of them.

Gretchen was toxic.
He was about to open his mouth and say so when she turned around and took the loofah from his hand.

She squeezed in and wrapped her arms around him as she began washing his back.

“My turn,” she said.

She didn’t stop at his shoulders, or his waist and Jake dropped down the hole all men fall in when a woman is soaping up his nether regions.

He forgot about toxicity and history and even the dull throb in his head decided to take a vacation as blood absconded to other places.

The steam fogged up the window and partition and he didn’t give a damn about either or the cost to his hot water bill or if Rick could see through the glass when he lifted Gretchen up and settled her onto him, legs wrapped around his hips.

He pressed her against it, holding her with one hand and against the wall with the other as he forgot about everything but that moment and the one thing they always had.