Page 23 of Close Quarters

“I didn’t say you couldn’t possibly know.”

“Right, because it’s just the exact words you use. Tone doesn’t mean shit.”

“So now you’re putting words into my mouth?”

“Christ, just…fuck off, Reno. I haven’t had someone piss me off as much as you do in ages. Just…leave me alone.”

I had plenty to say to that, but it was probably better that I just left things alone. It wouldn’t be a good sign for things to come if the two of us started going at each other’s throats on the first day. Well, it probably wouldn’t be good no matter how long into bunking together, but definitely not on the first day.

“Huh,” I grunted as I looked at the shelves he’d been cleaning earlier. “We have our own coffee maker? Wow, didn’t realize this was going to be an upgrade.”

“Yeah, and the shower has better water pressure than the one I was in before,” he said, and I heard a harsh click.

“What was that?” I demanded, turning around.

He smirked, slid the thermostat cover on, and pointed toward the ceiling vent. I waited, brow raised until I heard a familiar hum and a gust of cool air brushed over my sweat-covered face. “That.”

“I thought you needed tools,” I said, closing my eyes and enjoying the coolness. I hadn’t realized how warm the cabin had gotten with the two of us scrubbing away. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I’d say that would be a nice change of pace, but honestly, I’m just glad I got it working. Was afraid we’d have to get someone out here and you know how long they take? Forever,” he said, sighing and dropping into a chair. “Feels amazing.”

It was by no means a perfect solution, it would take the tiny unit ages to make the cabin feel like it wasn’t a boiling pit from hell’s backyard, but it was definitely better. I took a seat as well, placing myself under the vent after closing all the windows and the door.

It wasn’t the best outcome for the day, but it could have been far worse. And honestly, Elliot had proven himself to be…well, he wasn’t the worst choice to live with if he was that willing to work on the cabin. He would get on my nerves like nobody’s business, but at least he was useful.

It might just work out.

ELLIOT

This was never going to work.

I had never met someone as stubborn, temperamental, and infuriating as Reno. After almost two weeks living together, I was ready to throw myself off a nearby cliff. Well…maybe not myself. I was pretty fond of living, actually, despite how badly my life had gone. And I didn’t want to throw him off either because that was the kind of felony charge that kept you behind bars forever, and as cute as I was, I didn’t want to have to leverage that with one of the meanest guys in prison for the rest of my life.

“Can you please stop fucking singing all the goddamn time?” he groused from the bathroom.

“I’m humming,” I corrected him with a grumble, looking down at the paper I’d been doodling on. “You don’t hear me bitching when you start stomping around the place like a drunken ox.”

“I do not!” he snapped, appearing in a cloud of steam. Which meant we were going to have to deal with even more heat trapped in the cabin. For someone who had grown up in Texas and had been in one of these cabins before, he certainly seemed overly fond of scalding showers.

More surprising was that he had stomped out with just a towel on. I’d yet to meet someone as…I don’t know, paranoid? Self-conscious? Whatever it was that motivated him, the guy was downright careful to make sure he didn’t walk around in anything less than shorts and a shirt.

It wasn’t exactly a source of pride that the one time I’d seen more of his skin than usual was when he woke up in the morning. Without fail, he would roll over to sit at the edge of his bed and stretch his arms as far up as possible with a low groan. Every time, his shirt rode up and gave me a flash of his stomach, showcasing just how taut the skin over his muscles was and the dark patch of red hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his sleep pants.

It wasn’t a particularly strong source of pride because despite despising having to deal with his extra grumpy ass in the morning, it never failed to send a jolt of anticipation through me. It wasn’t like I had gotten laid in the past few years, and before that, I had been…well, calling myself a slut would be a bit of a disservice to the person I was. It wasn’t until I’d got locked up and talked to the prison shrink that I learned that apparently, ‘hypersexuality,’ as he’d referred to it, was pretty common for someone with my diagnosis.

I wish I could claim prison had stopped that, but really, all it changed was that I didn’t act on my desires. There was no way I was going to risk having any ‘relationship’ with someone behind bars. That was asking to become free game to anyone looking for release. That was precisely why I’d kept my sexuality a secret. I still didn’t think the people here were comfortable with the idea of the guys getting involved with one another.

Not that I was ever going to contemplate having anything like that with Reno, of all people. Even if I was taken off guard by the sight of him with only a tiny towel wrapped around his waist. Not even when he still had water clinging to his pale skin as he scowled at me. Not when I could see just how thick his arms were, see the entire stretch of his wonderfully flat stomach. And not even when I found myself wondering what it would look like if that poorly knotted towel happened to slip and?—

Right, I was going to stop those thoughts right now because the last thing I needed was to get hard. Well, harder than I already was. I could feel myself stiffening. Considering I was still in the thin sleep pants they provided, that was asking for trouble. That was all I needed, for him to see me getting hard, and then we’d have another complaining fit on our hands. Well, my hands, anyway.

“Did you come out here to give me a strip show?” I asked because I knew that would stop him in his tracks and make him aware of what was going on.

Sure enough, he stopped, his mouth still open as he looked down at himself. Absurdly, I watched his face redden before he whirled around. For one moment, the flap of the towel flew up from the force of his turn, and I caught just the briefest glimpse of his bare ass, which seemed to be somehow paler than the rest of him. I also did my best not to notice that the front of his towel bulged quite nicely, just like it did when he was wearing the same thin sleep pants we all did at night.

“You’re a fucking child, you know that?” he called from the bathroom.

“Don’t stop on my account,” I called back with a grin. “I wasn’t complaining.”

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