The Bathtub

A Bonus Chapter from Straight Roommate, Wrong Bed by Jace Wilder

This scene takes place after the epilogue. Ty and Eli have moved into their Maple Street apartment, and the bathtub Ty measured before they signed the lease is about to fulfill every promise he’s made about it.

⚠️ This chapter contains extremely explicit MM sexual content. Reader discretion advised. 18+ only.

Ty

I’d been planning this for three days.

Three days of research. Three days of preparation. Three days of the kind of focused, single-minded dedication that I had never once applied to my business degree but was now deploying with military precision toward the objective of making Eli Moreno come apart in a bathtub.

The bathtub. Our bathtub — the claw-foot behemoth in the Maple Street apartment that I’d measured in a showing and lobbied for in a lease negotiation and referenced in approximately forty sexual promises over the past two months. The bathtub that Eli had called “a statement piece” and that I had called “the site of future activities” and that had, until now, been used exclusively for its intended purpose of bathing, because we’d been too busy christening the bed and the couch and one memorable Tuesday the kitchen counter to get around to the main event.

Tonight was the night.

I’d bought candles. Not the vanilla-lavender kind that smelled like someone’s grandmother had exploded in a Bath & Body Works. I’d spent twenty minutes in the home goods section of Target, sniffing things like a deranged bloodhound, before settling on cedar and tobacco — which smelled, in my expert opinion, like a very expensive cabin where two men might do unspeakable things to each other on a bearskin rug. Masculine. Atmospheric. Eli would either approve or roast me for the rest of my natural life. Both outcomes were acceptable.

I’d bought bath salts. The kind marketed toward men, because apparently the bath-salt industry had decided that men would only soak in things that came in dark packaging with words like RECOVERY and DETOX on the label. The salts smelled like eucalyptus. They were fine. They were not the point.

The point was the tub.

I filled it at six-thirty. Hot — not scalding, but hot enough that the steam rose in thick curls and fogged the bathroom mirror. I lit the candles on the ledge: two cedar pillars flanking the faucet like sentries. Turned off the overhead light. The candlelight transformed the bathroom from a functional space into something that looked, if I squinted, almost romantic.

I took my shirt off. Because I was always already shirtless when the important things happened.

At seven-fifteen, the front door opened.

Eli’s exhaustion preceded him into the apartment — I could hear it in the weight of his bag hitting the floor, the slow mechanics of his shoes being removed, the particular quality of his sigh that meant the hospital internship had eaten him alive. Second-year med school was a machine designed to convert brilliant people into sleep-deprived husks, and Eli had been running on caffeine, spite, and my cooking for three weeks straight.

“Ty?” His voice was flat. Depleted.

“In here.”

He appeared in the bathroom doorway. He stopped.

He was wearing scrubs — the blue ones from the hospital. His hair was a disaster. His glasses were crooked. There were circles under his eyes dark enough to qualify as a medical condition.

He looked at the tub. The candles. The steam. Me, shirtless, leaning against the sink.

“You drew me a bath,” he said.

“I drew us a bath. The tub is big enough for activities. I measured.”

“You keep mentioning the measuring.”

“Because the measuring was the most romantic thing I’ve ever done and I want ongoing credit.”

His mouth did the thing — the almost-smile, the tectonic shift. “Cedar and tobacco candles.”

“Masculine.”

“You bought masculine candles.”

“The alternative was ‘Ocean Breeze’ and I have standards.”

“It’s working,” he said.

I crossed the bathroom. Took his bag from his shoulder and set it in the hallway. Stood in front of him — close, not touching, letting the heat from the bath and the heat from my body create a thermal zone that he could step into when he was ready.

“Let me take care of you,” I said.

I undressed him. Slowly. The top of the scrubs first, lifted over his head, revealing the lean torso I’d memorized and still couldn’t look at without my pulse changing. The pants next. I knelt and drew the drawstring loose, pushed the fabric down his thighs. His boxer briefs followed. He was half-hard — the ambient arousal of proximity and anticipation. I pressed a kiss to his hip bone. One kiss. Soft. A promise, not a payment. Then I stood and guided him toward the tub.

He lowered himself into the water with a sound that was almost obscene — a long, low, full-body groan that came from the center of his being.

“Oh my god,” he breathed. His eyes closed. His head tipped back against the rim.

I stripped off my shorts. Climbed in behind him. Sat back against the sloped end. Spread my legs. Pulled him against me.

His back settled against my chest. His head found the hollow of my shoulder. My arms wrapped around his waist. The water covered us both, hot and eucalyptus-green, and the combined warmth created a cocoon so complete that the world outside the bathroom ceased to exist.

For a few minutes, we just breathed.

I started washing his hair. My fingers in his curls, working the shampoo through, massaging his scalp in slow circles. His head tipped back. The sound he made — a groan so low it was almost subsonic — was the sound of a person who had spent months taking care of everyone else and was finally allowing someone to take care of him.

“No one does this,” he murmured. Half-asleep. “No one has ever—”

“I know.” I scratched lightly behind his ear. He melted further. “That’s why I keep doing it.”

I rinsed his hair. Then moved to his shoulders — the knots there, the tension he carried. I pressed my thumbs into the muscle. He hissed. Then groaned. Then made a sound that was closer to a moan than either of us expected, and the moan changed the temperature in the room.

My hands moved lower. Down his sides. Over his ribs. Onto his stomach, the muscles contracting under my fingers.

“Ty.” His voice had shifted. Lower. Rougher. The voice he used in bed.

“Hmm?”

“Your hands are migrating.”

“They’re being thorough.”

“They’re being strategic.”

“Strategy is important. I’m a business major.”

My right hand slid lower. Through the water, which made everything slick and warm and frictionless. I traced a path inward, deliberate, and felt him tense — not with resistance but with anticipation.

I wrapped my hand around his cock.

He was hard. Fully, achingly hard. The water made the grip slippery, the slide effortless, and the first stroke pulled a sound from him that echoed off the tile and settled directly in my own cock, which was pressed against his lower back and had been throbbing for the past ten minutes.

“Ty—”

“I’ve got you.” I set a rhythm — slow, tight, my thumb circling the head on each upstroke. The water moved with us, small waves lapping against the sides of the tub, the sound wet and rhythmic. His head fell back against my shoulder. His mouth was open. His eyes were closed.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” I said against his ear. “When you let go. When you stop thinking and just feel.”

“Don’t — fuck — don’t stop talking—”

His hand found my wrist underwater. Not to stop me — to hold on. His hips pushed into my hand, and the rhythm accelerated, the water sloshing over the edge of the tub, soaking the bath mat.

“I’m close,” he gasped. “Ty, I’m—”

I stopped.

“Why—”

“Not in the tub.” I pressed my lips to his ear. “I have a plan.”

“You have a plan for the bathtub sex?”

“I’m a business major. I always have a plan.”

“I’m going to murder you—”

“Stage two. Come on.”

We stood. Water cascading off both of us. I stepped out first. Turned to him. Took his hand and helped him out — and then I lifted him. Gripped his thighs, lifted him off the ground, and his legs wrapped around my waist. His arms went around my neck. His cock, hard and wet, pressed against my stomach. Mine pressed against his ass.

“Show-off,” he breathed.

“Functional strength, Moreno. Practical application.”

I set him on the edge of the tub. The porcelain was cool against his ass — he hissed — and I knelt on the bathmat between his thighs.

“The plan,” I said, “involves my mouth.”

“I approve the plan.”

I leaned in. Licked a stripe up the underside of his cock. His hand found my hair — wet, dripping — and his fingers twisted in it. I took him deep. No warm-up, no preamble — just the full, practiced, confident stroke of a mouth that had spent months learning this specific man. I knew the spot under the head that made his thighs shake. Knew the rhythm that built him fastest. Knew the exact pressure that turned his moans from involuntary to desperate.

I used all of it.

“Fuck — Ty — your mouth, your — god—”

The sounds echoed off the bathroom tile, amplified, bounced back at us. Every moan, every gasp, every wet, obscene sound was reflected and magnified until the small bathroom was a chamber of sound and steam and candlelight.

“I’m — Ty, I’m going to—”

I took him to the root. Swallowed around him. Pressed my tongue against the underside and hummed, and he came. Hard. His hand yanking my hair, his thighs clamping against my ears, a sound tearing from him that was my name and a curse and something wordless and shattered. I swallowed every pulse, held him through the aftershocks.

I looked up. He looked down. His face was wrecked.

“Your turn,” he said. His voice was sandpaper. “Bedroom.”

Eli

We didn’t dry off.

We stumbled from bathroom to bedroom leaving wet footprints on the hardwood and I pushed him onto the king bed, the cloud mattress, the sheets we’d picked out together. The sheets were going to be destroyed. I didn’t care.

He landed on his back, wet, golden, his cock hard against his stomach. I climbed over him, straddling his hips, and the full-body press of our wet skin sent a shudder through both of us.

“Condom,” I said. “Lube. Now.”

“Nightstand.”

I prepped myself. Quick, efficient — I knew my body, knew what it needed, knew the shortcuts that months of practice had earned. Two fingers, then three. Ty watched me — his hands on my thighs, his eyes dark, his jaw clenched with the effort of not touching himself while he watched me open myself for him.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said. “Eli, watching you — you have no idea what you look like right now—”

“Tell me.”

“Like everything. Like the answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking until I met you.”

I sank down onto him.

Slowly. Inch by devastating inch, feeling him fill me, the stretch and the pressure and the fullness consuming every thought until my brain contained nothing except the physical reality of Tyler Lawson inside me and the emotional reality that this man — this brave, golden, ridiculous man who bought cedar candles and measured bathtubs and called his father on a Thursday — was mine.

We both groaned. His hands gripped my hips. My hands braced on his chest. And for a moment we just breathed. Connected. Full.

Then I moved.

The rhythm was mine to set. I rolled my hips — slow at first, finding the angle, adjusting until each downstroke dragged his cock across the spot that made my vision white out. Ty’s hands tightened on my hips, guiding without controlling.

“Talk to me,” he gasped.

“You’re so deep.” The words came without planning. “I can feel every inch of you. You’re — fuck, Ty — you fit perfectly. Like you were made for this. For me.”

“Eli—”

“You drew me a bath.” I sped up. The bed creaked. The wet sheets squelched beneath us. “You washed my hair. You knelt on a bathmat and made me come so hard I saw colors. And now you’re inside me in our bed in our home and I want you to know — no one has ever loved me the way you do. No one has ever made me feel this seen. This real.”

His eyes were bright. Wet. His hands slid from my hips to my face, cupping my jaw, thumbs on my cheekbones — the gesture. Our gesture.

“You’re the most important thing in my life,” he said. “You changed everything. You changed me.”

I leaned down. Our foreheads touched. I shifted the angle. Sat up, planted my hands on his chest, and rode him in earnest — fast, hard, the rhythm that was less about finesse and more about need.

His hand wrapped around my cock. The grip was tight, sure, perfectly calibrated.

“Together,” he said. “I want us to—”

“I’m close.”

“Me too. Eli — fuck — I’m right there—”

“Then let go.”

He came first. By a fraction of a second — his back arching off the wet sheets, his cock pulsing inside me, his hand tightening on my cock in a reflexive squeeze that pushed me over the edge right behind him. I came across his chest while he came inside me, and the simultaneity of it — the shared crest, the two-person wave breaking at the same moment — was the closest I’d ever come to understanding what people meant when they talked about two becoming one.

I collapsed onto him. His arms wrapped around me. We lay there, hearts hammering, the wet sheets beneath us.

The candles were still burning in the bathroom.

“How was the plan?” he asked. His voice was demolished.

“The plan exceeded all projections.”

“Business terminology in the afterglow. The Moreno brand.”

“The plan also ruined our sheets.”

“The sheets were sacrificed in service of a greater vision.”

“The greater vision being bathtub sex.”

“The greater vision being making you feel good in our home.” His hands traced slow patterns on my back. “The bathtub sex was the execution strategy.”

I laughed against his neck. He held me tighter.

We showered. Changed the sheets. Got into the dry bed. Assumed the position — his chest, my head, his arm around me, my hand on his ribs.

“Eli?”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me I’m doing okay at this life thing.”

“You drew me a bath with cedar candles and made me come three times. You’re doing exceptionally at this life thing.”

“Three times?”

“Tub. Tub edge. Bed. Three.”

“That’s a personal record.”

“For you or for me?”

“For the apartment. I’m counting that as a housewarming statistic.”

I pressed my face into his chest and laughed until the bed shook and he held me through it and the candles in the bathroom finally guttered out and the apartment went dark and warm and quiet.

Not an accident. Not an experiment. Not a man standing outside a door in the dark, wanting but not daring to knock.

Just love — the kind you chose, the kind you kept, the kind that started with a WikiHow search and a shared bed and ended with a bathtub big enough for two and a man brave enough to fill it.

I fell asleep smiling. In the morning, he was still there.

He was always going to be there.

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