🔥 The Untouchable Summer

Thank you for reading The Untouchable Summer! As promised, here’s your exclusive bonus chapter — the scene that was too hot for Amazon. 🔥

Bonus Chapter: The First Night

Silas POV — Set one week after the epilogue. Leo has officially moved into the Chicago penthouse.

The last of the movers left at six.

I stood in the doorway of what used to be the guest room and was now—according to Leo, who had spent the past three hours directing traffic with the authority of a battlefield general—”the office we’ll never use because we both know I’m going to end up working from the kitchen table anyway.”

He wasn’t wrong. The desk we’d ordered was beautiful. The ergonomic chair was a masterpiece of Swedish engineering. And within a month, both would be buried under Leo’s notebooks and highlighters while he sprawled across the kitchen island, stealing my coffee and annotating whatever document had caught his attention that day.

I couldn’t wait.

“Stop staring at me.” Leo’s voice came from the bedroom, where he was unpacking the last box—the one marked “FRAGILE” in his cramped handwriting, which I’d learned meant things with sentimental value that Leo will pretend aren’t sentimental.

“I’m not staring at you. I’m supervising.”

“You’re staring.” He emerged from the bedroom wearing my shirt—the gray henley I’d been looking for all week—and nothing else. His legs were bare. His hair was a disaster. He had a smudge of dust on his cheekbone that I wanted to lick off.

“You stole my shirt.”

“You left it on the bathroom floor. That’s abandonment. I’m providing a loving home.” He crossed the living room—our living room, with our furniture, in our apartment—and stopped in front of me. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I live here now.”

“I noticed.”

“Like, officially. My mail comes here. My dental records are being transferred. I had to fill out a change-of-address form at the post office, Silas. That’s practically marriage.”

“In some cultures, a change-of-address form is more binding than a wedding.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Leo grinned. That grin—the one that crinkled his eyes and made him look like the seventeen-year-old I’d first noticed and the twenty-one-year-old I’d fallen for and the man he was becoming, all at once. The grin that had wrecked me in a boathouse and put me back together in a stranger’s doorway and was now mine, officially, with paperwork to prove it.

“I’m going to shower,” he said. “Want to supervise that too?”

“I might.”

“Might?” He raised an eyebrow. “After the week I’ve had? Packing, moving, surviving your building’s elevator? I’m expecting more than might, old man.”

“The elevator isn’t that slow.”

“I counted forty-three seconds between floors. I could have walked.”

“You could have. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to watch you vibrate with impatience in an enclosed space.”

“I don’t vibrate—”

I kissed him.

It wasn’t the kind of kiss we’d shared at Lake Geneva—stolen and desperate, always with one ear listening for footsteps. This was the kiss of a man who owned his life. Who had no meetings to rush to. Whose lover wasn’t going to vanish at dawn with excuses and regret.

This was ours.

Leo made a sound against my mouth—half surprise, half want—and his hands came up to grip my shoulders. He was still shorter than me, still had to tilt his head back, still fit perfectly in the space between my arms like he’d been designed for it.

“Shower,” I said against his lips.

“What about it?”

“Get in it.”

His eyes went dark. That particular shade of wanting that I’d spent the last month learning—the one that meant he was two seconds away from either making a joke or losing the ability to form sentences entirely.

“You’re very bossy tonight.”

“I’ve been watching movers handle your belongings for six hours. I have opinions about where things should go.”

“Things.” His voice had dropped. “Or me?”

I pushed him—gently, firmly—toward the bathroom. He went willingly, walking backward so he could keep his eyes on me, that grin sharpening into something hotter.

The bathroom in the penthouse was ridiculous. I’d always known it was ridiculous—marble floors, a shower that could fit four people, a soaking tub that had never been used. When Miranda’s designer had installed it, I’d thought the whole thing was obscene.

Now, watching Leo strip off my stolen shirt and drop it on the floor, I was grateful for every excessive square foot.

“You’re staring again,” Leo said.

“I’m allowed. You live here.”

“Is that how this works? Cohabitation grants unlimited staring rights?”

“It’s in the lease.”

“I didn’t sign a lease.”

“Then you’re squatting. And squatters definitely get stared at.”

He laughed—that bright, startled sound that I never got tired of earning—and stepped into the shower. The water came on, steam rising immediately, fogging the glass just enough to turn him into an impressionist painting. All golden skin and lean muscle and the curve of a spine I’d spent hours mapping with my tongue.

I watched.

For the first time since this started, I let myself watch without guilt, without calculation, without the constant low-grade terror that someone would find out. Leo was here. In my home. In my shower. And everyone who mattered knew about it—Richard, who was still working through his complicated feelings but had called twice this week to ask if Leo was eating enough. Maria, who had sent a care package of Leo’s favorite foods with a note that said simply Take care of him. Carter, who had texted a champagne emoji and nothing else.

We were allowed to have this.

The thought still made my chest tight in ways I didn’t fully understand.

“You know,” Leo said, his voice carrying over the water, “the point of a shower is to get in it. Not to supervise from a safe distance.”

I unbuttoned my shirt. Slowly. Deliberately. Watching him watch me through the fogged glass.

“Who said anything about safe?”

“Silas.”

“Leo.”

“Get in the fucking shower.”

I got in the fucking shower.

The water was too hot.

I didn’t care.

Leo’s back hit the marble tile, and his mouth found mine, and everything else ceased to matter—the temperature, the steam, the vague awareness that I was forty-two years old and about to have sex in a shower like a man half my age.

“Missed you,” Leo said against my throat, which didn’t make sense because we’d been together all day, but I understood what he meant. He’d missed this—the permission to touch, the freedom to want, the absolute certainty that no one was going to interrupt.

“I’m right here.”

“I know. That’s—” He broke off as my hand found him, wrapped around him, started a rhythm that made his head fall back against the tile. “That’s why I missed you. Because you’re here and I can have you and no one—”

I kissed him again. Swallowed the rest of his sentence. Let my hand do the talking instead.

We’d had sex before. Obviously. Weeks of it, at Lake Geneva—the pool house, the study, the dock, the cottage. But this was different. This was unhurried in a way we’d never managed before. No timer running. No footsteps to listen for. Just Leo, wet and wanting, making sounds that echoed off the marble.

“Turn around,” I said.

He shivered. Not from cold.

“Yeah?”

“Turn around. Hands on the wall.”

He turned. Put his hands on the wall. The muscles in his back shifted under golden skin, water streaming down his spine, pooling in the small of his back before continuing south.

I dropped to my knees.

“Silas—”

“Shh.”

I had a theory I’d been wanting to test. At the lake, we’d always been too rushed for this—too aware of the risk, too focused on efficiency. But now, with nothing but time and privacy and a heating bill I could easily afford, I was going to take my time.

I started at the base of his spine. Pressed my mouth there, tasting water and salt and the particular sweetness that was just Leo. His whole body jerked.

“Oh fuck—”

I worked lower. Slowly. Deliberately. Using my hands to spread him open while my tongue mapped territory I’d been too cautious to explore before.

“Silas, I—you don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to.” I bit the curve of his ass gently. “I want to. Unless you want me to stop.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

I didn’t.

I took my time. Let him feel every slide of my tongue, every press of my fingers, every moment of giving him something without taking anything in return. This wasn’t about efficiency or reciprocity or the careful calculation of mutual benefit. This was about worship. This was about making him understand, in a language that didn’t require words, exactly how much I’d wanted to do this every time we’d been forced to rush.

Leo fell apart slowly.

It started with his breathing—the ragged catches that meant he was trying to stay quiet, a reflex from weeks of stolen moments. Then his hips, pushing back against me, chasing sensation despite his attempts to stay still. Then his voice, climbing from low groans to desperate pleas to my name, repeated like a prayer.

“Silas—Silas, please, I need—”

“I know what you need.”

I stood. Pressed my chest to his back. Let him feel exactly how much this was affecting me—hard and aching against the curve of his ass.

“Tell me anyway.”

“You.” His voice cracked. “I need you inside me. Now. Right now.”

“We don’t have—”

“Top drawer.” He turned his head, catching my eye with a look that was half desperation, half smugness. “I unpacked the important stuff first.”

Of course he did.

I reached out of the shower, grabbed the supplies from where he’d strategically placed them, and came back to find him exactly where I’d left him: palms against the tile, legs spread, head bowed, the water streaming down his back like he was some kind of sacrificial offering.

My sacrificial offering.

Mine.

“Look at you,” I murmured, slicking my fingers. “Waiting for me.”

“I’m always waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for you since I was seventeen.”

“Not anymore.” I pressed one finger inside him, watching his spine arch. “No more waiting. No more hiding. You’re here now.”

“I’m here.” He pushed back onto my finger, greedy, impatient. “I’m here, Silas. So stop talking and—”

I added a second finger. He stopped talking.

I worked him open with the patience of a man who finally understood that patience was a luxury, not a burden. Every stretch, every slide, every sound he made—I catalogued it all, filed it away in the part of my brain that had been building a Leo Thorne archive for years. His tells when he was close. His gasps when I hit exactly the right angle. The way his shoulders trembled when he was trying not to beg.

He was always so good at trying.

He was even better at failing.

“Please,” he said. “Please, please, please—”

I gave him what he wanted.

The first slide in made us both freeze—him from the sensation, me from the overwhelming reality of it. Here. In my shower. In my home. No expiration date. No morning-after panic. Just Leo, hot and tight around me, his body accepting me like we’d been doing this for decades instead of weeks.

“Move,” he breathed. “Silas, move—”

I moved.

Started slow. Deep strokes that let him feel every inch, that dragged against the spot that made his whole body shake. The water was still too hot, the steam thick enough to turn the bathroom into a sauna, and I didn’t care about any of it. All I cared about was the sound of skin against skin, Leo’s desperate noises echoing off the marble, the way his hands kept slipping on the wet tile as he tried to brace himself.

“Harder,” he demanded. “I can take it.”

“I know you can.” I shifted my angle, pulling his hips back to meet my thrusts. “You can take everything I give you.”

“Then give me more—”

I gave him more.

Harder. Faster. One hand braced on the tile beside his head, the other wrapped around his hip hard enough to leave bruises. He’d have marks tomorrow. He’d look at them in the mirror and remember this—the first night in our home, the first time we’d been able to be as loud as we wanted, the first of a thousand nights just like this.

“Touch yourself,” I said.

His hand flew to his cock immediately, wrapping around himself with the desperation of someone who’d been on the edge for too long. I watched over his shoulder—his fist working himself, the head appearing and disappearing with each stroke, the pre-come mixing with the water.

“That’s it. Good. So good for me.”

“Silas—”

“Come when you’re ready. I want to feel it.”

He lasted about thirty seconds.

When he came, his whole body clenched around me—his ass, his shoulders, his fist—and the sound he made wasn’t words, wasn’t even recognizable as human, just a raw expression of pleasure that bounced off the walls and probably carried through the entire building.

We were going to get complaints from the neighbors.

I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I followed him over the edge seconds later, burying myself deep and letting go with a groan that matched his. For a long moment, we just stood there—him braced against the wall, me pressed against his back, both of us shaking with aftershocks while the water pounded down around us.

“Okay,” Leo said eventually, his voice wrecked. “Moving in with you was definitely the right call.”

I laughed. Pressed a kiss to his shoulder. Pulled out carefully, watching to make sure he was steady before I let him go.

“That was the deciding factor?”

“The shower sex? Yes. The shower sex was the deciding factor.” He turned around, leaning against the tile, looking like something out of a renaissance painting—golden and flushed and thoroughly debauched. “Everything else was just a bonus.”

“The fact that I love you. The penthouse. The heating bill I’m about to regret.”

“Bonuses. All of them. The core value proposition was always the shower sex.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with finance textbooks.”

“I’ve been spending too much time with you. Your boring business vocabulary is contagious.” He grinned. “But also, I love you too. In case that wasn’t clear.”

“It was clear.”

“Good.” He reached past me to turn off the water, which had finally started to run cool. “Now dry me off and take me to bed. We’ve got a lot of rooms to christen, and I’m thinking we start with the bedroom and work our way through the apartment over the next… month? Two months?”

“You have ambitious plans.”

“I have a forty-two-year-old boyfriend who needs to keep up with me.” He wrapped his arms around my neck, wet and warm and impossibly beautiful. “Think you can handle it?”

I picked him up.

He yelped—that surprised, delighted sound I’d first heard at the lake when I’d lifted him onto the kitchen counter—and wrapped his legs around my waist instinctively.

“I can handle it,” I said, carrying him toward the bedroom. “I can handle anything you throw at me.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Not promises.” I dropped him on the bed—our bed, in our room, in our home—and followed him down. “Guarantees.”

His laugh became a gasp became a moan, and we didn’t make it out of the bedroom for the rest of the night.

Later—much later—I lay in the dark with Leo sprawled across my chest, his breath evening out into sleep.

The penthouse was quiet. The city hummed far below us, muffled by distance and glass and the particular insulation that came with expensive real estate. Everything I owned was in this apartment—my books, my clothes, the architecture sketches I’d finally started making again.

And Leo.

Leo, who had taken a half-empty showroom and turned it into something warm. Who had scattered throw blankets and left coffee mugs on every surface. Who had put a photograph of Claire on the mantel without asking permission, because he understood that some ghosts were meant to be welcomed.

Leo, who was snoring slightly against my chest, a habit I’d discovered only after we’d stopped pretending we could sleep in separate beds.

“I know you’re awake,” he mumbled, not opening his eyes.

“How?”

“You do this thing with your breathing. It’s annoying.”

“I breathe annoyingly?”

“When you’re awake, yes.” He shifted, pressing closer. “What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“Boring. What specifically about me?”

“The fact that you live here now. The fact that I get to wake up next to you tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.” I pressed a kiss to his hair. “The fact that I spent twenty years building a life that felt hollow, and then you walked back into it and made it mean something.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then: “That’s unfairly romantic for—” He checked the clock on the nightstand. “—three in the morning.”

“I have my moments.”

“You have a lot of moments.” He tipped his head back to look at me, his eyes soft in the darkness. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with your moments.”

“You have time.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I do.”

He fell asleep again a few minutes later, his breathing deepening into the rhythm I was already learning to read. I stayed awake a little longer—not from worry, not from guilt, just from the simple pleasure of having something worth savoring.

The untouchable summer had led to this: an ordinary night in an extraordinary life, with the man I loved asleep in my arms and all of tomorrow waiting for us.

I’d spent forty-two years learning to control everything.

It turned out the best things happened when I let go.

I closed my eyes, listened to Leo breathe, and let myself fall into sleep without reaching for it.

Tomorrow, we’d christen the kitchen.

💕 Thank You for Reading!

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