The bathroom still dripped.
Steam clung to the tiles like a second skin as Cruxius rolled his neck, the vertebrae cracking in a slow, satisfied chain down his spine.
He stretched his arms wide behind him, muscles pulling taut across his broad back, sweat and other things still glistening along every ridge of him.
Jenny lay exactly where he left her, flat on the cold bathroom floor, legs barely shut, chest rising and falling in shallow, ruined heaves.
"I must say." He didn't even look back at her. "You really have very little immunity. Or endurance."
Her jaw tightened.
Her teeth pressed together hard enough to ache, and she kept her eyes shut because opening them meant seeing that expression on his face, that flat, unbothered assessment of her like she was a exercise that had come up short.
She said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
