I felt his eyes on me long before he said anything.
Slow, lingering… the kind of look that touches your skin before he ever does.
We were sitting close close enough that our knees brushed under the table.
He didn’t move away.
Neither did I.
Him: “You smell… different tonight.”
His voice dipped lower, like he was suddenly aware of the space between us.
“What perfume is that?”
I tilted my head, pretending to think.
Me: “Why? Is it distracting you?”
He laughed under his breath, but it wasn’t the
funny kind of laugh.
It was the kind someone lets out when they’re trying not to react too much.
He leaned in slow enough that I felt his breath before his words.
Him: “A little. Actually… more than a little.”
I could’ve told him the truth right then — that I’d tried a
pheromone perfume, a women’s perfume made to warm the air between two people without them even noticing.
But watching him try to figure it out was much more fun.
His fingers brushed mine on the table.
Accidentally.
Then not-so-accidentally.
Him: “Seriously… what is that scent? It’s driving me crazy.”
Me: “Just a
women’s pheromone perfume. Nothing dramatic.”
I said it softly, almost teasing.
He blinked, then smirked the way men do when they put two and two together.
Him: “So that’s why I can’t focus.”
His knee pressed into mine again.
“You could’ve warned me.”
I shrugged, playful.
Me: “Where’s the fun in warning you?”
He shook his head, laughing under his breath but he didn’t move away.
Instead, he leaned closer, letting the scent pull him in again.
Him: “Whatever that pheromone perfume is… it’s working way too well.”
Me: “Maybe it’s not the perfume.”
Him: “Then what is it?”
Me: “You tell me.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.
It was charged — warm, slow, and full of possibility.
And that’s the thing no one talks about when it comes to a
pheromone perfume in Australia or anywhere else…
It doesn’t create attraction.
It amplifies the moment you’re
already curious about.
That night, he didn’t ask again what I was wearing.
He didn’t need to.
The reaction said enough.
Chapter Two: Steam
The sauna door sighed open and the world turned to white—heat, eucalyptus, a hush that felt like being wrapped in someone’s breath. I stepped in with a towel knotted high, hair twisted up, and found an empty place on the upper bench where the wood kept secrets.
He was already there.
White towel. Damp hair. A bead of water running the long line of his throat down to the edge of cotton. He looked up like he’d been expecting me, like the room had held its lungful of steam just for this moment.
“Hi,” he said, voice low, softened by the heat. “You again.”
I smiled and let my knees angle toward him, close enough to feel the temperature of him across the gap. The heat made everything honest. No makeup could outtalk a flush like this.
He reached for the ladle, poured water over the stones. They hissed, the air leaned in, and eucalyptus opened like a hand. His eyes flicked to my mouth and back to my eyes, as if he’d just remembered there were rules.
“Still wearing trouble?” he asked, a hint of a grin. “Whatever that scent was.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe it’s just the steam.”
He laughed under his breath—the not-funny kind again—and settled one step lower, closer, elbows on his knees. We sat in that summer-slow silence you only get in saunas and after midnight. My pulse adjusted to his. Or his to mine. Hard to tell.
“You okay up there?” he asked, nodding to the higher bench. “Gets hotter.”
“I can handle hot,” I said, and instantly wished I’d said something cooler. His smile said he’d heard what I hadn’t meant to say out loud.
He moved, unhurried, to sit beside me. The wood creaked at the weight, our shoulders almost touching, the gap between our towels a single, negotiable inch. He didn’t crowd. He didn’t perform. He just… arrived. Present in that way men rarely are until everything else has fallen away.
“Tell me to go, and I will,” he said, quiet enough that the steam had to carry it to me. “Tell me to stay, and I’ll try to do it beautifully.”
“Stay,” I said, before my pride could write a cooler line.
He nodded once, like we’d struck a small, important deal, and lifted the ladle again. The stones answered. The room blurred. The world shrank to heat, breath, skin.
He reached—slow, visible, ask-with-the-body first—and brushed a damp strand from my temple with the edge of his knuckle. “May I?” he asked, fingertips hovering at the base of my neck.
I tipped my head forward, baring the tender place where heat collects. “Yes.”
His hand found that small valley and pressed—just enough to unhook a day I didn’t know I was still carrying. Thumb along the ridge of my shoulder. Palm warm. The kind of touch that pays attention instead of paying lip service.
The towel’s edge slipped a little with my breath. He didn’t look down. He kept his eyes on mine like it was a vow, and the discipline of that made something inside me go soft and fierce at the same time.
“You’re flushed,” he said, voice even softer now. “From the steam, right?”
“From the steam,” I agreed, and felt him smile against the air.
He worked along the line where neck becomes shoulder, mapping patience into my muscles. No rush. No grabbing. Just an easy, devastating comprehension of the human body’s need to be met exactly where it lives. The heat turned time syrup-slow. My breath found a deeper rhythm, and his fell with it, like two metronomes syncing to the same song.
“Tell me if I’m wrong,” he said.
“You’ll know,” I whispered, and he did; he always seemed to, tilting pressure, easing off, returning, each adjustment a question, each exhale an answer.
I let my hand rest on his thigh—towel, cotton, the steady strength underneath. His breath caught, barely. He didn’t push. He didn’t flinch. He just let the current run through us and back again.
“Whatever you were wearing the other night,” he murmured, “this beats it.”
“It’s still the same thing,” I said. “Curiosity. Amplified.”
We turned at the same time, like choreography we hadn’t practiced. Steam beaded on his lashes. I saw the moment his restraint met his desire and shook hands with it. He lifted his hand to my jaw, a touch that asked and promised in the same second.
“May I?” he asked again.
“Yes,” I breathed.
The first kiss tasted like eucalyptus and heat and something I’d been smart enough not to name until it arrived. He kissed the way he touched—present, listening, the pressure of a man who knows that less isn’t always less. My hand slid to the back of his neck, and he made a sound that lived somewhere between a sigh and a vow. The steam pressed around us like a cocoon.
I tightened the knot of my towel with one hand, not to hide, but to choose. His thumb spread the damp edge along my collarbone as if drawing a line he wouldn’t cross without hearing me say it. That restraint, God—there’s a gravity to it. The kind that makes the room tilt and your body lean the way the planet wants it to.
“I want to be careful with this,” he said, forehead resting against mine. “With you.”
“Be careful,” I said. “And be bold.”
He smiled against my mouth, kissed me again—deeper now, the kind of slow that feels like a decision rather than a delay. Outside the door, someone laughed in the lounge, a burst of ordinary life reminding us that the world still existed. In here, it had narrowed to pulse and permission.
He drew back just enough to look at me. “Cold plunge after this,” he said, a tease and a promise. “Or we’ll both melt.”
“Maybe melt first,” I said.
“Deal.”
He stood—unhurried—and offered his hand. Not to pull, to invite. I placed my palm in his and felt the future of this moment walk up my arm. He led me down a level to the lower bench where the heat was a fraction gentler, then settled beside me again, thigh to thigh, the contact a quiet, relentless electricity.
He poured one last ladle onto the stones. The hiss rose like applause.
“We can take this as far as you want,” he said. “Or we can stop at the door and live on better for it.”
I searched his face for the sell and found none. No hurry, no hunger dressed as romance. Just a man who had learned the difference between a moment and a meaning, and was offering both like open hands.
“Let’s do both,” I said, and his grin flashed boyish before he kissed me again, deeper, slower, the kind of kiss that attaches itself to a calendar and refuses to be forgotten.
We left when the room had given us every secret it could. The cool air on my skin was a benediction. He didn’t rush me to the plunge pool. He didn’t let go of my hand either. Outside the sauna, in the thin place between heat and chill, we paused. He pressed a kiss to my damp forehead, a gesture so gentle it clipped something tender inside me.
“Next round,” he said, eyes bright, “we try the cold.”
“Next round,” I said, and meant more than the water.
He laughed, low and warm, and the sound followed me all the way to the blue edge, where the rest of the night waited, patient and possible.
