I quickly ran upstairs and tried to freshen up a bit. I looked like hell, but I only had enough energy to put on a fresh shirt, brush my teeth, and make it back downstairs.
And just as Drew had promised, minutes later the kids came bounding into the house in a mixture of coats flying, shoes getting pulled off, shoving, and then yelling about dibs on the video games.
Penny rounded the corner with a tired smile on her face.
“Massage,” I blurted.
She stilled. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” She threw her hands in the air. The kids ran past her up the stairs. Each of them had a bag. She must have taken them to a store too. “My feet ache, you kiss me then tell me nothing can happen, basically push me toward your bandmate, then let me stay with you, almost kiss me again, tell me no, insult my work, and now you want me to massage you?”
“You done yet?” I grinned.
She glared.
“I meant massageforyou. You need a massage, and since I’m feeling a little bit better, I figured I could at least, you know…” I gulped.
She gaped and then nodded slowly, her cheeks pinking. “Yeah, um, let me just get the kids down for a nap and…” Shebegrudgingly muttered sorry under her breath and walked past me, then tripped on the first stair.
“You all right?”
“Yup!” She ran up the rest of them and minutes later returned with a bottle of lotion and handed it to me.
“Ah, getting fancy on me?” I teased.
“Are you really feeling better?” she countered.
I sat up and shrugged. Honestly, no. My head was pounding and I still felt delirious, but I couldn’t decipher if it was because I was going to touch her again or if I was still sick.
“Sit down.” I decided not to answer her.
“Where?” She put her hands on her hips.
“Right here.” I pointed to the space on the floor right in front of my legs and then opened them a bit. Maybe this was a bad idea, the touching.
She quickly moved to the floor and sat between my legs. My knees were next to her head and all I kept thinking was that it would be so easy to tug her up against me, to kiss the back of her neck and grip her ass with both hands.
Focus.
Her hair was already in a ponytail, which for some reason made me sad. I wanted to touch it, to move it out of the way, to feel its weight in my hand.
I cleared my throat and started massaging her shoulders.
She hung her head forward. “That feels amazing.”
Yeah, it did.
I was supposed to be doing something for her and already it was doing something for me, to me.
I stopped and grabbed some lotion then spread it across her neck, careful not to get it on her shirt. I massaged deep and ran my hands down her bare shoulders. A flimsy strap stood in the way of full skin-on-skin contact.
I hated that strap more than I hated Drew, and that was saying a lot.
She moaned and then her head fell back against my lap. I kept rubbing her neck then moved upwards, until I got to her face, my knuckles grazing her jaw.
Her eyelashes fluttered open. “What are we doing?”
“You’re sitting. I’m massaging.”
“Right.” She looked like she didn’t believe me.
