His fingers were warm and sure as they traced along the edge of the bruising, careful not to press too hard. The werewolf'stouch was nothing like what I'd expected from something his size. Where I'd braced myself for roughness, he gave me deliberation. Where I'd expected urgency, he offered patience.
"Turn around for me," he murmured, his breath ghosting against my ear. "Let me see what we're working with."
I shifted on the submerged ledge until I was facing away from him, my back exposed. The water lapped at my chest as I settled into position, and I heard him make a soft sound of assessment behind me.
"Christ, you really did a number on yourself." His hands hovered over my shoulders, mapping the damage without making contact. "This is going to take some time to work out properly."
"I've got time," I said, and meant it. For the first time in what seemed like my entire life, I had nowhere else to be.
His thumbs found the base of my neck first, pressing into the tension there with slow, circular motions. The pressure was firm but careful, working at knots I didn't even know I'd been carrying. I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding and felt my spine start to uncurl, vertebra by vertebra.
"That's it," he said approvingly. "Just let go."
His hands moved lower, following the curve of my trapezius down toward my shoulder blades. Every stroke was measured, purposeful, like he was reading a map written in muscle and bone. When he found a particularly tight spot, he'd pause there, working it with patient pressure until it started to release.
The heat of the water combined with his touch was making me lightheaded in the best possible way. I could feel my body starting to melt into his hands, three days of tension finally beginning to unknot itself under his careful attention.
"You carry a lot of stress here," he observed, his palms working along either side of my spine. "Even without the injury."
"Occupational hazard," I managed. His touch was making it hard to form coherent thoughts.
"What do you do?"
"Construction. Framing, mostly." I paused as his thumb found a particularly stubborn knot. "Or I did. Doctor's got me benched for six weeks."
"No wonder you're wound so tight." His hands stilled for a moment. "Must be hard, being forced to stop like that."
There was something in his voice that made me think he understood that particular kind of frustration. But before I could ask about it, his hands were moving again, and the thought dissolved under the steady pressure of his palms.
He worked his way around to my good shoulder, then back to the injured one with even more care. When his fingers finally approached the worst of the bruising, they were so gentle I barely felt them at first. Just the whisper of contact, testing my tolerance.
"Tell me if it's too much," he said.
It wasn't. If anything, the careful pressure felt like exactly what my body had been craving. He worked around the edges of the injury, never pushing too hard, but gradually coaxing the surrounding muscles to relax their protective grip.
I don't know how long we stayed like that. Time seemed to move differently in the steam and the heat, measured not in minutes but in the gradual release of tension, the slow dissolution of pain into something manageable. Other men came and went from the bath around us, but they felt distant, unimportant. There was just the water, and his hands, and the steady unwinding of everything I'd been carrying.
When he finally pulled back, I felt boneless, liquid. I turned to face him, blinking through the steam.
"Better?" he asked.
"God, yes." My voice came out rougher than I'd intended. "That was..."
"We're not done yet," he said with a smile that made heat flare low in my belly. His golden eyes had taken on a different quality, hungrier but still patient. "That was just the warm-up." He nudged me up to a higher ledge so that I was almost completely out of the water. Then he reached out, cupping my balls and rolling them in his fingers. “I’ve got a bit more to take care of here.”
His touch sent an electric jolt straight through me. I sucked in a sharp breath, my hips jerking slightly at the unexpected contact. The werewolf's hands were warm and sure, his fingers working with the same patient attention he'd given my shoulders.
"Easy," he murmured, his free hand settling on my thigh to steady me. "Just relax. Let me take care of this for you too."
I tried to speak, but all that came out was a low groan as his thumb traced along the underside of my sac. The contrast between the hot water lapping at my lower back and his deliberate touch was making my head spin.
"You've been carrying tension everywhere," he said conversationally, like he wasn't currently making my brain short-circuit. "Even here."
His fingers moved with clinical precision, massaging the tight muscles at the base of my cock with slow, circular motions. It felt incredible, but it was more than just arousal. It was like he was unknotting stress I didn't even know I'd been holding there.
I let my head fall back against the tile, eyes sliding shut. "Christ, how are you so good at this?"
"Practice," he said simply. His hand wrapped around my shaft, not stroking yet, just holding. The pressure was perfect, firm enough to make me twitch but gentle enough that I wasn't worried about my shoulder. "And I like taking my time."
