But it means that my legs are almost totally exposed, my assjust barely covered by the silk fabric. And his hands are going to be on me.
I tuck my arms under the throw pillow and stare at the coffee table and tell myself this is fine. This is just physical therapy. This is my friend helping me with my ankle.
He rests a hand lightly on my calf.
“This might be uncomfortable at first,” he says. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“Okay,” I say. My voice comes out normal. That’s a relief.
He starts to massage. His hands are very warm. The calluses on his palms rub slightly against my skin as he settles his grip, and I feel that friction everywhere. Up the back of my leg, up my spine, a pleasurable heat kindling between my thighs.
Of course, I’ve felt Slade’s hands before. He wraps my ankle every morning. I’ve learned to play it cool when he puts his hands on me, because he’s so level and professional about it that I try to match his energy.
But this? Me laying down, ass up, while he massages me? That’s a whole other thing.
“Relax,” he says gently. “I won’t ever do anything that would hurt you.”
Not what I’m worried about,I think silently. What I’m worried about is the opposite: that this feels too good. That I’m going to do something that hurtsme, like start wanting things I can’t have.
He says softly, “Breathe for me.”
His voice. God, his voice. It’s always deep but it’s lower now, unhurried, the murmur he drops to when he’s focused on something.
I breathe.
“There. Good girl.”
That heat between my thighs intensifies. Drums hotly throughout my limbswith every heartbeat.
This is going to be an interesting experience.
I press my face into the pillow as he gently rubs my shins.
“You’ve been staying off your ankle,” he says, conversational, unhurried, like he’s not currently dissolving me one careful touch at a time. “It shows. Less swollen than last week.”
Another circle, deeper. The pad of his thumb drags and I feel the roughness of it, that hand that has gripped hockey sticks and reins and rifles for years.
“Still holding a lot of tension here though.” His voice drops further. “Let’s work you through it.”
“Mmhm,” I mumble. It’s the best I can do.
He smells like his cedar soap with a hint of woodsmoke. He’s close enough that I can catch it every time he shifts his weight, every time he leans in to work a different angle. It’s a good smell, masculine and woodsy and deep.
His thumbs press in along either side of my Achilles tendon in slow, patient circles.
“Tell me what feels good,” he says.
Everything. Literally everything.
“Will do,” I say faintly.
His hands move up. The heel of his palm drags slowly up the length of my calf, and the roughness of it against my skin is a kind of blissful torture.
“Tight here,” he murmurs.
My mind instantly floods with filthy thoughts.
His thumb finds a knot just below my knee and presses in. “Is that too much?”
