Page 159 of Scarred

“I saw,” she winces, running her hands up my chest before cupping my face. “How are you holding up? Are your hips hurting?”

“I’ll live.”

Taking my hand, she leads me to her bedroom and pushes me to sit on the edge of the bed.

Dropping to her knees, she starts to untie my shoes, and I shake my head.

“I can take my own shoes off.”

She continues to work the laces and pulls off my polished black dress shoe before sliding down my sock next.

“When’s the last time you let someone actually take care of you?” She asks, moving onto my other shoe. I’m too tired to argue, so I let her do her thing.

“If I remember correctly, you took care of me really well the night you slept over before I left,” I smile.

“I’m not talking about sex,” she chuckles, rolling her eyes. “You do everything for Scarlett…Mae…you single-handedly carried the game tonight for your team…when do you get taken care of?”

“I don’t know…I guess since Scarlett was born, I’ve been on autopilot. I don’t need someone to take care of me. I’m the one who takes care of others, not the other way around.”

“Exactly,” she sighs, pulling off my last sock and standing up.

Stepping between my legs, my head drops to her stomach as her arms cradle my head in a hug.“You came here for a reason, Cayden,” she whispers.

It feels so fucking nice not to pretend I have all my shit together. With her, I can just be me, and it feels so damn good to have that part of me back.

Because the truth is, I’m tired. So fucking tired of doing everything on my own.

Tired of having everyone depend on me.

Tired of never feeling like I’ve done enough.

I’ve been treading with my head above water for years now, and I’m utterly exhausted.

As if she can sense the defeat in me, she slowly pulls me up and gets me out of my shirt and pants before pulling back her covers.

“Lie on your stomach for me,” she instructs softly, and I don’t even question it as I sink face-first into her mattress.

I hear her drawer open and peek my eye open.

She pulls out a brown bottle and squirts something in her hand. The scent of lavender fills the air as she straddles me before her hands start to glide over my body.

Moaning, I let her hands work their magic as she slowly eases all the tension from the last few hours out of my neck and shoulders. Moving further down my back, she massages my lower back and skims the waistband of my boxer briefs.

“May I?” She asks, fingering the black material.

“We are way past asking permission to touch my body, little moon,” I say in a muffled voice against the covers. “Anything of mine is yours to have.”

“Lift your hips then.” I hear the smile in her voice as my lip twitches.

I lift slightly and feel her reach around me to pull the material over my cock. It doesn’t take long before I’m growing against her hand as she slides them down, leaving me naked on her bed.

Shifting slightly, I get as comfortable as I can with a steel rod pressing into my stomach and hear another little giggle escape from the vixen on top of me.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to graze you like that. It’s hard to miss, being so big and all.”

A deep chuckle rumbles out of my chest as I grin against the mattress. “With you, little moon, you could look at me a certain way, and I’d get hard. I’m used to it by now.”

I know without looking that her cheeks are a beautiful shade of red right about now, and if I didn’t want the second half of this massage so bad, I would flip her over in a heartbeat and make it even more flushed.