Page 60 of Tied Over

“I stopped cooking.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not there to eat it,” I groused at him, slipping by, heading for the bathroom. “Now go take your damn shower.”

“We’ll go back to you cooking,” he said on his way out.

“How is that a good deal for me?”

I loved hearing him laugh and was very glad he didn’t see the boner I got in the shower just thinking about it again in my head.

Knowing better helped nothing. Like I knew better than to trust him to jump out of the shower and throw on his clothes. Just his hair took forever. There were a lot of products that went in to make the artful mane look effortless. He also had moisturizers for his face and lotion that made him smell like vanilla and sandalwood, or pistachios and lime with a hint of caramel. And there wasn’t just one tube, jar, or pump bottle. I knew from rooming with him that the whole process was some sacred alchemy he did that when he emerged from a shower, you wanted to press your nose to his skin and hair.

Since my own self-care regimen consisted of all-in-one shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, occasionally lotion, and moisturizer since I did sometimes shave the stubble, I was done, sitting on my bed, waiting for him for what seemed like hours. And since I didn’t have a lot of patience to begin with, I got antsy. Plus, I needed to take a pill since my shoulder was twinging. It didn’t feel like an ice pick was being driven into my joint yet, but it would get worse soon if the medicine didn’t hit my bloodstream.

Going to the kitchen with my supplies, I didn’t think about being shirtless until I put the bottle of water down and looked around.

“Sorry,” I said quickly, and was about to turn for the arch that led down the hall to my bedroom.

“Oh,” Angie said, her words stopping me, her playful leer making me scowl. “Well, lookit you, Josiah Redeker. What a gorgeous specimen of manhood you are.”

I flipped her off because we were friends now.

She laughed hard, then walked over to me, Davis and Hayden right behind her. “This is quite the wound, my friend.”

“It’s gonna be all right,” I assured her as Bodhi walked by on his way to the archway.

“Hey,” I called.

He stopped and came back, squinting at me. “Why are you in here?”

“Oh, I dunno, princess, are we done preening?”

“Fuck off,” he told me, chuckling, and Angie’s mouth fell open.

“Shit, sorry,” Bodhi said, glancing around. “I forgot about the kids.”

Since there were no kids around, I was thinking he shouldn’t have worried.

“No, it’s not…that,” she said, and I saw her looking at us. She could see one of his hands on my bicep, but the other, on the small of my back, she couldn’t.

“Good,” he said, tugging on me gently. “Let’s get you in the brace.”

Once we were in my room, he put the small piece of gauze on the wound, then began wrapping my shoulder.

“You can do this a little faster, yanno. You’re not wrapping my dick.”

For whatever reason, that struck him funny. He started laughing, and when you get the giggles, that’s it and it’s catching. And then, because it was a shared memory, we started talking about the guy we’d busted once who had his dick stuck in the neck of a beer growler, and there was only one way to get it off. That, of course, was how Hayden found us: Bodhi on my bed, barely able to breathe, and me glaring at him, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“What’s going on in here?”

“Your boyfriend’s an idiot,” I told him.

He smiled at me. “Let me help you with the brace.”

“No,” Bodhi said, still chuckling, standing up, having the hiccups now. “I’ve”—hiccup—“got it.”

Holding his breath as he wound the bandage around my bicep and shoulder, as soon as he couldn’t hold it anymore, he did it again.