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If that isn’t enough, he’s got his arm thrown over the back of the couch. My couch is small enough, so he might as well have his arm around me even if we aren’t directly touching. I’m getting a direct view of his armpit when I turn my head, which I’m ashamed to say is … actually really sexy. There’s something so hot about a man’s pit, the way it smells whether it’s clean or after hours at the gym when it reeks of musk and masculinity and effort. Right now, he smells as clean as the soap I keep in the shower, and I could press my face right into that sexy pit of his and breathe for days.
But I’m not looking. I’m staring straight ahead at the TV and letting my brain decompress from a mind-numbing day at the school where next to nothing happened at all. Even Dana left me alone, mercifully. I expected her to attack me again and ask all her usual questions about Stefan, but the only visitors who came to my office were a sweet teacher with a question about one of her students, and the eleventh grade assistant principal who, upon poking her head in, realized she had the wrong counselor’s office.
My Monday has been like a hundred other Mondays, with the sole and glaring exception of the hunk of man who’s staying at my house. A hunk I used to know so well.
A hunk who’s got his sexy pit halfway in my face.
“Fuck,” Stefan mumbles suddenly.
I halfway turn to him. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” He shifts a bit in his spot, his arm adjusting behind me, and then he resettles with a little sigh. His fingers mindlessly graze the back of my shoulder.
I stiffen up slightly. It could just be an accident, his fingers touching me. Surely he’s not trying to cuddle me or something.
Fuck, my mind is so insane right now.
“How was Parker’s?” I prompt him, opting for small talk while I attempt (and fail) to calm down my raging pulse. “Done yet?”
“That’s just it,” he grunts, shifting uncomfortably again.
“Yeah? Something happen?”
With the arm that’s not thrown over the back of the couch, he gives his own neck a firm rubbing, wincing as he does so. “Yeah, bro, something happened at Parker’s.”
“What?”
“I think … I think I pulled a muscle,” he answers, eyeing me as he slowly continues to rub his neck and grimace. “My shoulders and back are all sore and fucked-up.”
“Oh. That sucks. You need a painkiller or something?”
“Nah. They don’t help.”
“I have some ibuprofen. Couple pills should help.”
He grunts and shakes his head, declining, then turns his eyes back to the TV and continues to rub himself, appearing frustrated.
I return my attention to my laptop, biting my lip and unsure why he isn’t just going for the pills. Stefan has always been a bit stubborn about taking advice. I guess it’s almost comforting, how the best and worst parts of him are still there behind his bright blue eyes and intimidatingly muscular form.
“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath—again.
I eye him. He returns my glance, but then his eyes linger as if glued to mine—lost in secret thoughts and full of wonder—just like they were while we were eating earlier. He has that same invasive, hypnotizing look.
Something in his eyes makes all of my efforts at calming my heart fail instantly. It’s racing in a matter of seconds.
And then I realize in an instant what’s going on.
“Do … Do you …” I start to ask, swallow, then nod at him. “Do you want me to, like …?” I make a tiny shoulder-massaging gesture with my hands.
His face tightens. Something in his gaze flickers. Then, out of breath as if he just pushed down a door with his brute strength, he chokes, “Only if it’s alright with you. Is it alright? Do you mind?”
Oh my God. Do I?
Is he serious right now?
“I, um, well, I mean …” I shrug. “If you really want me to.”
“Yeah, I do,” he answers so quickly, he hardly gets the words out before he pulls his arm off of the couch and turns his muscled back toward me. “Fucking aches, man.”
I set the laptop next to me and turn toward his backside.
The white tank top stretches across his wide shoulders like a canvas, textured by his symmetrical, rippling back muscles and his two broad shoulder blades that create a valley down the middle. The straps at the top of his tank pull over the cords of muscle that slope up either side of his thick neck, where I’m about to put my hands.
Help me. I can barely breathe here.
I reach for his shoulders and spread my fingers.
When they touch him, it feels like putting the last piece of a puzzle in place. It’s also like gripping the top ledge of a brick wall, to be frank. I feel like some long-unfulfilled desire in me has, at last, been sated—like a thirst I didn’t realize I had.
