AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t apologize to me.”
His fingers touch my lower back, their warmth bleeding into my sore muscles. He exhales, long and hard, and takes my shirt from me, slowly lifting it over my torso. It’s too early for there to be bruises, but they’ll be there soon. I’m going to be one giant bruise by the time I wake tomorrow.
Once my shirt reaches my neck, he helps work it over my head and drops it to the floor. Palms cup the tops of my shoulders, holding me in place as he drops his mouth to the underside of my jaw. He kisses me as if he worries I might shatter beneath his lips. I let the gentleness of his care fill my belly with flapping wings.
“Can you help me into the bath? I don’t trust myself not to wind up on the floor again.”
I notice my misstep as soon as I sense the shift in his posture. Growing stiffer, he turns me by his grip on my shoulders and stares down at me with flashing brown eyes. I inwardly wince.
“What do you mean,again?”
“I fell earlier.”When I got the creepy text from my stalker that I haven’t exactly told you about yet.“It’s not a big deal.”
He drops his hands to his sides and furiously looks me up and down, inspecting me for injuries that I didn’t sustain during the fight. The dim lighting in the locker room helps to hide my bruised knees.
“You don’t fall.”
I roll my lips and limp to the tub. With my hands gripping the edge, I lift my left leg and shove it into the water, knowing it’ll only be worse if I move slowly. An angry huff hits my back before Noah’s helping me put the other leg inside. After stabilizing myself with a hold on both sides of the tub, I submerge the rest of my body beneath the water.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t hold your breath.
The shock of the cold gets easier with time, but it never fully goes away. Not in my experience. You just learn how to handle it. The first thirty seconds are torture. The next thirty are easier. After that, my muscles start to relax.
“Move forward,” Noah orders once I’ve mastered my breathing.
My lips pop open in shock. I look over and find him standing beside the tub in just his briefs. He’s so handsome. “You’re coming in?”
“Yes. Move forward.”
The water sloshes as I scoot forward and tug my knees to my chest. It splashes over the edges of the tub when he climbs in behind me and hugs my back to his front, his legs settling along the outside of mine. A low grunt is his only verbal response to the shock of cold.
I got him in an ice bath once before, after hours’ worth of begging, but it took him less time to hop back out than it did for him to get in in the first place. He’s never crawled into one with me since. Until now.
“Cold?” I tease.
He drapes his arms over my shoulders and cups my breasts, no doubt feeling how hard my nipples are. “Not as cold as you, apparently.”
“You’re telling me your dick hasn’t shrivelled up and tried to crawl into your ass looking for warmth yet?” I snort.
One arrogant press of his groin to my back proves how wrong I am. His dick is definitely very much there and apparently not affected by the cold as much as it is the feel of my tits in his hands.
“Would you look at that,” I mumble.
He removes his hands and clasps them together before hanging them between my boobs. “Stop trying to distract me and tell me why you fell earlier.”
“If I tell you, then you have to promise that you won’t lose your mind and will remember to breathe.”
I didn’t want to do this tonight. My level of exhaustion is one reason why, but more than that, if I tell Noah about the message, it’ll become that much more real. It won’t be a secret anymore. Things will only get worse. Of course, I’m not so naïve that I thought I could hide it forever. Just maybe until tomorrow.
His biceps bulge and strain against my neck. “That’s not reassuring.”
“Promise me.”
“Fuck, fine. Just tell me.”
I swallow my fear and lean completely against his torso, my hands gripping his knees. “I got a text earlier. An unknown number. I assume that it was—”
“Him.”
