Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
FOREST
I went to bed more confused than I had been before the… Well, it wasn’t a date. Dinner with a gorgeous guy who also wanted to marry me? There wasn’t a word for that, and I wondered if there should be. Surely I wasn’t the only person in the world in this position.
Flopping on my back, I stared down at my toes in an attempt to distract myself from what I really wanted to think about: Nash looking like sex on a stick in a form-fitting shirt and pants that left nothing to the imagination.
I’d stared at his ass twice—once when he went to the restroom, and the second time when he was slightly ahead of me so he could get the door on our way out of the restaurant.
And now, every time I blinked, I could see that peachy round thing behind my eyelids.
He was so well-formed. From years of training, of course, and the way he’d had to keep it up for his current job.
Every now and again, I’d get up in the morning and find him doing bicep curls on the patio with one hand, sipping coffee from the cup in the other and…
Ugh.
It was unfair to want him this much. How the hell was I going to survive a marriage to a man this gorgeous and this kind without being allowed to touch him?
Because in spite of pressing me on the type of person I liked to date, he was very clear about refuting my compliments.
Every time I called him sweet and kind, he’d pull a face and insist he was not.
I was reading him loud and clear, as much as it hurt. He was probably just trying to assess me so he could be prepared for anyone I chose to sneak over to the house once this whole thing was done.
If I agreed to it.
I hadn’t given him an answer tonight because I still didn’t have one.
It wasn’t necessarily about saving my life, but it was about saving my ass.
I was furious at the university for doing what they did, but in the quiet, still hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep, I was forced to come to terms with the fact that I was in no condition to work anyway.
Even doing an online class, my brain fog was next level. I kept forgetting facts I’d known since I was an undergrad. Any sort of stress put me at risk for a seizure or for my limbs to give out on me, and the reality was that I was not in a place where I could be any good for the students.
So where did that leave me? What choices did I have?
Sponge off Nash and Creek and ask them to pay out of pocket for all my treatments while I figured something else out? Or take Nash up on this offer, which would still leave me needing some help, but at least no one would go bankrupt from medication, physical therapy, and scans.
I hated this with every fiber of my being.
I was stressed and tired, but I couldn’t sleep.
I was weirdly horny from my dinner with Nash, but as I lay there, it was obvious my hands had no plans to cooperate.
The dinner had taken everything out of me, and now, when I attempted to curl a fist around myself, my fingers began to spasm and my arms began to shake.
I was hard and angry about it.
This wasn’t fucking fair.
Letting out a frustrated breath, I swung my legs over the bed. It took them several moments to cooperate enough for me to stand, and my knees wobbled like Jell-O while my toes would barely lift off the floor as I made my way toward the hallway.
I needed water or tea or…heck, a fifth of whiskey, maybe. I was under current orders to avoid drinking, but at this point, what did I care? I didn’t want this disorder to steal everything from me, but it felt like it was.
Bit by bit, all my joys were being stripped away. Bit by bit, I was losing access to everything that made me, well…me.
My throat felt tight, and I breathed through it, pressing my forehead to the doorjamb.
As I stood there, the visions of a nonfuture began to fade, and Nash replaced them.
Nash, sleep-soft in the mornings with his short hair smashed in weird patterns from his pillow.
His eyes were often heavy-lidded—from insomnia and nightmares, I suspected—but he never, ever failed to have a smile for me. Not once.
Would his hands be warm if he ever reached for me, if he ever pulled me close and breathed into the crook of my neck before turning his head up to kiss me? Would they be powerful and strong, holding me upright when my legs failed so he could grip my cock and stroke in ways I couldn’t anymore?
Would he whisper in my ear? Make my knees quake with pleasure as he murmured all the filthy, feral things he wanted to do to me? Or would he be sweet, making my toes curl and my stomach swoop?
Knowing him, it would be everything. Filthy-sweet nothings in whispers ghosting across my skin. And his lips would be so soft, his teeth sharp, hands clever, fingers so talented they’d have me coming before he was ever inside me.
My dick kicked against my pajama pants, a wet spot growing. I reached down and gave myself a single rub with the heel of a shaking hand when suddenly there was a shadow a few feet away.
I let out a sharp cry, attempting to move backward, but my uncooperative legs tangled together, and I went down. My eyes shut and I braced myself for the crash, but instead I met a firm grip—slightly painful still, but not nearly as bad as it would have been if I’d hit the floor.
“Shit.” Nash’s voice was a thick rumble. “Forest, oh my god. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
I was so in my head that I almost missed that. Sweetheart. My tongue felt glued to the roof of my mouth.
“Forest,” Nash said again. “You okay?”
I took a breath as he pulled me tight against his body to lift me up. “Yeah. I, uh…” And then I noticed that I still had a raging erection and now it was pressed against him, notched against his thigh.
Oh god, kill me now. Please.
Nash swallowed thickly and glanced down before his eyes darted up toward the ceiling. “Um…”
“Ignore that, please,” I begged.
He took a single step back, giving enough space between us for Jesus—as my youth group leader used to say during our yearly socials.
He bit his lip, and I hated it because he somehow looked even hotter when he was embarrassed. After a long beat, I realized he was still holding me. And I realized that if he let go, I’d fall again.
This. Was. Mortifying.
“Can you, ah…help me to my bed? My legs don’t seem to want to work right.”
Nash nodded, then glanced down at my chest and arms where I was clinging to him. My grip was weak and my hands were shaking even worse now. “Is that where you were heading?”
“No,” I admitted as he all but lifted me into his arms and walked me back toward the bed. “I was going to get some water.” Or booze. “I was having a, ah…a bad night.”
He sat me on the edge, and my body sagged in relief. My hands were still kind of wiggly, but I kept them tucked in my lap, though the uncontrollable friction on my cock wasn’t helping matters. Especially since Nash was shirtless.
“What can I do?”
I burst into laughter. I couldn’t help myself. “Nothing. Trust me.”
He knelt in front of me and gently elbowed my thighs apart so he could fit better between them. I had no idea why he was getting so close, but I didn’t want to fight him. The heat off his body felt so good.
“I’m very good at helping people, you know,” he murmured.
I let out a high, tight laugh. “Yeah. I know. But this isn’t a problem you can solve.”
“Your legs? Your arms?”
I let out a puff of air. My head felt a little foggy, and god, it was like all my social filters had abandoned me because I said, “My dick.”
He sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “Oh.”
“I…I can’t…” I growled and shook my head, trying to make a fist, but all I could manage was to close my fingers in toward my palm.
“I haven’t been able to, you know, since this started getting worse.
” I lifted a floppy hand into the air, then let it drop.
“Even when I’m feeling fine, every time I try, my arms just stop working. ”
His eyes went soft. Sad. A little pity, but mostly sympathy. His hands touched my shoulders, then dragged down to my wrists, steady like a ballast. “Forest,” he muttered softly.
Something warm bloomed in my stomach—the erection that should have been flagging by now harder than ever. I swallowed thickly and couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Let me help.”
“You— You can’t help me with this.”
He laughed softly, releasing one wrist to tip my chin up. Our eyes met, and I could see something in his gaze—something heavy and hot and needy. Or maybe I was just imagining things. Then he leaned in close. “I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
A small laugh burst out of my chest. “I’m sure you do, but…you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I— It’s…” Too much? Too intimate? Crossing lines we can never walk back?
He squeezed my wrist again. “If I asked you to marry me, you have to believe I’m more than willing to touch your cock.”
God, the way he said that. I’d been out of the closet for so long, but growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere made it hard to ever voice those things aloud.
Finding the one other queer kid in school was easy.
Finding the courage to do anything besides eye-fuck and trade silent hand jobs in the locker room was harder.
How was Nash so…so open? So at ease?
There was truth to his words, and my throat burned with the need to moan his name. I finally met his gaze again, something in me snapping. He was right—if I was willing to marry him, I had to be willing to get closer to him. And a lack of desire wasn’t the problem.
It was the potential for regret.
What if he realized what a mess I was and wished he could take it back? But that wasn’t like him, and I knew that.
I took a deep breath, then nodded.
His hand moved to my jaw, thumb coasting over my stubble with a quiet rasping sound. “I need you to say it, Forest. I need you to tell me what you want.”