Chapter 6
Zelda
When I packed my things and left home this morning, I hadn't started with a detailed idea of how this day would shake out. I wasn't a detailed idea kind of girl. I jumped first and worked my ass off to build the parachute before I hit the ground.
But even if I'd plotted this day down to the second, learning the sound bones and joints made when they popped into place wouldn't have hit the list. Breaking into Ash's apartment because he was too drugged to find his keys wouldn't have been on there either.
Realistically, we could've asked one of his neighbors to call the property manager or returned to the lobby to find a security guard, but this guy was looped off his ass and I needed the bathroom, ASAP.
Busting our way in was the fastest solution.
Once the lock disengaged, I wedged the door open with our luggage.
If I'd learned anything from ushering him out of the urgent care clinic with his shoulder freshly set and cinched in a sling, it was that I'd end up supporting some of his weight and I couldn't do that while moving luggage or holding doors.
"This is where I live," Ash bellowed to the empty hallway. "And you're here too, Zelda."
I swung my arm around his waist and urged him away from the wall. "No lies detected."
"How did you know where I lived?" I deposited him on a bench just inside the door, grabbed our bags, and locked the door behind me. His head thunked against the wall and he huffed out a quiet, "Fucking ouch."
"Your address is on your luggage. Also your license, which I needed for the insurance paperwork," I called as I went in search of a bathroom. "Stay right there. Do not move."
I breathed a giant sigh of relief when I pushed open a door and found a sleek bathroom on the other side. I should've drawn some inferences about Ash or his apartment from the elegant fixtures and wallpaper that looked like real grass cloth but my bladder was too full for that kind of thinking.
Once I was finished, I washed my hands under the motion-activated faucet. Now, that required no inference. I was drying my hands on a dark green towel when the door burst open and Ash stumbled in, his feet bare.
"Do I want to know what happened to your shoes and socks?" I asked.
"Zelda, when did you get here?"
"You've been alone less than two minutes.
How did you forget everything and lose your shoes in that time?
" With his only free hand, he wrestled his belt open, worked his zipper down, reached into his trousers.
"What—what are you doing?" I whirled around before seeing anything but I couldn't help but overhear what came next.
"I don't know what you're paying me but I'd like a raise. "
The toilet flushed behind me and the faucet switched on. "Name your price, Zelda. Whatever it is, I'll double it."
I peeked over my shoulder, found his trousers gaping open but the essentials stowed away. "That seems fair," I said. "Let's get you into bed, okay? You should sleep while you can't feel anything."
Ash reached for my hand, his still dripping wet, and brought it to his jaw. He was scruffy, the day's stubble thicker and darker than it was when I first sat down beside him.
"I can feel this." He dragged my palm up the carved granite of his jaw, rasping over his whiskers.
He was rough and hard, and watching me. I held my breath, watched him watching me.
He lifted his other hand to my face, cupped my jaw.
"I can feel this too." His gaze dropped to my lips and lingered there.
When he blinked up at me, he sifted his fingers through my hair. "I can feel you."
This wasn't on my list either.
"Yeah, it seems like you can but you'll be feeling something different in the morning. Something in your shoulder, that is. Not—not anywhere else." I pivoted out of this near embrace and herded him out of the bathroom, into the hall. "Where's your bedroom?"
He paused, flattened his hand on the wall, glanced around. "It's in my apartment."
"Yeah, that's a big help." As we shuffled down the hall, I spotted his shoes and socks, one of each abandoned every few steps.
I almost laughed but shouldering the weight of a two-hundred-and-something-pound man required all my energy.
"Here's the deal, Ashville. When we find your bed, you're going to snuggle up and go to sleep. Agreed?"
"Have you met Kirby yet? He's my pet."
"You…what?" I glanced around, half expecting to be attacked by a creature befitting my new boss. Something like a tarantula or, I didn't know, a ferret. "You have a pet?"
"Yeah. Kirby. He's my three-headed cactus. He stands guard and keeps watch over the kingdom." Ash pointed to the kitchen and yeah, a round cactus with three 'heads' extending from the body sat in a ceramic pot on the countertop. "Do we have any ice cream?"
We crossed a living room straight out of a home décor magazine and traveled down another hallway. "Not sure, sweetie. I can't imagine you keeping ice cream in the freezer. Seems about as off-vibe as you eating cookies for breakfast," I replied, kicking open a door. "Oh, thank god, it's a bedroom."
Ash leaned into me for a long, heavy moment where I let myself welcome that contact.
It was new and foreign and amazing. And it'd been so long.
Years and years without a touch like this had been almost enough to convince me I didn't need it the way I needed light and air. I needed it more than anything.
Then, he rasped, "I have missed my bed so much." He stumbled away from me, his limbs slow and uncoordinated as he weaved toward the bed. Before I could stop him, he flopped onto his back and promptly shouted, "Fuuuuuucking ouch."
"Okay, okay. Easy there," I whispered, rushing to his side. "Let's get you situated."
Putting a grown man to bed was about as simple as swaddling a bullfrog. He wiggled and rolled, and struggled to find a comfortable position. I almost had him there when he said, "Can you take my pants off?"
A shocked laugh burst out of me because yes, a portion of me was extremely interested in more information on that topic but also no, not today, Satan.
He pushed to his feet, wobbled, plopped back on the bed like a baby fawn learning its legs. "Have I mentioned auditing is highly varied work?"
"I don't even know what to say to that, sweetie." I stood between his legs, beckoned him toward me. "Stand up, hold on to me, and then you'll step out. Got it?"
"I need you to get my shirt off too," he said as he followed my orders.
His trousers dropped, the belt clattering as it hit the floor.
That left him in boxers—or briefs. I wasn't about to look.
A thin bit of fabric separated me from confirming the big feet hypothesis and that knowledge was more responsibility than I could manage tonight. "It's strangling me."
"Do you know how dramatic you are when you're drugged?"
"My mother says I'm moody," he said with a perfectly adorable pout. Yes, he was moody.
Before I could get him out of the shirt, I had to free him from the sling and the straps crossing his chest and circling his torso.
That meant navigating tender, swollen skin and proceeding despite his groans and grimaces.
It hurt my heart to put him through this.
"Are you sure you can't deal with the shirt for one night? "
"I don't know how to sleep with clothes on."
"Mmhmm." I nodded, murmured to myself again. "Mmhmm. This is perfectly reasonable information. Nothing about this is unusual, not when compared with the rest of this day."
Once the straitjacket sling was off, I started working the buttons loose at his collar, my touch professional as hell. I refused to let my fingers brush his heated skin or my mind wander to the fact he was nearly naked, in his bedroom, at night, with me.
When I pulled the shirt off his arms, he blew out a sigh of relief, saying, "This is much better."
And then he shoved a hand into his boxers—this time, I looked—and fondled himself for the longest minute of my life. I was too surprised by that move to stop myself from watching.
Yeah, my hypothesis was spot-on. Big feet, big…moods.
"We need to get you into that sling, Ash," I said when he finished reorganizing his man business. "Sit down on the bed so I can reach you. Okay?"
He let out a deep, rattling grandpa yawn as he sat down. "I'm so tired, Zelda."
Grabbing the sling, I tried to remember the proper way to get it on. "I'm sure you are. You have enough drugs in you to take down an elephant."
"I'm not tired from the drugs," he argued. "I'm tired from this whole fucking day. Do you know how it started? Do you know what I got this morning? A text message. Can you even believe that shit?"
"Nope, I cannot believe it." I glanced up from the sling and found Ash tucked into bed, the blankets pooled at his waist. "How am I supposed to reach you over there?" He patted the mattress beside him and I snort-laughed. "Oh, no, no, no, no. No."
He dropped his head back against the pillows. "I'm gonna go to sleep now, Zelda."
"Not without this damn sling," I said. "Don't you remember what the doctor told you? It's important to keep everything steady and immobilized."
He closed his eyes, patted the bed again. "Come here and do it."
And—dammit—I did.
I climbed onto the bed and wedged myself between Ash and the wall of pillows at his back.
It only took me two attempts to get the sling in place and he only howled a string of curses once.
But when I was finished, he shifted, scooping his good arm around my waist and resting his head right between my breasts, and trapped me under the solid mass of his body.
He mumbled a drowsy, "Thank you for everything, Zelda. You saved me today," and that was it. I was in bed with my boss.
I never planned on knowing the sound of bones sliding into place. Never imagined I'd share a bathroom with a man I'd met a handful of hours ago. I never anticipated I'd fall asleep with his head on my chest and his arm wrapped around my waist.
And I never dreamed of waking up to find a woman in the middle of Ash's bedroom, smirking as she said, "You're not Millie."
It seemed this was the one time I couldn't build the parachute before splattering on the ground.