5. MAX #2
The door opened the rest of the way, revealing Lucas, standing there in only a pair of black boxer-briefs.
He was slim, but there was the hint of a six-pack visible on his abdomen.
Not in a lives-in-the-gym way, but more a in-generally-good-shape way.
His arms had definition, and his thighs were… hngh.
I might have stared a little. Or maybe more than a little. Enough, at least, that he paused and looked down at himself self-consciously. “I, uh…” He cleared his throat. “I figured I’m gonna get wet doing this, so I decided to save my clothes. Do you mind?”
“Mind?” My voice came out high-pitched, and it was my turn to clear my throat. “Mind?” I said again, lower this time. “Nah, that makes sense.” And it did. It just also gave me a lot of eye candy that I was definitely not going to jerk off over later. “So, uh, how should we do this?”
“I think we just reverse how we got you in,” he said slowly, coming forward and adjusting my wheelchair’s position slightly to allow himself to get closer to the shower entry.
He avoided looking at anything below my eyes as he talked.
“I scoop you up like a princess -” We both snorted at that “- and pivot you into the chair. Tell me when you’re ready. ”
“Let’s do it.” Better to get this over with quickly, before I got any more fixated on what might or might not be a growing bulge in Lucas’s boxers.
Nodding, Lucas leaned forward and slipped his arms around me, hoisting me up. My wet skin slipped a little, and he tightened his grip reflexively, while I threw an arm around his neck in alarm. “Oops!” he said. “I’ve got you, I swear.” And true enough, his grip was now tight around me.
Before I could think of a reply, he was putting me down in my chair. Then he pulled a towel out of a cabinet and handed it to me.
I scrubbed the worst of the water out of my hair and laid my damp towel over my lap, then looked up at Lucas and found him watching me.
He quickly looked away before I could catch his eye, and I said nothing about the look.
The man had just gotten nearly naked to help me; he was entitled to a look or two if he wanted.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice sounding more gravelly than usual.
Now that I was no longer precariously off-balance, my cock was getting interested in the view.
I was thankful for the towel covering me.
“I know that was a pain in the ass. Not to mention awkward.”
He smiled and shook his head, taking another towel and wiping down his arms. “No problem. It was my fault we didn’t have a plan for this, anyway. Next time you’ll be able to do it all yourself.”
That sounded damn good, other than the part where I wouldn’t get to see him in his underwear again.
I didn’t say that out loud, of course; I just returned his smile and shifted in my chair so I could stick my towel under my ass.
It was uncomfortable to sit in a wet spot that wasn’t the fun kind.
We stared at each other for a second, neither of us knowing what to say, and then I bobbed a little nod at him and wheeled myself out of the bathroom and into my room.
Once there, I finished drying myself and pulled on another pair of slit pajama pants.
Once I had my bandages and boot off and the swelling had gone down, I was going to have to go shopping for a new wardrobe given that practically all my pants had been cut open by this point.
I transferred to the bed and wiped the moisture off the wheelchair’s seat, then transferred back into the chair with shaking arms. I had gotten better at moving myself in and out of the chair, but I wasn’t used to doing it repeatedly in quick succession, especially after having used a lot of my arm strength to shower.
A tap came at my bedroom door. “Max? You good?”
“Fine,” I called back, an image of him standing at my door covered only in boxer-briefs and a towel popping into my mind. And there went my dick again. I pressed a hand against it, willing it to go down. “Just getting dressed.” Did my voice sound a little high-pitched again? Shit.
There was a shuffling noise, as if he’d laid a hand on the door. “Ok. Shout if you need any help. I’m going to start dinner.”
Oh, I guessed he had already gotten dressed.
Pity, that. “Sounds good,” I told him as I wheeled toward the door.
When I opened it, he was already halfway down the hallway, wearing flannel pants and a loose t-shirt with his department’s logo on the back.
I followed him down the hallway and into the living room, then stopped in the kitchen doorway. “What are we having?”
He turned to smile at me. “I thought I’d do penne alla vodka with some chicken breast.” His eyes flicked to my bare chest—oops, I’d forgotten a shirt in my haste to get out of the bedroom—and then back up to my face.
His smile tightened a notch and he self-consciously released his hair from its bun then immediately gathered it back into a ponytail.
“Should be about thirty minutes.” He turned his back on me and reached for the pasta pot, and I shamelessly looked at his clothed ass and proceeded to remember what it looked like almost bare.
“Yum.” Was I talking about dinner or his butt? Who knew? I gave him a salute and backed out of the doorway back into the living room, settling my chair alongside the couch and reaching for the remote. I started an episode of Natural Detective, my newest obsession, and relaxed with a sigh.
A few minutes later, Lucas joined me and sat on the couch. “Ooh, who got murdered this time?” he asked, gesturing at the TV.
I grinned. “A rich old bastard with a young trophy wife. Three guesses who killed him. We don’t even need to watch to the end for this one.”
He cocked his head to the side, considering that. “Well, the easy answer would be the wife,” he mused, taking my prompt seriously, “but it could also be the wife’s boyfriend. There’s always a boyfriend. Or it could be someone else, and the show is going for the fake-out.”
We watched in companionable silence for a while, me doing some PT stretches with my stump while I sat there.
Moving it around was getting easier, and not just because the swelling was on its way down.
I could also feel it getting stronger, the muscles that hadn’t needed to be as strong before building themselves up as my body got used to the new normal.
“How’s that feel?” he asked, turning to look at me during a lull in the show as I raised my leg again.
I let my leg drop under careful control and grunted with the exertion. “Good. Like it’s getting better.” I gestured to my casted leg. “Now if this one could just get in on the act.”
“Soon enough,” he said with that gentle smile, then stood up.
“I’m gonna see if the water is boiling yet.
” He disappeared into the kitchen, and I didn’t let myself watch his ass sway as he walked.
I needed to stop creeping on the guy who had kindly let me into his home and life out of the goodness of his heart.
“When do you work next?” I called to him as I heard the rattle of pasta being dropped into the pot. Lucas’s shifts were erratic, sometimes coming overnight and sometimes during the day. I had no idea how he ever knew if he was coming or going, let alone how he stayed awake enough to treat patients.
He popped his head out the kitchen doorway. “4am tonight. And I’ll be out until about 5 in the evening. You’ll probably be on your own for dinner if I conk out right away.”
Did I mention he pulled twelve-hour shifts? The man was a machine. “I can handle dinner,” I told him, resolving to leave him some leftovers in the fridge so he had something to eat when he did wake up.
“I’ll be up in time to take you to PT the next day, I promise.” He turned back into the kitchen and pulled another pot off the pot rack with one hand and reached for something in a can with the other.
It would be my second PT appointment since I got out of the hospital.
The first had been less than fun, and I’d nearly snapped Lucas’s head off in the car on the way home.
Somehow I didn’t expect appointment number two to be much better.
“I didn’t doubt you.” And I didn’t; the man was the soul of dependability and tolerance.
I resolved not to take my post-PT frustrations out on him this time around.
I listened to him clatter around in the kitchen, opening cans and cartons and stirring things.
He was humming quietly to himself, a song I didn’t recognize, and I realized suddenly that I’d been staring at the kitchen with a soft smile on my face rather than watching the show that was still playing on the TV.
Making an effort to clear my expression, I focused back on the show, discovering that the murderer had indeed been the wife’s boyfriend and the detective had deduced that by observing that his left shoe had a scuff that matched one on the wall in the murder room.
Lucas was my host, not my boyfriend. I needed to remember that.