Chapter Eight #2
“I might have something for that,” she said, backtracking into the kitchen.
In the powder room beyond it, she opened the mirrored cabinet and gathered her essential oils.
In a small medicine cup, she mixed an ounce of jojoba, a carrier oil that could be applied directly to the skin, with fifteen drops of ginger.
Rogue twined around her ankles, meowing irritably from the back of her throat.
Sassy glanced into the hallway and found Riot hovering, ears forward, tail milling. She let out a laugh. “He just wants to play,” she told the cat. “Go. Be social.”
Rogue sat on the bathmat, staring up at her with insouciant eyes as she wound her tail around her paws.
“You’re going to have to get used to him,” Sassy lectured. “And look at him. He’s clearly harmless.”
The noise Rogue made could only be classified as a growl of discontentment.
“Be nice,” Sassy said, stepping around her. She went back to the dining room, pulling up a chair next to Nick’s.
“What’s that?” he asked, frowning at the medicine cup.
Pleased to see his plate half-empty, she answered, “Massage oil. May I?”
He nodded when she indicated removing his ACE wrap.
She did so with the utmost care. Laying his arm palm up on the tabletop, she performed gentle swipes with her thumbs across the swollen area. “Does that hurt?”
Despite a mouthful of food, his eyelids were at half-mast. “I can’t really feel anything right now.”
“Okay. I’m going to dab a little bit of oil near the inside of your elbow to make sure you don’t have a skin reaction.”
He watched as she rubbed the liquid in a small circle over his skin with the pad of her forefinger.
She waited while he finished eating. When a rash didn’t occur, she felt confident enough to go forward with the massage.
“Hold still,” she told him. “I don’t want to jostle your wrist, even if you can’t feel anything. ”
His lips twitched. “I thought I was the one with med training.”
“I learned a thing or two in the House of Bly,” she reminded him, referring to her artful, holistic mother. “Close your eyes. Try to relax.”
“Any laxer and I’ll be drooling on myself,” he said but shut his eyes in easy obedience.
Careful not to put too much pressure on the injured area, she used both thumbs to sweep the oil across the swollen surface, rubbing it in generously. She didn’t know if it would work, but she had to do something other than watch him suffer.
His chin drooped toward his chest and his respirations slowed.
His shoulders lowered not in defeat but in relief.
The smell of the ginger mingled with the scent of hardworking man.
The musk of clean sweat and earth didn’t always come from swinging a hammer.
Sometimes it came in the form of a sweet-faced paramedic who didn’t quit.
Quitting wasn’t in Nick’s vocabulary. He gave one hundred percent to those around him each and every day, even if it drained him.
Even if he had nothing left when he returned home.
His head came to rest on her shoulder. Though the oil had already been absorbed into his skin, she didn’t stop the movement of her thumbs as she worked them down his forearm, over the heel of his hand and back up.
He groaned deep in his throat. “Feels amazing,” he whispered. Then he did something that made her thumbs stop working and her heart wobble.
He turned his nose into her hair. There, he buried it and carried a long inhale deep into his lungs.
He was smelling her hair.
“You smell so good,” he breathed.
Her mouth dropped. “L-like paint?”
“Mmm. And wood stain.” He sniffed again, like she was in heat and they were both wolves living wild in the canyons. “And pomegranates.”
His voice had dropped to a low rasp. “Oh,” she said, unable to form anything more intelligible than that.
He nuzzled his nose through her hair and found the line of her throat. Then she felt his mouth against her skin and nearly lost her senses. Her blood rushed to a boil, her heart thrummed and her belly ached with what she feared was longing. “Nick…”
He stiffened. A moment later, he cursed and pulled back, lifting his head. “Goddamn it, Sassy,” he said, not meeting her eye. “I’m sorry.”
She saw the color in his cheeks and mustered a reassuring smile.
“You’re high on muscle relaxants,” she said, trying desperately to make light of what he’d done…
what she felt. “I think I can forgive you.” Still, she carefully lifted her touch from his wrist and helped him back into his ACE wrap. “You should probably rest now.”
“Right,” he said, bobbing a nod, his eyes on the floor between them.
“Can you get to bed?”
“Sure.” He stood slowly, using his free arm to take his weight. He took a step and tripped over the chair leg.
She made a dive, throwing herself under his shoulder to catch him. “You good?” she wheezed. He was built like a linebacker and weighed as much.
“I told you. I got this,” he declared and promptly lurched toward the wrong exit.
“You got this, all right.” Slinging her arm around his waist, she propelled him toward the archway leading out into the living room. “Bedroom’s this way, dungeon master.”
He tilted his head toward her. “Did you just lay a D&D reference on me?”
“I did.”
He whistled. His cheek rested against the top of her head. “That’s hot.”
“Okay, you need to stop talking,” she warned, guiding him around the couch.
They had to thread the needle through a freshly painted doorway.
Her bedroom was to the left. She led him past the hall bathroom to the right into the guest room.
“I’m mostly using it for storage until I can get all my projects completed.
” She made him sit on the edge of the bed.
Riot hopped onto the quilt next to him, lavishing Nick with ear kisses.
If he couldn’t walk to the bedroom, Sassy doubted he could take off his own pants.
Oh, boy.
“I’ll be back,” she said and nearly stepped on Rogue at the entrance to the bedroom.
She sought Nick’s overnight bag and brought it and the dog bed to the guest room.
She arranged the bed for Riot, adding a blanket on top of it because the room felt chilly.
As she pawed through Nick’s clothes in the duffel, she took out what he would need for bed.
By this point, he had sprawled across the quilt, his arms around Riot, who was planted halfway across his chest, sniffing every inch of his uniform shirt. She wondered if this was routine for them.
“Who’s my smoochie?” Nick cooed as Riot licked his chin lovingly. “Are you my smoochie-poo?”
Sassy cleared her throat. “I’m going to take off your shoes,” she announced.
He lifted a hand in acknowledgment before going back to telling Riot what a good smoochie-poo he was.
She pulled each shoe off by the heel, laid them side by side against the wall. His socks joined them.
She eyed his tree-trunk thighs underneath his uniform pants and pursed her lips. Keep your thoughts clean, Haseya, she schooled herself before pressing one knee into the bed. She found the buckle of his belt and started to navigate it.
Nick stopped cooing. He tilted his head to see her around Riot’s large one. “Whatcha doing?”
She gritted her teeth. “Undressing you.”
He raised a brow. “You’ve never done that before.”
“Nope.” She finally worked the buckle loose.
Next, she attacked the clasp of his pants.
Then the zipper. If she found Marvel superhero tighty-whities under his duds, she was going to tease him for the rest of his life.
Maybe that would boot her sudden attraction to him to the curb.
Superhero undies would surely make her libido remember that Nick was her friend. Nothing more, nothing less.
Or would they? Her pulse skipped. Her mind whirled. The way he watched her… Damn it, it wasn’t helping.
Ah hell. He could be wearing Sesame Street underwear and she wouldn’t find him any less doable at this point, would she?
Her love for Nick had been unconditional when it was platonic.
Now that all her adult lady parts were seeing him in a new, inconvenient light, it wasn’t going to be any different.
To put herself out of her misery, she yanked the beltline of his pants down, careful not to take his underwear—thank the maker, he wasn’t going commando—with them. “Lift your hips,” she said when the pants didn’t give.
He lifted them in a half-hearted bridge pose, laughing openly and fully when Riot rolled up his chest and landed on his face.
She managed to wrest the pants free from his hips and kept tugging until they were at his knees.
No superheroes and no kid’s cartoons, she discovered. Just midnight-black boxer briefs made of some soft poly material that made her want to touch…
No touching. We are not touching. Even if said boxer briefs hugged attributes she hadn’t known he was packing… She saw now why Nick’s past girlfriends had found their sexy time with him satisfying. Why they practically glowed around him after nights well spent.
She was thinking about Nick’s penis. Nick Malone’s penis. And she was interested. Intrigued, one might say.
Her face was so flushed, she felt like she’d stuck her head inside a boiler. Perhaps it was the fires of hell warning her she’d gone too far. Get thy mind out of the gutter while ye still can, Haseya Colton…
“Sassy?”
She finally yanked his pant legs free and almost fell back against the wall with the effort. “Hmph?”
Nick was watching her again with soft eyes. “Thanks for this.”
Don’t do that. She wanted to scream it at him. Instead, she extracted his wallet, keys and phone from his pockets and arranged them on the nightstand. She caught Rogue’s narrowed stare. The cat was now sitting on top of the dresser across the room, judging. “Don’t mention it,” she said.
“You’re my lifeboat.”