4. Adrian
ADRIAN
E xiting the room while Jesse undresses seems unnecessary, but I need the five minutes to get my shit under control.
Fuck, he’s sexy.
I hadn’t put it together when Wren had talked to me earlier. She’d said make sure you take good care of my brother . Would she still feel the same if she knew just how good we’d been a month ago?
I packed up my life a few hours from here for a chance to work at Mountain Side Salon and Spa. And despite the interview being more like an interrogation, Merrick had offered me the job on the spot. It was a hell of a gamble but it had paid off.
Big time.
To celebrate, I’d taken myself to a local bar, bought myself a drink, and hit it off with a gorgeous stranger. Sexy and strong, charming and delicious. Losing myself in Jesse was better than toasting the finest champagne.
“How about a wager?”
A wager.
His words bring me back to the present as I glance at the clock— two minutes. I can do this. I can totally do this.
If I win, he has to sing karaoke on Thursday at the bar where we met, and if he wins I agree to go to his family’s land and ride a horse. The thought makes me shudder, and while this should be easy—it’s been a long time since I popped a random boner—I’m not so confident right now.
Because I didn’t know my client was my hookup—the man I’d been dreaming about and jerking off to—and now all I want is to have my hands on him.
Fuck.
Time’s up.
Inhaling a steadying breath, I gently knock on the door and take the answering grunt as he’s ready.
The room is exactly as I left it except now there’s a neat pile of clothes on the chair in the corner, a pair of work boots tucked under it, and a gloriously naked man face down on my table with the blanket haphazardly over his waist.
“I’m going to start at your shoulders and work down, all right? I need you to tell me if it’s too much pressure or not enough.”
“Fine,” he mumbles as I start my routine, ignoring the way I can still smell his cologne over the massage oil.
The first few swipes of my hands are easy, my brain switching into autopilot as I listen to the way he groans and the sudden intake of breath. His body is tense, his muscles bunching and flexing as I move down his back, but I’m not sure if it’s because he’s in pain or because it’s me.
“Are you doing okay?” I rasp, my voice huskier than I anticipated.
“Sure,” he says wryly but I can hear the discomfort in his tone.
“Is it too much?”
“It’s fine.”
“That’s not how this works,” I say evenly, trying like hell not to smack his ass because he’s being difficult and he’d deserve it.
Don’t even go there.
“I can take the pain.”
“Does it feel good working through the pain toward relief, or is it pain just for the sake of being in pain?”
He’s quiet for a moment, my touch gentling before he sighs. “It’s a little too much above my hip; the bruising is mostly gone but it’s still tender down my left side.”
“All right,” I whisper, moving the blanket to uncover more of him and swallowing the rush of desire when I expose his ass cheek and all down his leg.
Good God, this man is beautiful.
“Are we supposed to talk?” he asks, making me chuckle and helping me refocus as I follow the lines of his body, working the muscles, trying and failing to ignore all the little breathy noises he’s making.
I want to help him, to provide relief and soothe his pain, but none of that takes away from the fact that I know what it feels like to be inside him, to dig my fingers into his flesh as I fuck him boneless.
Breathless.
The man who was only meant to be an indulgence.
“Do you want to talk?” My voice is nothing short of strained.
“I’m still trying to decide if I’m pissed or not.”
“About what?”
“I hate surprises,” he mutters, my ministrations slowing as I digest that. “It’s all of it—the name and that you were in town on business. ” He scoffs. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“You didn’t want to see me again?” I mean it to be flippant, but it sounds accusatory even to my own ears.
Pushing himself up on his elbows, Jesse turns his head and stares at me over his shoulder, making my breath catch at the intensity swirling in his chocolate-colored eyes.
Dammit.
“You rode the line between telling the truth and lying,” he says, my brain stuck unhelpfully on the word rode. “I told you I live here. It never occurred to you that we’d run into each other again?”
Holding my hands out to the sides in surrender, I shrug.
“I thought we might— hoped we might—but I didn’t think this would be where it happened.
We didn’t exactly exchange numbers, since you made it clear that wasn’t an option, and hell, now that we’re here—you could’ve told me your family owns half the damn town. ”
“We do not and what the hell does that have to do with anything anyway?” he snaps, rolling to the side as he swings his feet over the edge of the table. The only part of him covered by the blanket is a small section of his thigh, the rest of him gloriously exposed.
And hard.
But it doesn’t matter because I am too.
Fuck me.
Better yet, I just want to fuck him.
Clearing my throat, I let my gaze drop quickly to his lap before meeting his gaze. Growling, he yanks the blanket over himself and points at the bulge in my jeans. “You already lost.”
“But you?—”
“Yeah, well, the bet wasn’t to see if I’d get hard—that was practically a given.” The look he gives me is unhinged, a mix of desire and need that’s absolutely intoxicating.
A little too late, I realize that aside from the sexual tension threatening to suffocate us, I’m at work.
And I like my job.
“Jesse,” I start, gripping the back of my neck as I stare at the ground because right now, in this moment, Jesse Sterling is still my client.
“What?” he says, letting the blanket drop and pushing past me to where his clothes are piled on the chair.
It takes everything in me not to flat-out stare at him as he shoves one leg and then the other into his boxer briefs, the tight black fabric doing nothing to tamp down the way I want to bend him over my table and fuck him the way we both need.
Glancing at the clock, my heart sinks—his time isn’t up.
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell my sister. ”
“What, you’re a mind reader now too?” I scowl as he pulls his shirt back on, but he just grins—a slow, sexy one that tell me he knows exactly what he does to me.
“Nah, but that’s what I’d be worried about if I’d fucked my boss’s brother.”
I don’t correct him and say that Merrick Ellis is technically my boss—it wouldn’t matter anyway.
“So now what?”
“Now,” he says, getting close enough that I could brush my lips against his if I just lean in, “you get to meet the horses.”