Chapter 7
GRIFFIN
The weather is turning. It’s gray and rainy. It feels right. None of this is working out the way I’d hoped.
Jess wants nothing to do with me.
That much is crystal clear after a week of physical therapy sessions. She treats me like a piece of equipment. When she’s around me, she’s efficient, impersonal, and necessary. Her hands on my knee are clinical perfection. Her voice is pure professional detachment.
But there’s nothing clinical about the way my body responds.
Every session is its own special torture.
She leans close to check my form, and I catch a hint of her shampoo, still that same floral scent that used to cling to my pillows.
Her fingers press into my thigh, and I have to bite back a groan.
She guides my leg through resistance exercises, her palm warm against my calf, and all the blood in my body rushes straight to the bulge between my legs.
I’ve taken to wearing compression shorts under my athletic gear. It’s the only way to hide how hard she makes me. Every. Single. Session.
She doesn’t notice. Or maybe she does and she just doesn’t care. Either way, she never acknowledges the tension that crackles between us like a live wire. She doesn’t acknowledge the way my dick strains against my shorts every time she touches me.
It’s driving me insane.
Not because I don’t deserve it, I do. But because underneath all that ice, I can still see her.
My Jess. The woman who used to wake me up with her mouth wrapped around me.
The woman who’d ride me until we were both senseless, who’d beg me to take her harder.
The woman who let me push her over the edge so beautifully with my name on her lips.
She’s still in there. I’d stake my life on it.
Today, I’m lying on my back on the treatment table while she guides my leg through resistance exercises. The position puts me at her mercy. I’m flat on my back and vulnerable while she stands over me with complete control.
The metaphor isn’t lost on me.
She’s wearing those fitted scrubs again.
The navy blue ones that hug every curve she’s got.
Her tits strain against the fabric every time she breathes.
Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, exposing the column of her neck.
I used to bite that neck. I used to leave marks that she’d have to cover with concealer, both of us grinning like idiots.
“Push against my hand,” she instructs. “Harder. I want to feel you working.”
She’s trying to kill me.
My dick twitches with desire. I push against her hand and try to focus on the burn in my muscles instead of the way her words sound like something she’d moan in bed.
Her fingers wrap around my ankle. She’s holding my leg at a ninety-degree angle. Her other hand presses against my thigh, just above my knee. She’s inches from where I’m straining against my shorts. It’s clinical and necessary… And absolutely fucking destroying me.
“Good.” She folds her arms across her chest. “Again.”
I push again. She leans into the resistance. Her body angles forward and from this angle I can see straight down her scrub top. The swell of her breasts over the top of her pink lace bra nearly makes me come undone. She always did like pretty underwear. I used to peel it off her with my teeth.
I close my eyes and think about defensive formations. It doesn’t work. I move onto cold showers and Landon’s smug face. I think of anything except how badly I want to yank her down onto this table and find out if she still tastes as sweet as I remember.
“You’re tensing in your hip. Relax.”
Easy for you to say. You’re not the one with a raging hard-on.
Her hand moves higher on my thigh, adjusting my position, and her pinky grazes the edge of my shorts. I can’t help the sound that escapes my throat. It’s somewhere between a grunt and a groan. It makes her hands freeze.
Our eyes meet.
For one charged second, something flickers in her gaze.
I think it’s heat or hunger. It’s the same desperate wanting that’s been eating me alive for weeks.
Her eyes dart down, just for a split second, and I know she sees exactly what she does to me.
The thick outline of my manhood straining against my shorts is impossible to hide.
Her cheeks flush crimson.
Then she blinks, and just like that the mask slides back into place.
“Five more reps.” Her voice is slightly unsteady. “Then we’re done for today.”
I do the reps. I don’t push my luck. But I don’t take my eyes off her either, and I catch her watching me when she thinks I’m not looking.
Her gaze traces over my chest and lingers on my tattoo with her signature beneath it.
Then she drops lower, just for a heartbeat, to where I’m still painfully hard.
Her eyes drop for half a second and that’s all it takes to give her away. She wants me. She can deny it all she wants, but her body remembers mine.
I just have to figure out how to get her to stop fighting it.