Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I was so screwed.
On my knees in front of him, feeling all thankful just because he touched my back?
My cock was hard as a rock now, aching between my legs, begging for contact.
I didn’t know what my deal was with Gray Gilman, but I had never done anything so goddamn desperate in my life.
I shifted my knees on the rug, marveling at the sequence of events that had led me to where I was right now.
Gray moved his hand lower, skating down to the small of my back before plunging under the waistband of my shorts. He grabbed my ass cheek firmly, giving it a tight squeeze.
“God, this ass is impressive,” he murmured.
“I worked hard for it,” I said.
He gave it one final squeeze and then removed his hand, moving to crouch down in front of me instead.
I looked up at him, my heart beating like a drum in my chest.
There was something in his eyes. Usually he looked like a hunter, out on the field shrewdly looking for prey.
But right now, there was something softer there.
“You’re nervous,” he said finally.
“Had a pretty fucked up evening,” I said.
“You know what? Stand up. Come with me.”
He stood up, reaching a hand down for me. I ignored it, standing up without grabbing his hand.
My resistance made him smile a little, and my chest stirred with satisfaction.
He walked a few steps over toward the door that led to the attached bathroom. It was small but just as clean and peaceful as the rest of the place, with a little frosted window that let in the last of the evening light. There was a glass-walled shower at the edge of the bathroom and Gray went over, turning on the spray of the shower.
“Strip.”
“Always telling me what to do,” I mumbled, but I was already taking off my clothes.
The truth was that a hot shower sounded like absolute fucking heaven to me right now.
I didn’t bother hiding that I was staring at Gray as he stripped down, too.
He turned to get in the shower and I let my gaze linger on the back of his thighs, his perfect fucking ass, and the dips and curves of his back.
“Wait. The panther isn’t your only tattoo,” I said.
He had a small one right at the top of his spine. A feather, falling through air, only a couple of inches across. It was just as beautiful as his other one, but very different, with thinner lines and a more graceful art style in comparison to the thick, bold style of the panther on his arm.
“Got this one just six months ago,” he told me. I stepped into the shower behind him.
“Any special reason?”
He turned toward me, the water falling over him and wetting his hair. “When I found out my mom died.”
He may as well have just dropped a brick on my heart.
I blinked.
“What?”
He nodded, turning into the water as it coated his skin. “Was a long time coming. She certainly wasn’t well.”
“Christ, Gray. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
For fuck’s sake.
His mother had died only six months ago, and he hadn’t mentioned anything about it.
Even if he wasn’t close to her anymore, I couldn’t imagine the complex grief he must have been feeling, in the background, all the time.
“You want vanilla santal or rosemary eucalyptus?” he said, tapping on the bottles of body wash on the little ledge in the shower.
I blinked, trying to come back into reality. “Um. Rosemary, I guess.”
He was already back to talking about body wash and I was reeling from what he’d just told me.
I wanted to comfort him, but I had no idea how to do that for someone like him.
What kind of comfort could I even provide?
I watched his eyes, looking down at the bottle and pouring some of the gel onto his hands, lathering it in his palms. He moved to the side and motioned for me to get under the water, and as I stepped under the spray, he started working the gel onto my skin.
“This okay?” he asked as he kneaded his fingers into my muscle between my shoulder blades.
“Holy fuck,” I murmured, my eyes fluttering shut.
He wasn’t just working the body wash over me, he was full-on massaging my shoulders, deep and slow.
“Too hard?”
“No. Good. So fucking good. You have a calling in massage therapy if you don’t become a lawyer.”
I leaned against the wall of the shower as he massaged me, working his knuckles into the area just below my neck.
“Have you ever gotten a sports massage?” he asked.
“Not as much as I should.”
For the next five minutes he worked his way along my back, getting every tense spot in my muscles. He may as well have been hypnotizing me. I dropped into a sub-verbal state, existing purely just to have him touch me, the most relaxing thing I’d felt in months.