Hide: Downunder Ink Book 2

by Bronwyn Stuart

  His gaze is heated when he stares at me. “It’ll be PG. Mostly.”

  I don’t know what to say. I can flirt outrageously when I want but serious flirting? It’s different.

  When I don’t speak, he looks around my modest living room. “If I move this couch back, there should be enough room.”

  “Okay.”

  I stand and watch him move my furniture. His muscles bulge against the arms of his shirt and his arse is delectable when he bends this way and that. He’s strong. I like that in a man.

  He unfolds the table and clicks all the supports into place, putting his own weight on the top to make sure it’s solid. When he turns to me, my breath catches and I’m suddenly not sure this is the best idea.

  “You’ll have to take your top off,” he tells me.

  I twist my fingers together. “You did buy me dinner first, I guess,” I mumble. My top is tiny enough and I’m never ashamed to show a bit of skin, but this is different. I haven’t undressed for anyone without letters at the end of their medical title for the better part of an entire year.

  Professional. He’s a professional. I’m a professional. I can do this.

  I pull my top off over my head. That leaves my lacy push up bra and short shorts.

  “Lie down on your stomach.”

  I do that too. I hate taking orders from anyone but when he says jump, I jump.

  I put my face into the face-sized hole at the top. It’s padded and the vinyl is warm but not hot. It’s going to hurt like a bitch when I have to peel myself off it at the end.

  He’s moving around but all I can see is my floor, with it’s dust bunnies, and his shoes.

  His voice sounds over my shoulder. “I want to be clear that this is one friend giving another friend a massage. You are not my client or patient. No money will change hands for this. Friends giving friends massages. Got it?”

  “Yep.” Fuck it if my panties don’t flood with heat.

  “This might get weird if you’ve not done it in a while but tell me to stop if it does. I’m going to be touching you all over. Yes?”

  “Yes.” I go to lift my head but he’s undoing my bra strap and pushing the fabric aside. Cool liquid drizzles on my back so I lower it again. “Do you run this warning with all the friends you massage?”

  “They’re not you,” he says softly, but before I can reply he’s tugging my prosthetic off. “You can’t get truly comfortable with this on.”

  I let him do that too and the usual sense of shame, of needing to hide or deflect, doesn’t come. I don’t hide my injury from people because I’m worried what they will see, think. I hide it because I hate telling people how I got it. That’s the shame. Not in the loss, but in the losing. Drink driving is an unforgivable offence in most people’s books. Alcohol impaired my judgement then. I hope it isn’t impairing my judgement now.

  “Before I start, I’ll have to check you over, make sure I’m not going to do more harm than good.” This time he doesn’t wait for me to consent, just starts rubbing lazy circles in the liquid. It must be oil. After a few minutes, his circles get firmer as he glides his hands up and down the length of my spine. He places the heels of his hands against hip bones, almost like he’s testing my pelvis. I’ve had this done before. I’m aligned as much as I can be.

  Next he pushes his fingertips up against the bottom of my bum cheeks. Another alignment test. I have to resist the urge to push back until I’m in the perfect position for doggy. He’d get on the table behind me and… Fuck.

  “Breathe, Jen. Deep breaths. This won’t hurt.”

  My pulse is off the charts crazy and all my lady bits are throbbing. Professional. I’m a fucking professional. I try to calm my thoughts and my body.

  “You also have to relax,” he coaches me. “If you don’t relax, I can’t loosen you up.”

  I groan when he hits a particularly sore spot on my upper thigh, close to the outside of my hip.

  “Where did you get this bruise?” he asks.

  “I think it was when I fell with Trevor.”

  He stills. “You said you weren’t hurt.”

  “I wasn’t. It’s just a bump. I’m fine.”

  “I’ll work around it,” he mutters. His voice is off, tense.

  “If I mentioned it every time something hurt, my sisters would pack me off to the hospital daily.”

  “So, you’re in pain a lot then?”

  Fuck. I shouldn’t have said anything. “Not pain, not really. Mostly discomfort. I’m guessing most people without limbs are never one hundred percent comfortable again.”

  “Do you go to group therapy?”

  “Nah.” It was suggested and I did try it. I’m just better processing stuff on my own.

  “Let me know if you ever want to give it a shot. We have a good one going over at the hospital.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “You are beyond tense,” he says again, and I try so hard to relax but I just can’t. Even the small talk isn’t enough to make me unwind enough to let go.

  There’s a lump in my throat when I half-joke, “Are you sure you don’t do happy endings?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ben

  I knew this was not a good idea. No, scrap that, great idea, just… No. Bad idea.

  I’d be lying if I said the naked back of a patient never turned me on but Jen’s back is doing it for me in all the places it shouldn’t. Her question also isn’t original for people in my line of work but when she asks it, the blood rushes from my upper body right to my dick. Lucky she has her face down in the hole. I keep working on her knots like I didn’t hear the question but all I want to do is roll her over and jump on.

  I glide my fingertips over her spine and the lines of her ribs, her skin glistening with oil. I let my thumbs get a little too close to the sides of her breasts. Her intake of breath is loud in the quiet of the room and my dicks gets harder still.

  I move down her back, over her hips, dip my fingers into the waistband of her denim shorts. She lifts up into my movements. It’s only slight but it’s there. Along with a moan. I do it again.

  I’m playing with fire and I know I could get burned here but damn, she’s hot, she’s almost naked and she’s been playing with me. Flirting. Throwing out every signal there is. “Tell me what you want, Jen.”

  If I wasn’t waiting for it I’d have missed the way she squeezes her thighs together. My grip is firm on the backs of her legs, her arse cheeks begging to be cupped. I slowly move higher and then higher again. “Is this what you want?”

  She parts her legs a bit on the table and her breathing is so quick and harsh, it fills the space around us. “Touch me, please.”

  “I’m going to need more than that, Jen. Touch you where? How? Soft?” I back off. “Or hard?” I increase the pressure, my thumbs only about an inch from sliding up under her shorts.

  “Hard,” she says and attempts to push back against me again. “Always hard.”

  “Where?” I slide all the way under her shorts but I’m not touching anything I shouldn’t be. Not yet. I retreat.

  She whimpers. “More.”

  “You have to tell me, Jen. What do you want?”

  She bucks against me, sits up on the massage table, on her knees. She throws her bra somewhere but I don’t see where it lands. She swings her legs around so she’s sitting on the table properly and then reaches for me. Even like this she only comes up to my shoulders. She slides her hands under my shirt and I get the hint. I take it off.

  I cup her jaw and kiss her, slowly, softly, enjoying her taste and her heat. She sighs into my mouth and I increase the pressure, the urgency. Kissing her is like drinking chocolate. Rich, smooth, dark. I wander my touch down her arms, up her ribs. When I squeeze her breasts in my hands, she throws her head back and I feast on her throat, her collarbone, lower. I suck one nipple into my mouth while tugging on the other and she wraps her legs around my waist and grinds against me.

  “Fuck,” she swears
on a breathy exhale.

  “Mmm,” is all I can muster because I want to nibble, lick, fuck. Now my mouth is on her, I never want to take it off. I nip at a mandala and then lick what looks like a sloth. Her skin is still smooth despite so much ink.

  Her hands are at the button and zip on my shorts and that’s about the time my brain kicks back in. I grab her wrists and hold her still. “Wait. Wait. Slow it down.”

  She kisses my neck and nips my earlobe which makes me grind into her, my erection hard and seeking. She chuckles. “You sure you want slow?”

  I’m a hot-blooded male but this isn’t me. I’m not on Tinder, I don’t have one-night stands, and I don’t have sex with my clients or my friends, not like this. I take a step away from her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks, her hands falling to her thighs.

  “Nothing. I just… I don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do this? You’re a virgin?”

  Her wide gaze, full of shock, makes me laugh and she scowls. I tell her, “I’m not a virgin. Not churchy either. But I also don’t take advantage of vulnerable women, especially after a few drinks.”

  She crosses her arms over her bare chest and it pushes her boobs up. My mouth waters. “I am not impaired.”

  “I didn’t say you are,” I rush to assure her. Jesus, this could go pair-shaped in so many ways.

  “It’s the leg isn’t it?” She jumps down from the table, wobbles a second and then grabs for her prosthetic. “Or is it the ink? The age gap? What the fuck are we doing here, Ben? You suggested hanging out. You bought dinner. You brought your massage gear. You touched me first.”

  “A massage is totally innocent, Jen.”

  She points at the table. “That was not totally innocent. You were touching me. Giving me all the signs you want to fuck me. What stopped you?”

  I rub my forehead and squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s not your leg and it’s not your ink. Sex means something to me. I’m not a teenager anymore, I can’t just jump right into it without a thought.”

  “Not can’t, won’t,” she says.

  “There’s no difference,” I tell her. I was raised to respect women, to do things right. I won’t switch that off no matter how much I want to rip her shorts off and sink right into her.

  Disappointment fills her expression and I want to smooth out the line between her eyes.

  “Eleven months, eighteen days,” she says.

  “Since your accident?”

  “Since someone last wanted to touch me. Since the last time I was whole and a guy wanted to make me scream over and over and over. Eleven months and eighteen days of being treated like a piece of glass who could easily break.” She turns her back to me and leans on the tabletop with a defeated sigh.

  “This has nothing to do with your leg,” I tell her right before her head tilts forward and she lets out a bitter laugh.

  “It has everything to do with my leg. Who’d want touch it? Who’d want to see it? Let it rest against their chest or their thigh or sixty-nine me with my stump right there?”

  Emotion rips through me. This is another type of acceptance and she’s seeking it, with me. But is it because I’m here? Because in my line of work she thinks it will be easier with me? That I’m used to it? Like she mentioned earlier.

  “Guys aren’t that shallow,” I try to tell her.

  “They really are,” she laughs but there’s still no humour to it.

  I reach for her and she flinches and shrugs me off. “I think you should go. I don’t need a pity fuck.”

  Her language is harsh and I step away. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I wanted a great night with a good guy.”

  I watch her walk away, down a corridor into total darkness. I’m a fool. She offered herself to me, vulnerable, a bit broken, needing someone, and I turned her down. Made her feel less. That was not my intention. I look at the table, the massage oil, my gear. What was my intention exactly?

  Now I’m not even sure…

  Chapter Twelve

  Jen

  When morning comes, I hate myself and my situation just a little bit more than I did yesterday. If there’s a feeling for cheap, I’m it. I practically begged him to have sex with me like a true desperado. He said no and I made him feel like shit for it.

  Way to go, Jen.

  We don’t even really like each other. Not on a basic level. We’re nothing alike at all. But then what was all the touching about? There’s no way at some point last night, he didn’t want to see me totally naked. The way he sucked on my tits, the way he handled me, the way he was dry humping me. He wanted it. So why did he chicken out? He keeps saying he’s not churchy but I’m not believing him. He talked like a guy who wanted to put a ring on it before he puts his dick in it and I’m not that type of girl.

  I know I want to try before I buy.

  I laugh at myself. No one is talking marriage. Maybe he’s really just not into me? He can ignore my ink while his eyes are closed but in the cold light of day, when he blinks, he can’t get past it.

  Well, fuck him. If I’m not to his taste, that’s his loss. I won’t lose sleep over it. And he wouldn’t be the first guy to judge me based solely on my looks. I have piercings and a heap of tattoos. Get over it already.

  I’m out of bed and pottering around my apartment muttering to myself like a crazy person when someone knocks on my door. It’s Sunday. Not even ten am. Rude much? My mind guesses Jo.

  It’s not.

  “Leave something behind?” I force out even though his clean scent does interesting things to my insides. My dreams were not PG last night and as much as I tried to slap a different bristled face on my sleepy time lover, Ben’s grin just kept coming back to haunt me.

  He quirks an eyebrow and opens his mouth but then stops and looks me up and down instead. I’m wearing my pjs still. My very skimpy pjs on account of the air-con isn’t working any more this morning than it was last night.

  “I bought you breakfast.” Two coffees and a McDonalds bag are brandished and I swear under my breath. He knows my weakness already. I’m a sucker for shitty food.

  I lean on the door frame with my forearms, effectively barring the way. I know it’ll lift my top a little higher and I’m in the tease Ben kind of mood. “And what’s the catch?”

  “No catch. Dinner didn’t exactly go to plan and once again I owe you an apology.”

  “For not fucking me or not putting my couch back where it goes?”

  “Look, can I come in or not?”

  “It’s no sweat off my sack,” I tell him and turn before he sees the grin I can’t hide. How far would I have to go to discomfort him, to ruffle his feathers and his attitude?

  I tuck my good leg under me and sink into my recliner. He sits on the lounge next to me and hands me a coffee, a hash brown and a muffin wrapped in greasy paper.

  “I didn’t know what you’d eat so I got you the deluxe.”

  My stomach growls right on cue. “Thanks.”

  I unwrap the breakfast burger and take a huge, messy bite. He’s watching me. I make eye contact and don’t let go. I will not apologise for who I am or the dirty lengths I’ll go to, to make him sweat.

  “I don’t like how we left things last night. Or the other day. Or the day before that. We seem to rub each other up the wrong way and I hate it,” he says in a soft voice.

  I swallow and it’s an effort not to choke when he’s being so sincere. I lift my shoulders in a shrug. “I offered to rub you up the right way and you ran away like the virgin you say you’re not.”

  His frown is actually so cute as he says, “Do you always do that?”

  “Do what?” I’m all innocence but I’m pretty sure I know what he’s going to say next.

  “Make jokes. Try to be outrageous. Do you always get a rise?”

  I shrug again. “Usually it works.”

  “Why do it?”

  “It’s fun. You can’t be so serious all the time, Ben. Lighten up.”

&
nbsp; His frown turns really dark and I wonder which button I pushed this time. I didn’t mean to so I rush ahead with, “Look, I’m sorry okay. It’s been a shit year for me and I’ve coped by finding humour where there isn’t any. I’m as toey as fuck and starting to think I’ll never get laid again by a hot guy, or even a not-so-hot guy, and it’s making me cranky. Add to that this oppressive heat and I’m a bitch through and through.”

  He’s smiling at me by the time I’m done and I consider throwing the rest of my muffin at him. Not a euphemism. But then he says, “Come for a swim with me. It’ll cool you down.”

  My heart sinks and the food turns to dirt on my tongue. “I don’t swim anymore.”

  “What? As in you can’t? Because I can assure you, you can.”

  “I don’t swim anymore the same as you don’t do one-night-stands. As in, no one needs to see this shit up close and personal while I hop my arse into the ocean.”

  “Who said anything about hopping or being seen?”

  My turn to frown at him.

  “Can you just trust me for five minutes? Please? I know of a place with a private pool. Totally secluded. No one around.”

  My mind jumps to Jo’s first pool sexcapade with Ash she should never have told us about and I wonder if this is Ben’s way of doing more than apologising. Maybe he went back to his place last night and kicked himself for not shagging me?

  “Okay. Give me a few minutes though okay. I need to get ready.”

  “Take all the time you need. I’ll sit out back and wait for you.”

  Thank God I tidied up my lady bits yesterday and I know I have a few bikinis in the back of the drawer in my room. I shimmy into one and yes, I do mean shimmy. It’s burnt orange and there’s not much to it. The bottoms will go straight up my bottom and the top is barely two triangles strung together. It’s perfect for ruffling Ben and damn, I do hope it works.

  I chuck on my jeans since I have no idea who might see me between my place and this mysterious pool. The top I cover with a peasant blouse that’s sheer and floaty.