by Zoe York
Jenna waved her hand. “You guys go. We’ll call Chloe up and see if she wants to come over and make sangria with us.”
They were making their guests a meal that night that reminded them of their time in Spain. Jenna had thrown herself into the meal planning, spending the entire previous week tracking down Spanish cheese and sausage and wine, and trial-running different recipes.
“Should I invite Tom back here for dinner, then?”
Jenna’s eyes lit up. “Yes, great idea.”
Sean drove. He’d ordered in extended mirrors for his truck, and they made a big difference in his confidence that he was seeing all other drivers on the road while minimizing head swivelling.
The Pine Harbour Search & Rescue Team’s training centre was located inside the provincial park where Tom worked as a park ranger. Sean gave his name at the gate then drove through to the facility, where Tom was waiting for them.
He gave Alex a quick overview of the facility, but Sean knew what their visitor wanted to do. “You want to head out for a run?”
Alex laughed. “Was it that obvious?”
“I recognize the hungry gleam in your eye.” Sean clapped him on the shoulder. “Go. Run like the wind. We’ll stay here and I’ll kick Tom’s ass in the weight room.”
As they warmed up, Tom showed Sean the workout he’d planned on the white board on the wall.
Sean made a few suggestions then they ran through three circuits of the first set with ease.
“Okay, for the next one, let’s up the intensity a bit. Work to exhaustion each time.”
Tom nodded then dropped into a plank. “Bet you can’t do more push-ups than me.”
The old Sean would have taken that bet. Would have tossed in a race up the ropes as a kicker. “You’re probably right.”
Tom glared at him. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck off. You’ve been doing nothing but arm and chest exercises for months. Come on. Show me what you’ve got.”
Against his will, Sean felt himself flex his biceps. He could hold his own, maybe. But he wasn’t winning any contests. “I’m getting there.”
“Then if I kick your ass today, you’ve got a goal for next time. Come on. Show me what you’ve got.”
Sean slowly lowered himself to the ground. “Yeah, all right.” He did a quick mental scan of his body. All good. He locked out his shoulders and pressed himself up. “Ready? Go.”
He couldn’t turn his head to watch Tom. He heard the other man counting, though, and they were keeping pace with each other. He passed twenty with ease, but then his shoulders started to burn. Thirty was a nice number to hit, too.
Thirty-five, thirty-six…
He tightened his core until it felt like his entire torso was made of steel. Thirty-nine. Forty.
Forty-one—
“God, I’m done,” Tom gasped as he hit the ground.
Forty-two.
Sean held the last one an inch off the ground, then lowered himself. He kept his eyes looking straight, but he grinned.
Fuck, yeah. He dropped his head to the ground and rolled onto his back. “What were we betting?”
“Nothing. Pride. Bragging rights.”
“Next time, we’ll put money on it.”
Tom laughed. “You may not be able to go fast anymore, but maybe there’s some value in going slow.”
Yeah. But it also wiped him out. “That’s probably it for me.”
Sweat rolled down his back and his arms shook from the effort. He’d definitely pushed the limits there, in a good way.
“You mind if I keep going?”
“You mind if I give you pointers on your form?”
“Not at all.” Tom grinned at him.
“That was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“Free personal training from an elite athlete? Sue me for being clever.” Tom grabbed onto the rope and jogged backwards.
Sean watched as his friend used the rope for balance and dropped into single leg squats.
Tom’s face tightened up as he passed fifteen reps, but he kept going for another five, and when he finished, he gasped and stumbled, shaking his leg out before switching sides.
“Where are you feeling that?” Sean asked.
“Fucking hell, everywhere.” Tom laughed then winced as he kept piling on the reps. Again, his face twisted before he pushed out the last few. “Right up the outside chain of muscles. My calf is on fire.”
Sean didn’t say anything, just swivelled his fingers in the air. “Go again. Push-ups first, then the assisted pistol squats. Back to back, you can do it.”
“In a minute.”
“In thirty seconds. You’re not paying me to go easy on you.”
Tom swore under his breath. “I’m not paying you at all.” But he grabbed the rope and went again at the thirty second mark. This time when his expression shifted, Sean glanced at Tom’s feet. “Did you just shift your weight to the outside of your heel?”
Tom froze before laughing in a strained way. “Maybe. Shit, yeah.”
“Earning my keep already.” Sean cleared his throat. “Don’t do that. Stay on a balanced foot to the point of exhaustion, even if it comes sooner.”
“You’ve got an eagle eye,” Tom said, gasping, when he finally collapsed on the grass after six more gruelling exercises, each of them made harder when Sean figured out how Tom was compensating to push himself to more reps. “On form.”
“Combination of not being able to let my head move while working out, and my history of having my own form analyzed, I guess.”
“You could do personal training in general, not just running coaching.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Come back tomorrow and kick my ass again.”
“Deal.”
As they finished stretching, Alex emerged from the woods, his dark skin gleaming with sweat. “Sweet trails up here.”
“You know it.” Sean shook his hand. “Good run?”
“Great.”
There was a pang of jealousy at that, but it was short and mostly a benign flavour of bittersweet.
One of these days, he was going to need to try running—maybe if he fell over or stumbled into a tree, he’d be able to convince himself it was better not to miss it at all.
He started laughing.
“What is it?” Tom asked.
Sean shook his head. “Just thinking of myself careening wildly off trail. It’s nothing. This was great, though. I’ll be back tomorrow, just name your time.”
THE NEXT DAY was a holiday Monday, but Jenna had a birth to attend, so Sean saw Grace and Alex off on their drive back to Toronto, then headed out to the training facility again.
Tom was in his work uniform. “Sorry, had to pull a last minute shift. Holiday weekend and we’ve got campers galore. But I’ve got an hour free now, let me just change.” He pointed to the locker room, but didn’t move.
“Sure, my day is wide open.”
“Dinner last night was fun,” Tom added. “I like Jenna’s friends.”
“Yeah, they’re good people. It was nice to hang out with Chloe, too.” Sean wasn’t going to poke too hard, but after Tom and Chloe had left last night—within two minutes of each other—and Grace and Alex retired to the spare room, Jenna had confided that she thought the park ranger and the librarian had a flirtation going on.
Tom just nodded.
Oh, well, Sean tried.
Tom changed the subject. “And Jenna looks ridiculously happy with your grumpy ass.”
Despite his best attempts to be nonchalant, the corners of Sean’s mouth turned up in a grin. “Helps that I’m less grumpy now. We’re getting there.”
“Where are you getting to?” Jake asked as he rounded the corner.
Sean waved to his brother and ignored the question. “What are you doing here?”
“We heard there was a free workout session with an elite athlete.”
“We?” Sean groaned as Matt and Dean appeared, t
oo. He pointed at Tom. “I will get you for this. I will find a way to hurt you. Pendulum lunges until your quads explode.”
“They love you.” He winked. “But not as much as Jenna does.” He turned to Sean’s brothers. “That’s what we were just talking about. How your baby brother here couldn’t keep his hands off his wife last night. Or last weekend at the diner, when they had twigs in their hair from a roll in the forest.”
“We went camping,” Sean muttered. “Now are you here to work out, or gossip?”
Everyone but Matt said working out.
“Matt can go up the rope first, then. Up you go, asshole. No rest for the wicked.”
By the end of the hour-long session, everyone was groaning and sweat-slicked—even Sean. It was good practice for him to adapt their workout to his own limitations, and he surprised himself by flipping it, too. Some of the things he’d learned in rehab, like the balance exercises, were quite hard for his muscle-bound brothers.
Dean fell out of step twice while trying to balance on one foot with his eyes closed. Sean made a note on his phone, where he had rudimentary notes on each of them.
Whether they liked it or not, his brothers were his first clients, and he was taking this new job damn seriously. Even though he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
As Tom tossed protein bars around, Dean sat next to Sean on the wood steps. “That was really good.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Dean sighed. “We were rough on each other.”
“We always are. But you were right. I was being a jerk, and selfish. Now I’ve got my head on straight. I’ve got a plan.”
“Are you going to share it?”
He sketched out some of the ideas he’d been considering. Running coaching, personal training, but maybe also something for wounded vets. He wasn’t really qualified to help anyone psychologically—but on a human level, he could relate to the reluctance to accept that kind of help.
Fitness wasn’t a replacement for medical help, but it might be a replacement for other things vets had lost. “It needs a better name than this, but I’m thinking something like Sean’s Fitness Coaching and Rehab for Reluctant Jackasses.”
Dean nodded along. “Bit of a mouthful, but yeah, I like the idea.”
“Mmm.”
“What’s holding you back?”
“It still feels too soon to bite off something new. It’s good in theory, good with you guys, but…”
“You don’t do anything in half-measures.” Dean gave him a gruff nod. “You never have. Why should this be any different?”
Sean hadn’t realized until this moment just how much his brother’s approval meant to him. “Thanks.”
“When it’s the right time, you’ll launch it with a bang. It’s a good plan. Liana might be interested in the running coaching.”
“You don’t need to—”
“It wouldn’t be a pity hire or anything like that. You know she’s serious about her running. When we first met, she was almost more interested in your running than in anything to do with me.”
Sean bumped his shoulder. “That changed, though.”
That got a bigger smile.
“Hey, when are you going to actually marry her?”
“Soon. After her next album releases. You’ll be the first to know.”
“Hey, speaking of the women we love…” Sean raised his voice. “Jake! Come here. I need your help.”
BY THE TIME he got home, Jenna had returned from the birth and headed back out again. She’d left a note for him saying she’d gone over to Chloe’s with some of the leftover sangria.
He showered, then pulled on clean clothes and texted Jenna. I’m home. Are you going to be long?
She replied immediately. Just poured a glass. Will be a while. Do you want to come here?
He could, but he had plans for their evening together. I might take a nap.
Okay. Rest up.
He was tempted to fire back something filthy in reply, but Chloe was the type of friend who might read her texts over Jenna’s shoulder.
Instead he stretched out on their bed and thought about what he wanted to do tonight. Maybe draw her a bubble bath first. He hadn’t done that yet, and it would show her that he remembered the things she’d missed the most when she was in Turkey.
Then…
He closed his eyes and thought about her bikini. Her curves. Her smile.
Yes, her mouth.
His brain caught on that and something thick and heady started to swirl around in this thoughts. He tugged his shorts down until the elastic pressed against the top of his groin, and he rubbed his lower abs. Could he jerk off?
What had once been such a simple, fundamental function was now a mountain to climb. He’d made his peace with his vertigo, accepted the faint, constant ringing in his ears. But this dysfunction was hard to handle, especially now that his libido had roared back to life.
He didn’t need to come every time Jenna did. Hell, after months without sex, both before and after meeting her, he knew life was more than a quick fuck to a climax.
But…
Jesus, he needed to get out of his head. He grabbed his phone and pulled up the same dirty video site he’d visited before.
Blow jobs. He was overthinking this. Maybe the doc was right. He’d asked about it again at a follow up appointment, and Sean had pushed it off, but maybe he just needed basic sexy visuals to retrain his brain.
Dick rehab. Maybe it was time.
He thought of Jenna’s mouth as the video buffered. How wet and sweet and warm it was when he kissed her. He thought of Spain. Of sun-warmed skin and endless days of hedonistic pleasure.
He slid his hand into his shorts and cupped his balls as the video started. No thinking, just watching, he told himself. Let the lizard brain take over.
The sounds were better than the visual, really. He closed his eyes and turned up the volume. Appreciative hums, teasing promises. Wet licks and groans that followed.
Then he heard a creak in the hallway, followed by Jenna calling out his name.
His brain had trouble switching gears—one part screaming Jenna’s home, dipshit, the other happily turned on and lizard-tastic—and before he could get his hand out of his shorts, Jenna pushed open their bedroom door. “I’m back. Do you want to listen to some comedy as we make—”
He dropped his phone, but it was too late. Her eyes went wide, and from where it fell on the mattress, his phone continued to emit the tinny sound of sloppy slurping.
She froze, her eyes wide, and he tried to jump off the bed. The room spun hard around him, and he fell back onto the mattress, landing on his ass.
Fuck.
His stomach twisted in panic as she twisted away.
“Wait!”
She turned back so slowly, so reluctantly, he wanted to die inside.
“It’s just—”
She shook her head, her expression unreadable. “You don’t need—”
Oh, but he did. “The doctor—”
“Really, it’s—”
He swore, interrupting their stream of talking over each other. Every cell in his body twitched from the shot of fear-driven adrenaline his brain had just dumped into his system, and he couldn’t think straight. He pushed off the bed, keeping his eyes locked on her this time, and crossed the room.
On auto-pilot, he reached for her, curving his hand around her arm.
Holding on.
She looked up at him as he braced his other arm against the doorway and took a long, steadying breath. “I want to say it’s not what you think, except it’s exactly what you think.” He gave her a weak smile. “But nothing more.”
“Okay…” she trailed off, confused. That made two of them.
He dove head first into the probably too-much-information explanation. “My doctor brought up sexual function a few weeks ago, and I didn’t handle it well.”
“Oh.” She pressed her hand to
his chest, and he stroked his fingers down her arm, until his palm covered hers.
“But he suggested some basic visual aids, and I’ve been trying.” He exhaled roughly. He leaned in, ignoring the swirl in his brain, and he lowered his voice to an intimate, pleading pitch. “It’s just exposure therapy.”
God, let her believe him. After all the progress they’d made, let her understand.
Time stretched painfully as her cheeks pinked up, as her eyes roved across his face—and then over his shoulder.
And that’s when he realized, through the blood pounding in his ears, that the video was still playing.
“Does it help?” she asked to a soundtrack of an unmistakable blow job.
He opened his mouth but no words came out. He shook his head.
“That’s a shame,” she whispered. “I’m all for exposure therapy.”
Wait, what?
“If it’s doctor recommended.” Oh, God. She was teasing him. She rolled her shoulders and slid her hands into the back pockets of her jean shorts. “Who am I to say you shouldn’t do…that?”
“You’re my wife,” he ground out. She had every right to say that.
“That’s right, I am.” She lifted her chin. “And maybe we should have talked about this sooner, but I’m not upset. Just surprised, that’s all. Have you been trying this a lot?”
He shook his head. No.
“Mmm.” She smiled at him, and deep in his belly, need reared its head.
“Uh…” This was good, right? She wasn’t upset. Good.
But he’d lost most of his vocabulary and all of his higher processing skills.
She reached for his shirt and tugged it up, sliding her hands over his waist. “Sean,” she said, his name a breathy offer that made his head spin in a whole new way. “Do you want to keep watching?”
“No.”
“Okay. Do you want… me?”
“Yes.” God, yes.
Her eyes sparkled as she pointed to his phone, and what sounded like an epic fake orgasm from one or both participants. “On my knees, maybe?”
“Uh…” Did he? Yes, fuck yes. But also, no, Jesus, he couldn’t.
She licked her lips, and the scales shifted. Just a hair. “Or would you rather something else…” She closed her eyes, and the pink in her cheeks deepened. “Exposure therapy…like maybe watching me?”
