She laughed, a sad, low sound that was more choked than it had any right to be. Wrapping her arms around him, she buried her face against the solidity of his shoulder, hanging on. “Please tell me I can stop calling you ‘Dad’ now.”
“God, yes.”
“Phew.”
“You were so brave, baby. So brave.”
Hardly. But it felt so nice to hear.
His hands traveled up her spine, one coming to settle at the nape of her neck, and he dug his thumb into the muscle there. “You’re so tense,” he said.
“Imagine that.” Her eyes stung, and the wrung-out, exhausted feeling from before had magnified a hundredfold. “Almost as if talking about all that shit stresses me out.”
“Almost as if,” he echoed. Releasing her, he shifted to the edge of the bed and gestured at the empty expanse of mattress. “Lie down. Let me take care of you.”
Whatever resistance she would’ve normally had to that sort of thing was officially on vacation. She flopped forward, landing on her stomach. Moaning, she petted the surface underneath her. “Mmm, bed. You’re my best friend.”
“I know where I rank in this situation.”
“Shh, I’m trying to have a conversation with your bed.”
“Well, don’t let me get in the way.”
“I won’t—” she started to say, but the words cut off when he put his hands on her shoulders. The warm pressure, gently kneading at the precise place where so much of her tension always lived had her eyes squeezing shut, a noise escaping her that she’d never admit to later.
“Is this okay?”
“I think I can manage to put up with it.” She was such a liar. It felt so good.
And it was uncomfortable, too. Clearly he meant for her to lie there and let him give her a massage or a backrub or whatever he wanted to call it, but that was weird, wasn’t it? Her skin prickled with self-consciousness, a guilty selfishness at accepting that kind of gift.
“Shh. Just relax.”
“I’m trying.”
He leaned in closer so his breath was in her ear. “That’s the problem.”
The mattress rocked as he moved. Heat to either side of her made her breath suck in as he straddled her thighs. His hard-on wasn’t touching her, but she didn’t doubt it was there. The guy got aroused at the drop of a hat, but somehow this wasn’t about that. His hands drifted lower on her shoulders, one of his thumbs finding a knot, and he shifted to dig his knuckles in. The deeper pressure was too tender, too hot—
Until it released.
“Holy shit,” she groaned.
“I’ll take it that was nice?”
“So nice.” A part of her was melting, but another part felt all the more aware of the one-sidedness of this act. “Want me to do you, after?”
“If you’re still capable of it by the time I’m finished with you, I won’t have done my job correctly.”
Another little stab of guilt ran through her. “But—”
“Shh.” He dipped to kiss the nape of her neck. “Enjoy this. Okay?”
His reassurances didn’t change the squirminess inside her, the sense of being looked at and on display. Of taking something she wasn’t sure she could return. But he went about this with such an easiness, touching and caressing with sure hands.
Gradually, her muscles loosened, and she sank deeper and deeper into the mattress. Some of his quiet confidence seeped into her bones.
“That’s right,” he said, soft and low.
By the time her shoulders had officially been reduced to jelly, she was almost calm. When he tucked a finger into her towel in question, she lifted up.
He peeled the fabric from her slowly, exposing her flesh to the breeze coming in from the fan. She was damp with perspiration and the water that had clung to them after their shower. He pulled the towel out from under her and then guided her down to lie flush against the mattress again. Naked. His bare thighs brushing the outsides of hers, the whole long line of his torso a radiant heat from above.
“Adam—” His name spilled out from between her lips. She didn’t want him to stop, didn’t want anything but for this to go on and on, her flesh faintly giving off sparks as a new sort of anticipation banked and built. A low arousal settled warm and patient in her abdomen.
“Shh.”
He shifted, hands making their way down her sides. He kissed her sacrum and gripped her hips and then—Oh. A cool rush as he blew a low stream of breath across her spine. Her skin prickled, gooseflesh coming up, but then he was soothing it, massaging her with heated palms.
He worked the whole length of her back over and over before edging even lower. Thumbs dug into her thighs and teased the insides of her knees. Her calves rippled with the best kind of achiness as he rubbed them. One at a time, he took her feet into his hands. And that was really weird, except when he ground a knuckle into the arch, she just about came off the bed.
“Too much?” he asked.
“No.” Fuck, no. “It’s fine.”
And she was so glad she was on her stomach like this—that he had no way to see her face.
Because it was more than fine, more than not too much.
It was perfect. Too perfect, and her heart panged.
She didn’t know if she would ever, ever get enough.
Suddenly, she felt every inch of her nakedness all over again, and Adam was too far away. She stretched her arm out toward him, trying to tell him without words that she needed him closer, hot and real and pressed against her.
“What?” he asked.
“Just… come here.”
He rose up easily enough, climbing higher on the bed, but of course the asshole had to do it all sweet and fond, laying a line of kisses up the backs of her legs and along her spine. He kept that careful space between their bodies, too, and she wanted it gone, wanted to be blanketed by him, protected from all the things today that had left her shaking. From her own mind. From herself.
She lifted up onto one elbow, craning her neck and reaching to get a hand on his skin. She couldn’t look into his eyes, but she could drag him in—in and in until their lips met. Opening for him, she held him against her and licked into his mouth, suddenly desperate.
She didn’t want to think anymore, didn’t want to be taken care of. She wanted to lose herself.
“Jo.” He broke away enough for air. He sounded dazed but still too cautious. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I just—” What? Everything inside her felt like it was cracking apart. Deep in her gut, it hurt. I just felt really vulnerable. I needed you close. She swallowed and gripped him tighter. “I want you.”
“I want you, too,” he said, and how did he make it sound so simple? Admitting that? “But—”
“No buts.” She pulled him to her mouth and kissed him with another level of need, hot and dirty. Fumbling, she took him by the hand and led him to her breast, the one with the piercing through it, and that never failed to get him going.
Sure enough, a filthy noise fell out of him as he rubbed the metal between his finger and his thumb. Her nipple perked up, going hard and swollen as lines of heat shot straight to her clit.
“Isn’t that good?” She ground her hips into the mattress, squeezing her thighs together. “It feels so good when you touch me like that.”
He cut off a curse, sagging lower against her until finally his cock dragged against her ass. He moved into the contact, flesh bobbing through the thin layer of fabric still separating them, and his throat worked like he had things to say but had lost the words. “But I was going to…”
Right. Take care of her. Treat her right. She shook her head and kept him close. “You’re taking such good care of me now.”
And that seemed to do the trick. He melted into her at last, letting her bear some of his weight. She wedged her legs apart until he fell into the space between them, and fuck, maybe someday they’d do this bare. Someday when they’d done the whole going and getting tested thing, and she’d had her implant checked out.