“You’ll never bejust a nurse.” That’s the most important part of anything, so I get it out first. “People say I wear my heart out there for everyone to see and for everyone to own a part of and share in, butyou’re all heart too. You’re smart, generous to a fault, and humble. You don’t have to be a therapist to just talk to me.”
She’s looking at me like I have every answer in the world. Like I’m the key to everything. LikeI’meverything. It’s a lot of pressure to be looked at that way, but I also feel seen in a way I haven’t been since my grandma died. Even though Carissa knew it would hurt, she gave me that love in whatever measure she could. It was never unethical. She always kept a distance between us. If she hadn’t given her notice, I know she would never have allowed herself to blurt out what she did today. All those years, I couldn’t imagine what kind of torture it was for her.
She bites down on her bottom lip like I’ve just put my thoughts out there. Over the past years, I’ve shut myself down on the sexual front. It’s not that I’m not a sexual person, but as I just said, trusting myself with that when it comes to another person wasn’t ever going to be a thing.
All those years of stuffing it down, being too busy to think about it, or indeed thinking about my most intimate moments getting splashed all over the internet in a tell-all that may or may not have truth to it, and how absolutely libido-shriveling that is, it all roars to the forefront now with just that tiny motion.
I’ve been celibate for years. My dick is barely even acquainted with my own hand.
Watching Carissa’s teeth sink into her plump lower lip is pretty much like having them bite straight into my cock. Why I would even want that, I don’t know, but I do. With her. In ways I can’t even comprehend. I can’t remember the last time I had sex.
Seriously.
For real.
For absolute one hundred percent, real.
There’s a lot of past testosterone packed into this moment.
Popping a boner in tight leather pants is inadvisable as there’s nowhere for it to go.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her eyes shooting straight to her feet. She’s adorable in those ripped-up shorts and that cray T-shirt. I like the pickle riding the eagle. My pickle would like to do the same. Except the eagle is her.
Jesus Christ.
This is not going to be a thing. Not when she justapologized.
“It’s not your fault. Please don’t say you’re sorry.” I’m currently having a blood-to-brain-cells ratio problem. I think. And a leather pants problem, which I don’t think, because I know for a fact. “If I kissed you, would that make it worse?” Fuck. Fuck, shit, damn, fuck it all to fucking fuckery. That wasnotwhat was supposed to come out.
But I’m a little unnerved to find that it’s what I want.
I want itbadly.
So, so bad.
I want to fold her into my arms, tilt her face up, and kiss her until neither of us can breathe. I want to taste her lips, I want her tongue in my mouth, and I want her breath to become my breath. I want the taste of her embedded into my brain cells.
If my cock were an engine, that kind of thinking would only serve to rev it up, not tone it down. And that’s exactly what’s happening. These already impossibly tight leather pants are getting tighter and tighter. My balls are zipping up into my body and somehow also hanging so low that they’re probably visible in my pantstoo. I’m harder than these countertops. They’re only butcher block, and mere wood has nothing on me. Not when I’m granite, or quartz, or goddamn diamond-level bonering.
“Undoubtedly yes. A hundred thousand unfathomable amount of times worse,” she confirms in a squeaky pitch.
My heart plummets, and my dick throbs. There’s something seriously wrong with that equation. The wrongest part of wrong is that I’m going to have to leave this house with a hard-on fromhell. What am I supposed to do? Shove the top hat in front of my crotch?
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want you to do it,” she clarifies, grasping the counter a little bit harder. “Even if it’s just once, and you have to leave.”
Fuck. That’s the keyword.Leave. Notjust once.I can’t focus on that. Not when we both know thatjust onceis neverjust once.I have never wanted to kiss someone just for the sake of it. Even before I was famous, I never had casual sex. I treated people with respect, as my grandma always advised me to, plus I was kind of shy. It was hard to trust and put myself out there.
I think I might be the only man in the world who isn’t really attracted to someone until I know them. I didn’t figure that out until I was already well into this business, and after that, I didn’t stand a chance of having a normal relationship, even if I wanted one.
But IknowCarissa. Not as well as I should, but what I do know is a massive turn-on.
“You can’t show up here in skintight, crack-bearing red leather pants, massage my roast…”
Lumbering loons on a lumberjack, why does that sound so hot?
Massage my roast…
Massage my pork…
