“You were worried.” He glanced up at me in awe.
“Yeah.”
He rested his hands on my chest and palmed my pecs. “Good. I like that.”
I smashed my lips to his, and a nurse, who walked by the door, giggled. “Get his shirt on, then follow me, fellas. We’ll get you set up with a follow-up appointment.”
Ari seemed ready to crawl out of his skin by the time we left, and I thought maybe all the forced interactions with people were getting to him. The second we were through the front door of my house I grabbed Advil out of the cupboard in the kitchen and gave him two, and then I had him lie on his stomach on the couch in the living room and iced his back.
Ari glared at me the whole time.
I let him lounge around in front of the TV and worked out just to kill time.
Ari glared at me when I came back to put ice on his injury.
I mowed the lawn, and when I came back inside because it was time to ice his back again—that’s right, more glaring.
It didn’t take long for me to realize he wasn’t the best patient in the world. At around six o’clock in the evening, after I’d cleaned up the dinner dishes, I panicked because he wasn’t tucked up on the couch in the living room where I’d left him. I found him staring at a wall in our playroom after a quick search.
“Come on. Ice,” I said, holding out my hand to him.
“I’m not doing this five times a day. It’s boring.”
“You will,” I growled out.
He crossed his arms but followed me to the living room, and I coaxed him down to lie on the couch, then laid the cold compress across his lower back, over his T-shirt. I brushed hair off his forehead, and he turned his face toward the couch cushion. Irritation wriggled through me.
“It’s boring,” he said, the closest to a whine I’d ever heard from him. “I want to do things. I hate this.”
“How about I give you a reward every time you do what you’re supposed to do? Ice five times a day, that’s five rewards every day. You’ll need to put heat on it tomorrow, so same thing. Pretty good deal, right?”
He glanced over his shoulder, but I could see the calculations going on in his eyes. “Like what? I’m not a kid, I don’t want popsicles.”
“You choose.”
“Your cock,” he said immediately.
I pressed a kiss to his cheek and loved the way he wrinkled his nose. “Tomorrow. I don’t think it would be good to fuck you today.”
He sighed. “You’re really worried about hurting me.”
“Yeah, I guess I am. But roll over for me and I’ll get you off.”
His eyes widened. “Every time?”
I kissed his shoulder. “Yeah.”
He let out a horrible sound as he shifted to his back and unzipped his pants, and I had to laugh at the determination in his expression as he pushed up to slide his clothing down and out of the way.
* * *
Ari was better for me the next day, but orgasms will do that to a man’s disposition. He had been napping for at least a half hour after his bribe to behave—a blowjob—and he looked like an angel with his dark lashes resting on his cheeks. I brushed hair off his forehead. He was beautiful when he was dripping in blood, but I couldn’t stop staring at him right now. Somehow, he’d captured me. I kept imagining someone tossing him against the stairs, so after a while I only had one choice—I left the house and went in search of someone to make bleed.
I wanted it to be Derek Uhlig.
So, I went on the hunt. I waited for a long time but didn’t see him going into or leaving the miserable pit he called a casino, and then I checked everyplace around town I thought he could be, including his home address. It was late afternoon by the time I remembered a pack of drug dealers who frequently gave up info if we ignored what they were up to. I found Moses and his gang of idiots hanging out at a small park on Lincoln.
It wasn’t difficult to run them down because they were out of shape and did more partying than working out, and I only had to raise my fist before Moses ducked and curled his skinny body into a ball as he squawked.
