Then he turned to me, and his gaze nailed me to the floor. “Get some rest. You’ll need it. We won’t go easy on you.”
“We—” I gulped and cleared my throat, because that word came out a naked scratch of sound. “We wouldn’t expect you to.”
“Very good.” He stared at me a moment longer and I had the same overwhelming sensation that he was holding back, keeping his distance, as when I’d thought he was about to kiss Perry.
My throat went dry.
Then Channing huffed and straightened, stumping towards the welcome mat where he stopped and looked back. “Sleep well. Both of you.”
We didn’t reply as we watched him walk out and close the door gently behind him.
I paused, but of course he wasn’t coming back. When I returned my attention to Perry, he was frowning. I touched his face where Alan had.
“What?” Perry asked, blinking up at me.
“Nothing to worry about right now.” I leaned in and kissed him like Alan had maybe wanted to, but hadn’t. It was soft and quick, then I straightened. I had my instructions, which had eased my paralysis and I could do the things despite my jitters still vibrating under my skin. “Come on. Take the pills while I get the shower going.”
It was calming to step into the shower with Perry, get him good and sudsy and carefully rinse him off again. It wasn’t a sexy thing. We’d spent two days throwing more rocks than we usually threw in a month, and we were both tired.
Perry was in pain and I just wanted to be touching him without causing more pain.
Once he was clean, I sent him out to dry off and apply ice while I got clean. When I made it to the bedroom, he was lying in bed, the ice pack set aside, his eyes closed.
“You’re on my side,” I mentioned as I dropped my towel on top of the hamper.
“So I can spoon you without lying on my bruises, obviously.”
I grinned. “Obviously.” I clambered into bed on his side and snuck my bare ass back against his pajama-clad crotch. I fell asleep to the feel of his palm stroking along my hip and thigh, secure, finally, in his arms.
CHAPTER 12
PERRY
There was neveranything quite like the calm of having Evan’s naked body pressed to mine, hearing his breathing, even as he slept, laying my hand over his heart to feel it thumping.
His energy was always off when he’d been out all day. After a long work shift, he’d bounce in the door and talk a mile a minute. But eventually, at the end of the day, when the lights went out and he was in our bed, sex or no sex, he would finally still. That was my favourite time.
I loved his energy, and his non-stop talking, the way he always wanted to touch me, reassure me I was loved, but this stillness that came over him when he finally stopped made my heart happy.
I snuggled in with a sigh, closed my eyes, and didn’t waste any sleeplessness on Alan Channing. We’d already decided he was a problem for future us to solve, though I wasn’t even sure how much of a problem. We’d both expressed our interest already. He was hot. No denying that. And Evan liked him well enough to listen to him. I liked him well enough not to go fully caveman when that happened. He was sensitive enough that what he suggested made sense. Made Evan calmer and, strangely, made me calmer too.
The weight and warmth of Evan next to me soothed a lot of my discomfort while I watched the darkness deepen to black, and listened to him breathe. He’d been asleep for a while before the Tylenol finally kicked in and my face stopped throbbing. I drifted off smelling our shampoo in his hair and our soap on his skin.
Evan was already up when I finally gave in to the weak sunshine slanting across our pillows and, sadly, across my face. I climbed out of the warm nest and wandered to the kitchen where he was dancing to whatever was playing over his headphones, waving one oven-mitted hand in the air and singing into an egg-covered spatula.
I leaned in the doorway to watch him, smiling, because yeah, there was pretty much nothing about how he was in the world that I didn’t love.
He finally noticed me when he did a pirouette, a reminder that curling wasn’t the first thing he’d done on the ice. He’d grown up a figure skater, though he assured me he was a much better curler.
“Hey.” He grinned and shoved his headphones down around his neck. “Ooh. Ow.” He squinted closely at what I could only imagine was a pretty impressive shiner. “How’s that feel?”
“Wouldn’t say no to a couple more Tylenol.”
“I can do that.” He put the spatula and oven mitt next to the stove and fetched the bottle, opening it for me as he brought it over. “I’ll get you some water for those, and a cup of coffee.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed his wrist when he handed me the pills, so I could pull him close enough to kiss.
He didn’t hesitate to kiss me back, though he did screw up his face as he pulled back. “Morning breath.” Then he kissed me again, handed off the pills, and sashayed to the sink to the rhythm of the music I could now faintly hear emanating from his headphones.
