Where had that come from?
Fucking whisky. Even when it didn’t push me into a fog of despair, it still sent me round the bend.
I sat back in my seat, my head spinning, and not from the booze. I stretched my legs out in front of me, massaging my thighs. My shoulders ached too, stiff from a three-hour ordeal with Shadow, and I knew my body was going to give me hell tomorrow. Still, that was what you got for leaving a horse like Shadow unworked for so long. It was going to take months to get him back on track.
Harry nudged me, his elbow driving gently into my side with just enough force to rouse me out of my haze.
“Huh?” I blinked at him. “What?”
“I said, you look uncomfortable. Have you hurt yourself?”
“No.”
“Sure about that? Because I can see the tension in your neck from here.”
I scowled. Couldn’t help it. “Got X-ray eyes, have you?”
“I’m a physiotherapist, mate, not a freak of nature.”
He gestured for me to move closer and spin around. Against my better judgement, I obeyed. I braced myself for his touch but was sorely unprepared for the sensation of his hand sliding down my neck. He was tactile with Emma, with my mum... even George, but I didn’t touch people carelessly, and so the dizzying relief that came with our contact now—the energy—left me breathless.
A strangled noise escaped me. Harry chuckled. “Better?”
Better than what? Whatever he was doing was magic—spreading down my spine and across my back, easing the burning tension in my shoulders—but what replaced it wasinsane. My chest tightened and my skin tingled. My vision blurred.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head. Harry upped the ante and pressed his thumbs hard into the pressure points in my neck. Ithurt, but somehow my body knew the pain was productive, and I didn’t flinch.
Another groan escaped me.
“Sorry.” Though Harry didn’t sound contrite enough to mean it. “Sleeping on this couch is probably messing with your entire body. Do you get a lot of neck pain?”
“Some. It’s not usually like this, though. Riding Shadow always fucks me up, especially when I haven’t done it in a while.”
“Would it be better with a saddle?”
He was watching me. I felt suddenly naked. I darted a gaze to my abandoned T-shirt, draped over an ironing board that no one ever used. To reach it, I’d have to stand up—to break the spell Harry had cast over my sore muscles.
I couldn’t do it. “Even if Shadow would let me, I don’t ride so well with all the gear. It doesn’t feel right—too detached, you know?”
“I don’t know anything about riding.”
“Whatdoyou know about?”
Harry snorted. “Not much.”
I didn’t believe that, but I considered the things I’d seen Harry do and tried to compare them to riding a horse. “Would you rather run through the fields or on a treadmill in the gym?”
“The fields.” Harry didn’t hesitate. “I’d never run outside much until I came here. It’s changed my life, I swear.”
“Why—fuck, that feels good—I mean, how has it changed your life?”
Harry said nothing for a long moment, his thumbs still creating alchemy in my neck, then he exhaled a soft puff of air against my skin. “I guess it feels more natural to run outside, to feel the wind in my face, the sun, the rain. It’s freeing.”
“Uh-huh.” I waited for the penny to drop, but Harry was silent again. He swapped his thumbs for the heel of his hand, and then I lost the ability to speak coherently anyway. I couldn’t say how much time had passed when I finally got it back, but I did know that it was a split second after Harry removed his hands from my bare skin.
He leaned back on the couch. I did the same, angling myself to look at him, although I kind of wanted to scramble for my T-shirt. “So...”
“So?” Harry arched an eyebrow in a way I couldn’t imagine him doing if we were sober. “What are you staring at me like that for? Have you got some big burning question you want to ask me?”
