As I step out onto the pool deck, Morgan wolf whistles.
“Much better,” she says.
I blush, but I know she’s just messing with me.
She reclines in a chair by the pool, applying sunscreen. I’m kind of surprised she hasn’t hired someone to do it for her.
I take the seat across from her. “Deign to share your sunscreen with a poor?”
Morgan shrugs, and I take that as a yes, starting by running a thick layer over my tattoos. I don’t care how pasty and white it looks, they represent too much money and pain to let the sun ruin them.
“What are the species?” Morgan asks, tilting her chin at my arm.
I startle a little, because it’s actually like a… casual, conversational question.
“Tea tree spring, some willow… evening primrose, lavender, echinacea, belladonna.” I point out circular yellow flowers, soft violet sprigs, bright purple cone-shaped flowers, and indigo bell-shaped ones.
“Isn’t that a poison?”
“The poison’s in the dose,” I say with a shrug. “And they… look cool. Here’s rosemary, chamomile, ginkgo, wolf’s bane, St. John’s wort… I won’t bore you with the rest.”
“You never bore me, Jamie.”
“You’re the first to say that,” I offer wryly, moving on to spread the sunscreen on my other arm.
“And that one?” she says, gesturing at the Pokémon.
“It’s… from a video game. I, uh, I really liked it as a kid. It was my first tattoo.”
“And the bird?”
I lift my arm to show her the black and grey sparrow on my ribcage. “My second. Hurt like hell.”
“Why a bird?”
“I was… coming out of a hard time in my life. Wanted a ‘freedom’ sort of thing. Very cliché, I know.”
“It’s nice,” Morgan says lightly. “I like it.”
I hope my blush doesn’t show as I twist around awkwardly, trying to get most of my back.
“Here,” she sighs. “Turn around. I’m not having you complain of sunburn later.”
I freeze. Then I force my muscles to move one by one as I follow Morgan’s instructions to sit at the end of her chair, facing away from her.
Her hands are soft and warm and strong on my back, and my heart thunders in my chest. She’s slow, deliberate, thorough. She must really get annoyed by complaining. I need to do something to disrupt this moment, to make it feel less significant that I’m imagining it to be.
“Don’t pharma CEOs benefit from me getting skin cancer, though? Sell more drugs that way.”
Morgan chuckles. “Good thing Artemis isn’t in oncology.”
Her thumbs sweep down the sides of my neck, tracing theedge of my trapezius muscle. She blends the sunscreen out to my upper arms, sure to wrap around my limbs.
I’m glad I… took care of things this morning. As it is, I have a semi. If I were still that pent up, this would be a disaster.
She runs her thumbs under the edge of my trunks, and I shiver.Fuck. Maybe a little more than a semi now.
“Sorry, that tickles,” I say, hoping she believes me.
