“Thursday. Got it.” He was heading into the semifinal against Jordan on Friday and if he scraped through that, the real grind would start on the American tour. He’d need more than just a light massage, In reality, he’d need someone with him full-time.
“Don’t do anything stupid in the next forty-eight hours,” I added, stripping off my gloves.
He gave me that signature look of mischief. “No promises.”
I shook my head, already reaching for the door. “I’ll see you Thursday, Reed.”
“Looking forward to it.”
I didn’t glance back. I couldn’t.
By the time I hit the tunnel, I couldn’t tell if the echo around me was my footsteps or the heavy thump behind my ribs. With every step, the line I had drawn was getting harder and harder to see.
Chapter 11
Tyler
Thursday
I hadn’t seenher since the quarterfinal, but she hadn’t left my head for a second. Every stretch, every rep, every goddamn ice bath, all I heard was that clipped Irish bite telling me not to be an idiot. It was making me feel things I’d never felt before, and I wasn’t about to let her think I couldn’t follow through with her advice.
I’d never given a shit about impressing physios before. Half the time I tuned them out, let their advice slide in one ear and straight out the other. But with her it was a completely different story. I wanted her to know I’d listened, that I wasn’t just the screw-up everyone had probably already warned her about.
I was her last slot of the day, so I knew she was finishing work after seeing me.
Lucky bastard, really.
And the way I’d been wired tight since I walked down here, yeah, that was on her. No point pretending she hadn’t already worked her way under my skin.
The hallway was quiet as I jogged through the back entrance to the physio suite beside the gym, skin still soaked from running drills. I hadn’t even showered again– idiot move, considering I was about to walk in there half-wrecked from practice and stupidly desperate to see her. Through the open door, I spotted her twisting her hair up the way I noticed she always did before examining me, like it was part of her ritual.
When she saw me, her whole body seemed to coil tight again; I fucking hated that I did that to her.
She didn’t say a word. Just raised one brow that saidyou’re late,snapped on a pair of gloves, and jerked her chin toward the table.
And yeah, I couldn’t even hide that Ilovedthe way she bossed me around.
I hopped up onto the bed smiling, kicked off my sneakers, and lay back. I knew the drill by now.
Except this time she tugged my shorts a little higher—fuck—until her fingertips found the top of my hamstring. She didn’t mean anything by it. I knew that. But still.
Her hands were warm and familiar. But she didn’t dig in like usual, instead, she touched like she knew my limits now better than I did. And the fucked-up thing was… I’d started waiting for it.Wantingit. Like my body recognized her before my brain caught up.
She worked with that same maddening precision, all focus and control while all I could think about was how good she felt and how close she was to my dick. I clenched my jaw, fixing my eyes on a water stain on the ceiling, trying to think about literally anything else. But then her thumb brushed near the hem of my boxers, her face right there beside my thigh, and a strand of dark hair slipped loose from her clip and grazed my skin.
That was it; flashfire straight through my skull. Suddenly, all I could picture was how she’d feel on top of me, straddlingmy hips, hands spread across my chest, moving slow and filthy while I begged her not to stop…
“Okay,” she said briskly, effectively short-circuiting every nerve in my body. “It’s definitely loosened up. Well done for doing the stretches.”
I blinked, trying to remember how to sit upright because she’d just triggered a praise kink I didn’t even know I had. She was already at the sink, washing her hands like she hadn’t just caused me all kinds of problems. My body was still catching up to what had just happened, my fingertips biting into the black plastic coating of the treatment bed.
“If you meet me here at twelve tomorrow,” she added, tossing the towel into the laundry bin, “I’ll see you before the match. Rest it tonight. Don’t overstretch.”
I nodded, tugging the leg of my shorts down and discreetly adjusting the hard-on I was still sporting.Cool. Totally normal. Great job, Reed.
“So…” I aimed for casual, even though my pulse was still slamming in my ears. I was surprised I still had any blood left in my upper body. “What’s the big Thursday night plan in physio world?”
She smiled faintly. “Oh, very wild. Bath. Netflix, maybe a book, then bed.” She rolled her eyes.
