Flawless (Chestnut Springs #1) (29)

My head flips up, the tips of my hair brushing against the top of my shoulders. “You think I’m going to win?”

All at once, I feel like the little boy who so badly wants attention, who wished his mom was there to see him do something impressive. The trouble-making shit disturber who didn’t care about getting a scolding because it was still attention. It meant someone cared about me, and as one of four kids with a single dad breaking his back to run a ranch, I sometimes got lost in the shuffle.

She blows a raspberry as she moves toward the door. “You’re pure magic up there. Of course, you will. Now put your cream on and go to bed.”

My chest warms as she reaches for the knob, and suddenly I don’t want her to leave at all.

I want to hear all about how I look to her.

It’s fucking lame.

I clear my throat and blurt out what I’ve been trying to figure out since she mentioned the cream. “I don’t think I can lift my arm to put the cream on my shoulder.”

She freezes, skirt swishing against her knees. On a heavy sigh, she turns back to me with an expression I can’t quite place on her face. Some cross between annoyance and sadness. And then she’s kicking her boots off and padding across the room in socked feet, swiping both creams off the desk, and then crawling up on the bed until she’s kneeling behind me.

“Which shoulder?” Her voice is tight as her breath dances across my bare back.

“The right one.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

“Jesus, Rhett,” she breathes.

“Getting hung up tonight didn’t help.” Nothing worse either because you can see the disaster coming in slow motion. This sense of panic settles into your gut that your hand is really fucking stuck in there.

“Okay, before tonight, where did it hurt?”

“Under the shoulder blade.”

The tips of her fingers land gently right where the plate of my shoulder blade rests over my ribs, and I shiver. “Here?”

“Jesus, why are your hands so cold?”

“Because it’s freezing outside, and I walked to get you all this, dumbass.” Her fingers prod along the line of the blade, and I wince.

“Careful. Your dad told me to keep my hands off you.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t tell me to keep my hands off you.”

A quiet, strangled noise lodges in my throat as her hands flutter over my skin. Somehow, that one sentence from her lips has all my blood rushing in a singular direction. And suddenly, things feel awkward. Altogether too quiet. Too personal.

“Thank you,” I mutter, it’s so much easier to say without looking her in the eye.

She rests her hand flat against my back for a few beats and quietly replies with, “You’re welcome.”

I can hear her squeeze the cream out into her palm next, the sound of her hands rubbing together as she warms the ointment between them. And then she’s slathering it over my shoulder, hands gliding against my skin with such tenderness that it doesn’t even hurt. She massages gently, and I let my eyes fall shut, my shoulders drooping when I didn’t even realize I had them tensed up.

Her fingers press and slide down every line of muscle, down into my mid-back, toward my spine and over the top of my shoulder.

“These muscles are hard as rocks,” she mutters with a thread of annoyance in her voice.

Yeah, and so is something else.

When her fingertips push up the line from the top of my shoulder into my neck, I groan.

“Is your neck sore too?”

“I told you everything is sore.”

She sighs and reaches for the other tube. I can smell the minty medicated scent the minute she squeezes it out. “Your neck is sore because all the muscles beneath it are so fucked.”

“Is that the medical diagnosis? Fucked muscles?” I ask as she brushes my hair aside.

Her responding laugh is quiet, but then her hands are on my neck, digits digging in at the base of my skull and pulling down, thumbs working hard. And when I groan this time, it’s in pleasure, not pain. I lean into her touch like a dog getting a scratch behind the ear.

I hate seeing the tour doctor on the best of days, but after The Summer Treatment, I will definitely dread his thick, rough hands when I could have her careful, soft ones instead.

My cock throbs between my legs, and I’m momentarily grateful for my loose sweatpants.

At least she’ll never know.

She spreads the muscle balm over my shoulders, covering areas she’s already soothed. And for a moment, I let myself imagine that she really likes this. Doting on me. Caring for me. Putting her hands on me. That it’s not just a job. That she isn’t just trying to prove herself in what I’m assuming is a brutally cutthroat industry.

When she pulls away, I bite my tongue to stop myself from asking her to keep going.

She swallows audibly before she crawls off the bed and straightens herself beside me. “Just make sure you cover that cream up with a shirt, so it gets nice and hot.”

“Okay. Yeah.” My eyes shift over to my luggage, wondering if I’ll be able to lift my arms comfortably enough to pull a shirt on.

Summer must catch the look on my face because she sighs deeply and moves over to my open bag while shaking her head. “Is this t-shirt okay?” She turns, holding up a well-worn gray shirt.