Leveled (Saints of Denver #0.5)(14)

“You father was a police officer as well?”

“Yeah.”

“And even though you lost him you wanted to follow in his steps?” He sounded puzzled by my career choice and he wasn’t the only one. My mother cried for a week straight when I was accepted into the academy. Even though all I had ever wanted to do was follow in my dad’s footsteps.

“Being a cop was the only option for me. I never considered anything else. That’s part of the reason why I’m so anxious to get back to it. I don’t have a backup plan, Lando. This is it for me.” It came sounding a little more raw and desperate than I intended it to, but it was the truth. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself if I couldn’t go back on patrol and that was terrifying.

“Hmm …” He switched things around so that I was sitting upright and had a leg bent in front of me and my entire torso wrapped around it like a pretzel. I narrowed my eyes at him because he made it look effortless and I was breathing heavily and sweating buckets and not just from the temperature in the room. “Why was that it for you? You lost your father; you had to see how it hurt your mother and sisters and I bet they worry about you all the time. Why would you pick that as your only option?”

It was a good question. One I wasn’t sure I had an answer to. “I wanted to make my dad proud. I wanted to help people. I wanted a job where no one would question my authority or my …” I yelped as I bent too far and my thigh protested. I rolled over and ended up back on my back as I looked up at him. He was shiny with sweat from the heat in the room and his eyes were intently focused on me.

“Your masculinity or your sexuality? You wanted a job that was associated with being a man even if you just happened to be attracted to other men?”

I crossed my hands and rested them on my abs as my breath whooshed in and out. “Maybe that was part of it as I got older but as far back as I can remember I wanted to wear a uniform and to carry a badge. I wanted to make a difference.” I closed my eyes and drifted back in time. “I wanted to make sure no one else had to stand by their father’s grave holding their mother’s hand while she sobbed and sobbed.”

“She very easily could be standing next to your grave next, Dominic.” The words were so quiet it was almost like he breathed them instead of spoke them and there wasn’t anything I could say to argue that he was wrong because he wasn’t.

“I know, but I’m a cop. It’s part of who I am and my mom has always accepted me for every single part of me. It sounds like we’re both lucky that way.”

He put his hands on his hips and seemed to be turning my words over in his head. After a couple of minutes where I just laid there and sweated he finally spoke. “Why don’t you take five and then meet me back upstairs in the spa area. We’ll get the massage out of the way and see if we can work that shoulder out so that on Wednesday we can get back on track.”

I struggled back into a seated position and lifted an eyebrow at him. “You never answered me. Are you the one handling the massage?”

His eyes flared hot at the center and the corners of his mouth twitched like he wanted to grin but was fighting the urge. “I shouldn’t, we have techs, but I’m going to.” The look on his face turned entirely predatory. “I have a feeling my self-control is going to be hurting as badly as your shoulder is by the time we’re done.”

I groaned as I watched him walk away. Basketball shorts did wonders for him both coming and going. “No pain no gain, Mr. Fancy-Pants.”

Chapter 6

Lando

I was setting myself up for failure.

I knew it as soon as I walked into the tiny, sequestered room that we used for massage therapy. I had a tech on staff who I could very easily call to handle this for me. That would be the smart thing to do, the professional thing, but I wasn’t going to make the call.

Nope, I was going to walk in that room with a naked Dominic Voss laid out on the table in front of me and torture myself by putting my hands all over the miles and miles of thick and ropey muscles that covered his big body, knowing that it couldn’t lead to anything. Well, knowing that it shouldn’t lead to anything, but my self-control felt paper thin and stretched as tautly as it had ever been. I couldn’t recall a point in my life where attraction had clawed at me, gnawed on my insides like a hungry monster demanding to be fed. It was hard to concentrate on anything else with this ravenous need pulsing inside of me. I was tempting more than fate by going into that room and putting my hands on Dom, but I had reached the point that I no longer cared.

He was lying facedown on the table and he didn’t look up when I entered the sage-scented room. The new age music that was typically piped in for relaxation was turned off, so the only sounds that filled the tiny space were the alternate sounds of both of our heavy breathing. His sounded like he was getting ready to fall asleep. Mine sounded like I had just run a marathon. His hair was damp from his shower and I took a moment to silently chastise myself for being so caught up in my own thoughts that I hadn’t bothered to spruce myself up after the sweaty yoga session. All I did was throw on a white T-shirt and muck around in the mire of my wayward thoughts. I probably smelled like the floor of the gym, but there wasn’t any time to fix it or worry about it now.

I made sure the door clicked shut behind me so that he knew I was in the room, but he still didn’t move. I wondered if he actually had fallen asleep. I cleared my throat a little bit and told him, “I’m going to focus mostly on your shoulder to see if we can get that muscle to loosen back up. It probably won’t feel all that great at the beginning and you need to make sure you hydrate when we’re done.”