Page 9 of Take Me Big Boy
My hands keep moving. His breathing changes—subtle, just a little deeper—but I feel it where my fingers rest against his ribs. And then, on the second pass over his shoulder, I feel him go still under my touch. The kind of stillness a person goes into when they’re holding themselves in check.
It happens then. My eyes move down before I can stop them, and I notice his gray sweatpants, a similar pair to what he wore yesterday, stretch. He’s hard and knowing—seeingit—sends a tremble through my body.
“You’re not going to run off again, are you?”
“No,” I say stubbornly, even as I swallow down the nerves. “It’s a common thing. It’s natural.”
“Is it?”
Why the heck does his voice sound low and raspy? I turn to Penny, hoping for a distraction, but the traitor is sleeping. Really? I brought her to provide a buffer, and she’s lying in a patch of sunlight, dozing off?
Traitor.
My nipples begin to pebble behind my sweater. “Um, tell me if it hurts when I touch you here,” I choke out, running my hands gingerly over his skin and applying pressure as I feel around for knots and tenderness. When he doesn’t respond, I force my gaze back to his and stare into those deep brown eyes, losing myself in them. For a moment, neither of us speaks.
“I’m not going to be much use to you while I’m like this,” he says, his voice low and rough. “I can step out. Five minutes. Then we work.”
The blinders fall off my eyes, and the room shifts. He’s not trying to embarrass me. He’s giving me a way out. The rough exterior, the apology yesterday, the way he’s offering to leave his own damn workout room rather than make this awkward for me—it’s the same man underneath. The one who’s spent the last twenty-four hours trying not to make this worse for me.
Except I don’t want him to leave the room.
“Or,” I hear myself say, “I could… help.”
His head turns slightly, those brown eyes pinning mine. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just watches me—letting the offer sit in the air between us, waiting to see if I’ll take it back.
“I want to,” I say, and the words surprise me less than they should. I’d thought about his hands all night. I want to know what he sounds like when he stops holding it together.
His eyes darken, and whatever was holding him still snaps. “Then come here, little rabbit.”
I lift my hand to touch him but quickly pull it back. “Um.”
“Scared?” His voice is low and rough—daring me, the way it was meant to. Not soft. Not soothing. A challenge.
“Not of you,” I say, surprising us both. For a beat, neither of us moves. He’s watching me—those dark eyes pinning mine, hungry and patient at the same time, like he’s letting me feel the weight of what I just said. Like he’s giving me space to take it back.
I don’t take it back.
I step forward instead, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that my breath catches at the smell of him—soap and skin and something deeper that I don’t have a name for. His chest rises and falls slowly. Mine isn’t slow. Mine is racing.
I lift my hand and rest it lightly against his stomach—just there, palm flat against warm muscle, feeling him breathe under my touch. His abdomen tenses, and a low sound rumbles in his throat. His eyes never leave my face.
“Ashley.” My name in his mouth sounds like a question and a warning and a plea all at once.
“I know,” I whisper.
My fingertips trail up his stomach, mapping the ridges of muscle, learning the shape of him because I want to. Because I’ve wanted to since yesterday. Up over the surgical scar at his shoulder—gentler there—and back down, slower this time, hisskin hot and alive under my hand. He doesn’t move. He lets me touch him.
It’s the letting that undoes me.
This man, who answers to no one, who shouted at his brother to leave him alone, who growled at me on his front porch—he’s standing perfectly still and letting me put my hands on him. Letting me decide.
My fingers reach the waistband of his sweats and pause there. I lift my eyes to his.
He doesn’t speak. Just watches. Waiting.
I slide my hand into his sweatpants, and the moment I touch the warm skin of his erection, a low groan tears from his chest.
“Ah!” I gasp when he jolts against my hand, but I don’t pull back. My fingers close around him slowly, learning him the way I learned the shape of his stomach—exploring, careful, awed by the heat and the size of him.
