Page 139 of The Blame Game

But his hands were sure and steady as he carefully manipulated Dom’s limbs and Dom felt better by the time he was done. Looser.

“Can I try one more thing?” Shea asked. “I have an idea of one thing that might work that it doesn’t sound like they’re having you do.”

“Sure. I’ll try anything.”

“You’re having numbness here, right?” Shea touched his outer thigh. “Along the tensor fascia lata where it connects to your IT band?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s likely your lateral femoral cutaneous nerve has been impinged.”

“Okay,” Dom said slowly.

“So I’m not saying you don’t have a herniated disc, but if that’s causing some misalignment in your body and changing the way you’re walking and holding yourself to compensate, it’ll cause the area around your iliopsoas and inguinal ligament to get inflamed and irritated.” He touched a spot just inside and slightly below Dom’s hipbone, along his groin crease.

Dom tried to ignore the lift of his cock in response.

Shea was being professional right now.

In the brightly lit training room, with half a dozen of his teammates around and a brisk and efficient trainer touching him, Dom never got hard. It was so far from sex that his body didn’t find it arousing at all.

But it was a whole different story in Dom’s bedroom—in their bedroom, Dom corrected himself—with the low lights and Shea touching him and being sexy in his competence…

Of course, there was no hiding it, since Dom wore thin pajama pants that hid nothing.

Shea smirked. “You’re really into this, huh? And you scoffed at the idea of role playing. Seems like the PT and patient angle is doing it for you.”

Dom snorted, knocking his bent knee into Shea’s ribs. “Shut up. I—it’s not the situation. It’s you touching me.”

“Yeah?” Shea smiled more softly, his gaze warm. “Good. Now roll onto your stomach.”

Dom lifted an eyebrow, but he did as requested. “You going to fuck me?”

“No.” Shea lightly slapped his ass. “I’m going to show you a couple of exercises. This first one is a nerve tensioner. Now, this would be better on a training table, but we can make this work. I want you to lift up onto your elbows until your chest leaves the floor. Don’t go into too deep of a backbend though—we don’t want too much compression in your lower back.”

Dom did that and Shea corrected his posture a little. “Good. Now look down as you flex your left knee. You want to bend your left leg while you lower your head. Try that a couple of times, slowly, and tell me how it feels.”

Dom did. “This is fine. No pain,” he said when he was done.

“Good. Then do ten of those.”

When Dom was done, Shea patted his thigh. “Okay, now we’re gonna do something very similar but it’s a nerve floss. This time, I want you to bend your head back—carefully, don’t crunch your neck—while you flex your knee.”

Dom did it, then did a round of both on the right side, and another round on the left. “How do you feel?” Shea asked when he was done.

“Fine?” Dom rolled onto his back. “It didn’t feel like much of anything though.”

“That’s good. It’s not a ‘push harder to achieve better results’ kind of treatment. Just something that you can add to your exercises. As long as you’re not having pain, it should be absolutely fine to do once or twice a day until you get your results back. You’re welcome to check with the trainers to make sure they approve though, if you’d feel more comfortable.”

“I’ll mention it to them, but I mean it, I trust you,” Dom said, reaching out. He grasped Shea’s forearm and squeezed.

“Hey. When do you get the results from your testing?” Shea asked with a little frown.

“Should be sometime this week.”

“Want me to come with you?”

Dom’s immediate response was to say no but he hesitated. “Uhh, maybe?”

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