Page 92 of Hold Me Today

I’m hoping for honey rimmed with amber.

Rein it in, Stamos. Rein it the fuck in.

“Nick?” At my softly uttered name, I lift my chin and meet my favorite brand of honey. Mina motions to the empty chair. “How about I finally give you that trim I promised?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

I strip off my work gloves, dropping them next to the drill, which I unplug from the outlet before moving toward Mina. Today she’s wearing a pair of gray sweatpants that gather at the ankle and another one of her sweater crop tops—this one is white and reveals a strip of tantalizing bare skin. She looks comfy and edgy and beautiful all at once, and it’s no wonder that my hands have a mind of their own. The moment I step in close, I brace a hand against her hip and brush my lips over her forehead. “Don’t turn me into Vin Diesel,” I tell her, giving us both a throwback to one of our very first emails that we exchanged.

The backs of her fingers gloss over my knuckles. “Or what?”

Gamóto, I love the challenge in her voice almost as much as I love verbally sparring with her. Pulling away, I drop my ass into the chair and swivel it around to stare her down. “Or you’ll be lucky if you see any of The Great One on our trip to Maine this weekend.”

Her face reveals nothing as she spins me back to face the mirror. “Men,” she huffs playfully, “your entire sex giveswaytoo much credit to your dicks. How many minutes do you think you spend thinking about it during the day? Asking for a friend.”

“Percentage-wise?”

She nods, then reaches for one of the bottles sitting on her makeshift cart.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I pretend to think heavy on the topic while I watch her tip what looks like oil into the palm of her hand. “Maybe eighty percent?”

Rubbing her palms together, she meets my gaze in the full-length mirror positioned about a foot away from my feet. “And the other twenty percent?” she asks.

I offer a slow grin. “Spent thinkin’ about you, Ermione.”

Her cheeks grow rosy, and she pokes me in the shoulder with a knuckle, since her hands are all slick with oil. “Smooth, Stamos, so smooth.”

And then she slips her fingers into my hair and I go straight to heaven.

“I thought you could use a little stress relief,” she says, her attention fixated on my head while I watch her in the mirror. I’ve seen this woman naked, I’ve seen her orgasm so hard that her pupils dilate and her legs twitch, but to date, I can’t say that I’ve seen her shy . . . until now. She doesn’t look up as she massages my scalp, applying pressure with her fingertips. It’s an act of self-control to keep from groaning out loud when she glides down to the nape of my neck and works to loosen the tense muscles there.

Voice rougher than I’d like to admit, I mutter, “You have unicorn fingers.”

She laughs at that but doesn’t stop her ministrations. “The old salon I worked at—we were expected to offer a short scalp massage before every haircut. If I have unicorn fingers, it’s only because I learned the better the massage the higher the tip.”

Makes sense. I feel like one lucky son of a gun right now. “You can have every tip I’ve got.”

“Ah, I see we’re firmly in the eighty-percent bracket right now.”

“Don’t forget the twenty,koukla. I’m thinking about you.”

Briefly her fingers freeze, and my gut clenches with the worry I may have overstepped our casual boundaries. But then she continues, and it’s the little smile gracing her mouth that has me relaxing again.

Once she’s done making me almost come in my pants from her unicorn scalp massage, she starts in on the haircut itself. She spritzes my hair, using some shampoo that she says doesn’t need to be washed out but will remove most of the oil she used on me. I understand approximately half of what she says, but I give her my undivided attention anyway, nodding and doing exactly as she tells me to do.

She spends more time on me than she did on my guys, and I like to think it’s because she enjoys touching me as much as I enjoy being touched by her. She clips here and snips there, her fingers fluffing my hair, all while eyeing me with studious focus. Her teeth sink into her plump lower lip as she steps back to survey her handiwork.

“Satisfied?” I ask.

“I aim to please.” She winks at me, then sets her shears down on the cart to her right. Picking up one of the smaller tubes with a glossy, blue coating, she squeezes product into her hand and rubs her palms together again. “I didn’t want to go too short with these curls,” she tells me, threading her fingers through my hair to evenly distribute the cream. “I like having something to hold onto when you’re doing business.”

Doing business. Nowthat’sa euphemism I haven’t heard before.

Cracking a grin, I shift my gaze from her face to my reflection. Call me a romantic or what have you, but I feel like Ilookdifferent. It’s not the hair. Mina’s done a great job with the unruly mop on my head, for sure, but it’s not what strikes me the most. No, it’s the wayIlook younger—less surly, as she always tells me, less reserved. The grooves in my face appear softer, less deeply embedded, and I know I only have Mina to thank for the pep in my step.

I want this more than I should.

Me, her, and a fake relationship I desperately want to make real.

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