Page 60 of Small Town Hunter

“I won’t.” He leans back on the bed. “But if I’m not back in five days, you should get a move on without me. I’ll make sure you can. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’m worn as a wet saddle,” he grunts. “How do you feel?”

“Better ‘cause I threw up,” I say honestly.

“Can you dig those paws into my back a little?”

“A massage? Okay.”

He turns on his stomach and I run my hands under his shirt. His skin is smooth, his muscles full and hard…perfect. Until I get to his shoulders. I stop.

“Shrapnel,” he says.

I move my fingers over a deeper wound. “What about that?”

“Fight.”

“And that?”

“Belt.”

“Belt?”

“I had a real interesting childhood. Go lower…to the left…Yeah…Sweet Jesus.”

His hair is so soft. I remember I’m supposed to be massaging his back, not running my hands through his curls. But he doesn’t say anything when I do. Until he says gruffly, “I’m sorry for earlier.”

“It’s alright. I started it.”

“I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

“I was more out of pocket,” I admit, then ask, “What do you mean by ‘interesting’?”

“Dad was a cheater. Gave my mother issues,” he replies, voice muffled by the mattress. “All that TV stuff.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Bastards,” he grunts. “Glad you got away from ‘em, Trina.

I’m sitting on his back…actually, I’m sitting on his butt.

Which is very firm.

I remember the man from the porn movie had a butt like that. I try to put the thought out of my head, but it lingers, especially with me basically straddling Crash. My private parts are resting directly on top of him.

“Do you think it was a sin, what we did earlier?” I ask.

“Nothing done from a pure heart can be a sin,” he says quietly.

“What about your marriage? I don’t want to violate that.”

“Hell, that was probably a sin to begin with. Christ, Trin. Take it up with the Man upstairs, I don’t know a damned thing and I’m going to hell anyway.”

“You’re not.”

“I am,” he says with resigned assurance.

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