Page 94 of Oar Than Friends

‘I’m so happy you’re here,’ Oz whispered in my ear.

‘Me too,’ I replied truthfully and I wondered if maybe I wasn’t just here for him, or me. That my being here helped to distract them all from the person who was missing because, again, Oz was doing what he could to protect his family. ‘Me too.’

‘What’s Boxing Day? Is this the same as the Santa run but we wear boxes?’ I lifted my leg from under the warmth of the comforter, and pulled down the edge of my pyjama pants – my new dark-red pyjama pants, which had been a gift from Phoebe – to reveal a large bruise spreading across my thigh. ‘I’m not sure I can do another one of those.’

Oz chuckled, brushing his palm against the purple/blueish marbling, and dropped a soft kiss to it, ‘No, it’s just the day after Christmas.’

‘Why’s it called Boxing Day?’

‘It was traditionally a day when gifts were collected for those in need. They were boxed up and handed out.’ His shoulder jerked in a shrug.

‘Oh. So what are we doing today then?’

‘Whatever you’d like, Yankee Doodle. Probably more eating, Phoebe will have another movie for us to watch,we can take the dogs for a walk across the fields. I should probably do a work-out.’

‘I’m never going to get any studying done, am I?’

‘Of course you are, and if I’m not mistaken you’ve been acing your anatomy coursework.’

His grin was so devilish, along with the devious glint in his eye peeking out from under the flop of dark curls, that I couldn’t help but laugh at him, or stare, especially when he jumped out of bed and stood at the end. I watched as he slowly moved his palm across his heavily stacked abs, brushing against the tip of Excalibur until his hand dipped under the obscenely low-slung band of his pyjama pants and disappeared.

A barely-there sigh fell from my lips. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, rowers have the finest bodies.

‘See? You can name all these muscles already …’ he grinned with a flex of his bicep, stretching the Olympic rings.

It should be cheesy, itwascheesy. I shouldfind itcheesy. But all it did was remind me of exactly what he could do. What those muscles were capable of.

I wasn’t sure how much I’d learned during his anatomy lessons, not anything that could be used in my exams anyway. I’d learned plenty about how my body reacted when his mouth inched up the inside of my thigh, or how he’d discovered a spot to the left of my ribcage that hardened my nipples until they were twisted to the point of painful, or how I knew he loved when I fisted through his hair and gripped onto the strands by the way his kisses deepened and his thrusts intensified until it was me screaming out for release.

But actual studying? No.

However, I was learning about the differences between the US and England and the length of time Christmas seemed to stretch over here. It felt like every day there was another thing to celebrate or take part in, whereas back home life would have returned to normal by the day after Christmas, if not the afternoon of.

I had friends who’d drive into the city to exchange their presents the second the stores reopened; a fact which had shocked Phoebe to her core. My cousins would be back working. My mom always took the tree down the day after Christmas because‘I’ve had enough of it getting in the way,’and nothing would stop my dad from being out on the fishing boat.

It was helping me understand why Oz had made such a big deal about me not going home, because Christmas in England was centred around spending time together, family and love. And he’d brought me back to experience his, because here Christmas went on forever.

Right now, I wasn’t even sure what day of the week it was.

What’s more? I kind of liked it.

But I did need to study, and the dull panic that I hadn’t done anything for days was getting louder.

‘Come on, let’s go and work out. You can explain the process of my muscles working correctly, then I’ll show you exactly how my muscles can work for you.’ His thick eyebrows wiggled at me, making me roll my eyes in response because he still hadn’t run out of innuendos between my medical degree and his dick.

If studying was my top priority, sex was his.

After Oz had dragged me off yesterday on the pretence of taking the dogs for a walk but instead taken me to a pretty awesome tree house in the woods on the far side of the estate, it had become clear he was on a mission to have sex in every square inch possible.

It was something I was only too happy to help with.

While my mind might belong to me, I no longer owned my body. It was the property of one Arthur Osbourne-Cloud.

I’d never experienced anything like it. The way he could control every sensation I felt, reaction I gave, every breathless response to the questions he’d ask – do you like that? Does that feel good? You wanna see how deep I can get?

My entire body quivered in desperation for him. The way things were going, my heart would be following.

On second thought, maybe studying wasn’t my top priority.

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