Page 28 of Untouchable

Fighting it is not working. Harp squirms, coughs, and tries to covertly reach a hand towards his groin under the sheet.

“Sorry, was that too much?” Parker asks. He takes Harp’s biceps and guides his arm so it’s laying back on the table. “I know this part isn’t super comfortable, but we’re almost done.”

Harp frowns deeply and uses every ounce of his brain power to try and take control of his body. We're almost done, we're almost done, we're almost done.

Clearly this is one of those useless random boners that you can't look too deeply into. It happens sometimes with the wrong thought or friction at the wrong time, though less and less after Harp entered his forties.

There's no chance of dissociating his way out of it now that his hands are firmly back at his sides because Harp is so acutely aware of everything in that moment: the glide of confident, slicked hands over his muscles, releasing deep tension. It’s as if Parker is channeling power through fingers and straight into Harp’s weary muscles, touching everywhere but his almost painfully hard nipples.

* * *

Parker’salmost done with the session when he realizes why Harp has been squirming around.

Suddenly, Harp’s flinching makes sense—Parker hadn’t hurt him. Harp was trying to cover his hard-on, rapidly swelling beneath the thin flannel sheet.

It takes Parker by surprise—not because he hasn’t had a client get an erection before; that kind of thing happens more often than one might think—but because, Parker discovers, there’s still a part of his brain that isn’t entirely in work mode.

Holy shit, he’s huge,this part of his mind unhelpfully observes, and Parker feels the blood drain from his face.

God, shut up, he tells himself. Be a professional.

Parker finishes up as quickly as he can—he was almost done with the massage anyway, so he gives Harp’s shoulders a few more cursory kneads, keeping his eyes firmly averted.

“All right, Harp, thanks so much for a great session,” he says, the well-practiced words spilling out of his mouth. “I’ll step outside, take your time getting off the table.”

* * *

Harp gets dressed,hating himself. There’s no chance Parker didn’t notice that, judging by the speed with which he wrapped up their session.

He looks just as awful as he feels in that moment. But at least his hard-on is long banished. He’ll be lucky if he can ever get hard again in his entire life after being this embarrassed. It’s as if this boner was so shameful it went back in time and cancelled out all boners before it.

Be casual,he tells himself. Be casual. Be casual. Becasual becasual becasual be fucking casual.

As he descends the stairs, Harp feels about as casual as a man falling off a cliff.

He walks right past Parker, unable to meet his eyes, and stalks into the kitchen. Harp doesn’t have anything in the way of a to-go box and he hates tupperware, but he’s already decided to load up a plate for Parker and cover it in foil.

He may have fucked all of this up spectacularly—and he’ll be lucky if Parker ever wants to come back out after this—but Harp knows how to use food as a shield, and it had been a decent enough buffer earlier in the afternoon.

When he turns with his loaded, foiled plate, Parker is in the kitchen doorway, stooping to pet Bo. Harp approaches and clears his throat. Parker straightens out and gives him a deer-in-the-headlights look.

Harp offers out the plate of food and a folded fifty as a tip.

“Thanks for staying late today,” Harp says abruptly.

“Oh—” Parker says, standing up quickly and not quite meeting Harp’s eye. “I—you don’t—are you sure?”

Harp frowns, not sure if Parker means the tip, the food, or the gratitude in general for his patience, for the fact that Parker hadn’t simply fled the scene.

“Yep. I’m sure,” Harp says, meaning it all, he supposes.

“Uh—” Parker says, and for a moment Harp thinks he will refuse. But then, Parker’s hands dart out and he grabs the plate, though he’s still not making eye contact. “At least let me buy you lunch sometime.”

He says it so quickly it all sounds like one long, garbled word—atleastletmebuyyoulunchsometime.

It takes Harp a full beat to understand that it was a question, and he’s already saying Sure, of course, before he even fully processes that he’s agreeing to go into town for Parker.

Parker glances up, his eyes wide.

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