Page 79 of Just One Bite
“Feet in the tub,” he orders, and I don’t protest. The ice water on my swollen feet draws a yelp from my lips, but as the seconds tick by, my muscles loosen.
After a few minutes, he towels them off. One of my toenails is black on my right side, and I have open sores at the top. My pinky toe might lose its nail soon.
I gasp as his thumb moves to the arch of my foot.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No, it … That feels so good.”
“I’m going to try to avoid your blisters.”
He uses a dab of healing balm to massage my feet. There’s a level of shock I have to work through. A man is massaging my mangled feet, and it’s kind of nice.
And better than that … he wanted to. I didn’t need to ask.
I think I’m staring at him too much, so I close my eyes, relishing in the sensation of his fingers bending into my skin. He grabs more healing balm and works it into my calf and back down to my arch. Heat trickles down my spine. I have to breathe through some of it. The intensity of the relief he’s providing is blinding.
He stretches my foot ninety degrees, and I wince. He stops, lessening the pressure, and eases back into it.
“You’re doing great.”
His praise singes through my veins, and I breathe out as he tries again. He breathes out with me. My heartbeat responds, and I feel it everywhere. My head. My chest. Between my legs.
“Does that feel better?”
I nod, watching his hands and the way his veins pop as he continues. I need to change the subject. Focus on something else.
“I’m surprised you didn’t run. My dad used to say my feet looked like a man’s … He was joking, I think.”
“Not very funny.” Parker is focused on his task, oddly taking working the soreness from my muscles very seriously.
“My dad was clueless after my mom died. He didn’t know how to take care of his girls. Eva and Emma think he tried his best, but … I think he just fell apart. He gave up on his life’s work. He didn’t go out anymore and didn’t let us either. I was restricted to my town’s ballet classes because he wouldn’t let me go to any of the ballet schools in the city. It’s like he thought sheltering us would save us from the world, and now I think my sisters and I could have benefited from not being so isolated. One blog post and suddenly the world is ending.”
“Yeah, death is … strange, what it does to people. After my mom died, I think my father hated looking at me. He got enough reminders of her at work, and then he’d come home and want a break. That’s why it’s Rage or nothing for me. I can’t go back home.”
That, I understand.
“Ooo.” I exhale as he concentrates his thumb in the arch of my foot.
“Deep breaths.”
“Your mom … What was she like?” I want to imagine her. Did she have the same blue eyes as Parker? The same hair?
“She was tall and warm. Always hugging me. Worked on the Werewolf Council. Really in–your–face bubbly. Straight, dark hair, but her eyes were bright blue like mine. It was how people identified her pack because her eyes stayed blue in shifted form.”
“What happened to her pack … after she died?”
He presses three fingers down the length of my calf. It burns in a soothing way. “They wanted to preserve all of her work in the Werewolf Council and instead of passing that work to me, they exiled me. She hadn’t specified that she wanted me to take over in her will … She got sick suddenly … and so they appointed a new Alpha, and yeah …”
“Is that why you don’t want to accept your alpha blood and make your own pack?”
“Forming my own pack isn’t as simple as just having a group of people to hang out with. Suddenly, I have to ask myself, what do I want to do for the world? Do I want to carry on a path like my mother? Form my own? Then I’m responsible for this whole group of people who form their lives around me, and I don’t know if I feel … good enough for that.”
Parker doesn’t think he’s good enough? How is that possible? Everything about him is perfect, and it’s not an act. I see it in the way he treats others, and I’ve seen him on the ice. It’s in his touch and how he makes me feel … important.
I think any mother would be proud of a man like that.
“What would your mother say?”
