Page 72 of A Reluctant Boy Toy
“Ariel, I told you. And Tag, Molly, and some of the nurses. The pilot of our aircraft—”
“Okay, okay. I get it.” I made a funny face to break the awkward moment. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”
“I could never hate you.” Stone said fervently. “I just don’t know…”
“What? That leaves a plethora of other options.”
Poor man, I thought.
Stone was caught in a riptide on the ocean of charm that isle moi.
I snorted. “Well, I know what I’m feeling.”
“What?”
“Itchy as fuck. Stone? Papi chulo? I will buy you a private island if you help me wash my hair.”
“Which one?”
“Not Manhattan or Fiji.”
He frowned. “So not a good one.”
“Please, Stone.”
He gave me a look of utter disappointment and said, “Come on then.”
I'm not shy about my body. I would have shucked my clothes off as if I was behind the scenes at fashion week, but Stone had to help me painstakingly get out of my tank top. My sleep pants were easy. He taped plastic sleeves over my casts.
He used shampoo that smelled like almonds and took his time, gently scrubbing my hair and scalp clean and rinsing the soap out. Then he repeated, giving me a longer scalp massage. I groaned when his fingers smoothed over my neck and washed behind my ears.
With a washcloth and some neutral-smelling soapy gel, he started scrubbing my shoulders. My back. My chest, pits, and sides. He kept his eyes carefully on my face, his gaze locked with mine.
I never once caught him looking below my waist, but what happened anyway?
I popped a boner.
“Oh my God. Kill me right now.” I couldn’t even cover my raging hard-on with my hands. “Please don’t look. I’m so sorry. This has never happened to me before.”
“Never?” The side of his lip kicked up.
“Not in a situation like this.”
“People bathe you a lot?” He reached back and got a hand towel to drop onto my lap. Of course, now it looked like he’d hung the towel on a particularly springy hook.
“Please, God. Let me disintegrate and wash down the drain. Amen.”
“Suck it up, buttercup. It’s a perfectly normal human reaction.”
Honestly, it wasn’t that I wanted him to do anything at all, but how did this man, who said I was so beautiful, keep looking at me like I was a surfboard he was rinsing off after a day at the beach?
“I don’t chub up every time someone looks at me. It’s just…It’s been a while, okay?”
It took him a long time to reply. “How long?”
He asked like the answer meant something to him, but I couldn’t imagine what. He’d gone without a partner since he split up with his wife. He clearly understood that a man didn’t have to settle for anything to scratch an itch. It took me a while to find a way to say the words without sounding pathetic.
“You don’t go through what I did and hand yourself over to just anyone. It’s been awhile.”
