Page 16 of Live for Me

How in the fucking hell was I supposed to avoid touching her?

She hadn’t even put any extra effort into this kind of torture, and it was still the absolute worst fucking torture I’d ever experienced. She was wearing the same tiny shorts and the same tank top she slept in back in Indiana most nights. Giving me the same constant curiosity about what was underneath that tank top because sheneverwore a fucking bra, and I was prepared to bet my soul that her nipples were pierced.

I dragged my hand along the back of my neck to try to ease the tension that never seemed to fade from that area.

Then that tension increased tenfold when I felt fingertips on my shoulder blade.

Shit, it increased nine-million-fold.

Her fingers moved along the full length of one of the worst scars on my back.

My dad had used my body to break a whole ass dining room chair down into kindling that time.

“There are so many,” she whispered.

This was not at all the time for my dick to be trying to spring to life, but I couldn’t focus on anything outside of the way her fingers felt against me.

She was fixated on some seriously fucked up sadness.

I was fixated on her.

Memphis sucked in a breath and her fingers were gone a second later.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, like she hadn’t meant to touch me at all. “I really just came to apologize for being weird earlier. Not to just keep making it worse.”

She was backing away from me by the time I’d turned around again.

“You don’t need to apologize forearlier. You’re weird all the time,” I said and smiled. “And that all happened over a decade ago, angel. It doesn’t do either of us any good to be upset about it now.”

“What a ridiculouslyUtahway to look at something. Indy will want that in theBible,” she said and smiled while she looked around the room. “You travel with a heating pad?” she asked when she spotted the one that I’d been lying on in the bed closest to the door. “No judgment. I mean, I’ve done it before too. Just I would imagine for a different reason. Girl problems and all.”

“I will demand more information about thisBibleone of these days. So, just know that’s coming. And yes. My old man body gets tired doing the kind of work that I do.”

“It’s for the neck thing?” she asked.

“Neck thing?”

“I thought it was just a stress tell. The way you rub the back of your neck.”

The hammering that my heart was already doing managed to gain the power of electricity and turned it up a notch to jackhammering when she climbed onto the foot of the bed on her knees.

“Come here,” she said and nodded to the place in front of her.

I looked around the room like a crazy person.

Like maybe she was talking to a ghost who might’ve been chilling in here with us.

I got myself moving toward her before she changed her mind about whatever this was, though. She pointed to the edge of the bed, and I sat my happy ass right in front of her without so much as a second thought. I willed myself not to think too hard about how easily she just had me following her very quiet commands.

Both of her hands gripped my traps a second later, and I was certain I was at the beginning of a sex dream.

“You carry an awful lot of tension in your shoulders.”

“Yeah. The goal is usually to keep it from coming out through my fists.”

Her hands froze for a moment, like she was trying to decide if she was allowed to laugh at that or if I was being serious and it was scary.

I needed anything else to focus on while she touched me. The way she was digging her fingers into every muscle across my shoulders was not supposed to be sensual. She didn’t come in here to fuck me. She didn’t come in here for me to fuck her.

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