Page 56 of Saving You

Turning away, he headed for the bedroom and stopped in the doorway. Oz had obeyed—just like Ridge knew he would. He was face down on the comforter, the bed haphazardly made, and he was staring at the door with half-lidded eyes. Ridge saw his cheek lift in a smile.

‘Stay,’ Ridge ordered so Oz wouldn’t get up, though it looked like the man had no intention of moving. He set the bottle down on the nightstand, then reached behind his head and grabbed his shirt, pulling it off.

Oz made a soft, curious noise.

‘Trying to be fair,’ Ridge told him.

Oz snorted and shrugged.

Unbuttoning his jeans, he shimmied out of them and left his clothes in a pile at the foot of the nightstand. Tossing the oil onto the pillows, he knelt down and rested his chin on the edge of the mattress.

‘Hi,’ Oz mouthed.

Ridge smiled at him, then eased back so he could have signing space. ‘I’d like to give you a massage.’ He had to spell the word.

Oz’s brows lifted, and his body twitched like he was debating about moving before deciding to use his voice. “Massage me?”

Ridge nodded. ‘It might help you relax. I’m very good.’

Oz rolled his eyes and laughed. “Of course you are. Is there anything you’re not good at?”

Ridge felt his cheeks heat a little. ‘There’s a long list, trust me. But tonight, I can help you relax.’

Oz licked his lips, then asked, “Happy ending?”

Ridge’s whole body jolted, and Oz’s face filled with panic. Before he could take it back, Ridge leaned in. ‘Yes,’ he signed. ‘If you want. Only if you want.’ And then he kissed him, this time not waiting for permission. Oz groaned, lifting his head and shoulders off the bed to give as good as he was getting.

Ridge felt himself thicken in his boxers, but he shoved that thought out of his mind. Tonight might be that night he gave everything to Oz without worrying about himself. The thought made him even harder.

He eased back with a series of small pecks, then nuzzled Oz’s nose with his own before rocking backward onto his heels. ‘What would you like tonight?’

Oz swallowed heavily. “I don’t know. I just want to forget for a little while.”

‘I can do that,’ Ridge signed. ‘Starting with getting you relaxed. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Just feel, okay? Feel my hands.’

Oz nodded and did as Ridge asked. His lashes fanned downward, light but so fucking pretty. Ridge knew the kind of trust it took for Oz to shut out the visual world. It left him down one of his most important senses—the one he relied on most.There were very few people in the world Ridge would trust in that position.

Taking a breath, he pushed to his feet, then carefully climbed over and settled half his weight on the backs of Oz’s thighs. Oz let out a soft groan and arched into the first pass of Ridge’s hands.

Normally, Ridge would correct him, gently pushing him back down. But he wanted Oz to hunt for that comfort, to seek it out and show Ridge with his movements and unconscious sounds exactly what he wanted.

He felt heated deep in his core as he opened the oil bottle and poured a large dollop on his hands. The smell was subtle but nice, and the moment the oil was warm, he lowered his palms and did a firm sweep from the top of Oz’s ass to his shoulder blades.

The man beneath him let out a chest-deep groan and went boneless against the mattress. Ridge smiled and repeated the motion—over and over as Oz’s whole body began to shed his tension. He knew this wasn’t a cure. He couldn’t fix everything with a bottle of oil and a nice orgasm after.

But he could give Oz moments of peace, and that had to mean something, didn’t it?

Those little moments were how Ridge survived the first few years of raising his daughter and realizing that his choices probably left him more alone than ever. He hadn’t grown up with the best role models. Oz was the first person Ridge had ever told about his family, and he’d left out heaping piles of detail because he hated thinking about it.

Sometimes, when his mind was too quiet, he’d shuffle through old memories. The road trip he’d taken with his aunt only to come home and find everything he’d ever known in tatters.

There had been blood on the wall because his dad had gotten drunk and punched through the living room window. The lawn was scattered with the charred remains of his clothes because his mom had burned them all that same night after the cops took him away. Ridge’s room was trashed because in his dad’s drunken state, he thought his mom was hiding her affair partner in there somewhere, and no one had bothered to put it right again.

His dad lost his job after that, and his mom was having an affair with a guy who lived in a broken-down school bus up the street. She looked Ridge in the eye the first weekend after his dad officially moved out and told him she was tired of being a parent.

“It’s my time to focus on myself,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for fourteen years. You need to figure yourself out.”

He had no idea what to think about that. What did a teenager who was too young to drive or work say to a parent who was done with them? That week, he packed a bag and didn’t see her for two full years. And when he came home to a new apartment that was entirely alien with no room for him, he knew that everything he remembered from his childhood had all been a lie.

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