Page 72 of The Weight Of It All
He looked down. “Your jeans are fine. You can just wear one of my shirts.”
And suddenly, I was nervous about being naked with him. Which was ridiculous, considering what we’d just done.
Reed smiled like he knew exactly what I was thinking. He slowly pulled my shirt over my head and turned me around so I faced the bathroom vanity, and of course, the mirror. “Look at yourself, Henry.”
I did, though my eyes were drawn straight to his refection behind me. I mean his shoulders were twice as broad as mine. He was a head taller than me. It was hard not to look at him.
“No, look at you,” he whispered. I did as he asked, andReed studied my chest in the mirror. I wasn’t defined like him, or tanned for that matter. I had lost some weight, and I had toned up a little, but it was nothing compared to him. “I like what I see, Henry,” he said, planting a kiss on the top of my shoulder. He did seem to like what he saw. He told me he liked me for me, regardless of the body I had. I stared at my reflection, trying to see what he did, and Reed waited until the mirror started to fog up. “Come on, I hate to waste water.”
He opened the shower door and stepped under the stream. I shook my head at how fucking absurd this day had been, finished getting undressed, and joined him.
He was already soapy, and if I thought he was hot before, then I would gladly stand corrected. Because him being wet and soapy was a sight that literally took my breath away. I reached up and touched a stream of bubbles that was making its way down between his pecs and onto the defined muscles of his abdominals. Even the bubbles looked happy to be there. Not that I could blame them.
Reed took his shower gel and loofah and scrubbed the mess dried on my belly, then trailed his hands all over me. He wasn’t shy about touching me, and I tried not to think about how out of shape I was, especially around my middle. He certainly didn’t seem to notice, or care. When I was sufficiently scrubbed, and given there wasn’t a great deal of room in his shower, we had to sidestep around each other for me to get under the stream of water. After I was rinsed off, Reed tilted my head back into the spray of water and kissed me.
He pulled away with a devilish smirk and turned off the taps. He stepped out and handed me a towel before quickly drying himself. While he pulled on his jeans, he said, “So, I was thinking…”
I towelled off. “Yeah?”
“Well, I still have all the ingredients for that salad I was going to make you last night. We could do that now, if youlike?” He did up his jeans and ran the towel over his hair, making it stick up in all directions. “I’m hungry. But I’m always hungry, so if you’d rather leave it, I can just grab something else.”
I pulled on my jeans and did them up, feeling a little less insecure not being completely naked in front of him. “Sure! Sounds great. I’m kinda hungry actually.”
He grinned and scooped up our dirty shirts. “Excellent. I’ll just go find you a clean one of these.”
I hung up both towels, and he appeared a second later with two T-shirts in his hand. They were identical, just like the one he was wearing earlier. A simple cotton shirt with a sports brand across the front, both the same size. Except when he put his on, he filled it like a god, and when I put mine on, it fit me very differently.
Reed just smiled happily, like it made not one lick of difference. “Come on. I need foooooooood.”
He led the way to the kitchen, talking cheerfully as I followed. “The best thing about this recipe is that it takes fifteen minutes.” He opened the fridge and rifled through it, handing me ingredients as he found what he needed. “And considering I eat about six times a day, quick meals are a good thing.”
“Six times?”
He closed the fridge door with two bottled waters in his hand. “Yep. My metabolism is kinda fast. I burn a lot of calories at work, so I usually just keep fruit and protein bars with me. You’ll get used to it.” Then he made a face. “If you want to get used to it, that is.”
I put the salad stuff on the counter and took one of the bottles of water he was holding. “I would like to get used to it.”
He grinned, but he blushed a little as he nodded. “Good. Me too.”
And Emily’s words came back to me. He might be a big guy, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel. And while my preconceived stereotyped notion was that all gym junkies were fuck-anything types, he couldn’t have been any more opposite. He was just as vulnerable as me.
“I’m glad you like to eat,” I said. “Because I like to cook. But just so you know, I have a protein bar you can have any time.”
It took him a second, but then he realised what I was talking about. He chuckled. “So you have the sense of humour of a fifteen year old boy.”
“Pretty much. You’ll get used to it.” I took a sip of water. “Oh, and I still have to make you that beetroot thing. It was incredible.”
“Okay.” He kissed me with smiling lips. “Maybe this afternoon? We could take a walk to Coles later if you want?”
“We could. But I have the ingredients for it at my place.”
His gaze met mine, and there was a flicker of heat there. “Sounds good.”
It was pretty obvious that my offer for him to have dinner with me was also an invitation for something more physical. I didn’t think we were at the having-anal-sex stage yet, but there were about a hundred other things we could do. I realised then that we needed to have the talk.
“So…” I started cautiously. I picked up the sweet potato. “I guess we need to talk about sexual histories and expectations at some point.” He looked at the phallic shaped potato in my hand and smirked, and I snorted. “Yes, your apt sized vegetable is apt.”
He handed me the peeler, then thought better of it, and took the potato and peeler back. “I might do that part. Can you wash the salad leaves?”
