“What?” she asked, turning back around, catching me staring at her ass.
“Trust me, it’s definitely sexual,” I replied, my cock throbbing in my hand.
“Look, Jesse, you’ve got to stop this,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “I can’t work like this. We barely knew each other. It was a long time ago. It didn’t mean anything. It’s best we just keep things professional.”
“That’s true, it was a long time ago,” I replied slowly. “And it was just one night. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean anything.”
“I meant - I - well - you - goddammit, Jesse, I really don’t even remember. Can we please stop talking about it?”
“Don’t remember!” I roared. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Do you?” she asked, her voice dripping with irritation.
“Yes. It was amazing,” I replied. She’d returned to my side and was roughly rubbing some kind of minty smelling lotion on my leg now, her face turned away slightly. I reached up and wrangled a loose curl, tucking it behind her ear. She shuddered, her eyes locking with mine as she looked at me in shock. “I didn’t forget, Maisey. I’d never forget. It was the best night of my fucking life… Tell me you didn’t forget either. It was your first time. I know damn well you didn’t forget that.”
She shook her head, slammed the bottle of lotion on the table and walked out, leaving me with a silent answer to my question.
She hadn’t forgotten a goddamned thing.
10
MAISEY
I closed the door to my office, sinking against the wall and falling to the floor. As if having to massage his fucking thighs and groin weren’t bad enough, I had to deal with him touching me? Yeah, maybe it was no big deal, but the act of touching my hair like that was so familiar, so intimate, it had completely unnerved me.
I’d never imagined it would be this hard to see him again. I’d been so in love with him, as much as a naive teenager can be in love. But over the years, his effect on me had lessened to a tolerable level, and I’d learned how to push the thought of him far in the back of my mind. In just a few years, he’d demolished years worth of resistance that I’d built up.
I felt like a teenager all over again. Fumbling, stumbling, butterflies, sweaty palms and a fluttering heartbeat. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I had a virus. But I didn’t. It was all Jesse. I was sick with every emotion under the sun right now, and if I didn’t get a grip on it, I was going to lose everything I’d worked so fucking hard for. My job. My stability.
I couldn’t do that. I owed it to Maddy to keep my shit together. She needed a parent that didn’t fall apart just because my past had marched back into my life.
My head was spinning, but I had to get back in there. I stood up, squared my shoulders and walked back down the hall.
Grady was waiting again, like a faithful puppy. I wondered if he had his own life, or this was it. He barely nodded at me and I knocked and walked in again.
Jesse had taken off his shirt and was sitting on the edge of an exercise bench in the corner, lifting weights over his head, his arms raising up and down, his tight muscles rippling down his naked back, his biceps twitching and flexing and covered with a light sheen of sweat.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You should start slow.”
“My arms aren’t fucked up. Besides, you walked out without telling me what to do. I don’t like just sitting around and wasting time. Time is money, right?” he winked.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, forcing my gaze away from his amazingly toned body. I’d seen pictures of it. He’d been photographed many times over the years and his body was probably plastered on many teenaged girl’s walls, but there was something different about seeing it in person. He was a perfect man, if you were only looking on the outside. His body was flawless, outside of the swollen and scared knee and bruises on his left side and thigh. Somehow, I didn’t see those though. I just saw the hard work he’d obviously put into developing his body into elite athletic form. It was breathtaking, and it took me a second to gather my wits about me before I could begin speaking again.
“So,” I began. My voice was shaking and it was beginning to piss me off. I was a grown woman acting like a virginal teenager. “We have a pool and hot tub down the hall. Water therapy is a big part of what we do here.”
“Does this mean I get to see you in a bikini?” he asked.
“What? No! I won’t be getting in.”
“That’s too bad, it was starting to sound fun,” he said.