I helped him up and over the side of the tub, half-kneeling to lower him down to sitting.
“Okay?” I asked.
“I will be if you take off your clothes,” he replied.
“El—”
He shivered. “Turn on the hot water, and take your clothes off, Seth.”
I gave in again, turning on the water—making sure it was hot, but not scalding—before stripping off my shirt, then dropping my own sweatpants. “Promise me something,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“If anything hurts—anything—we stop. Okay?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you stop when something hurts?” he asked, and I felt my neck and chest flush.
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“I have chronic pain,” I retorted. “If I didn’t do things when I was in pain, I wouldn’t ever doanything.”
He frowned. “But?—”
“You have an acute injury. Injuries,” I corrected. “I don’t want you to pull stitches, break blood vessels, or do anything else that could make it take longer for you to heal, okay?”
He studied me. “Do I hurt you?” he asked me, his voice tight.
I sighed. “Not in the way you mean,” I replied. “Youdon’t hurt me.”
“But…?”
I sat on the edge of the tub and leaned forward to turn the tap off, steam from the water beading on my skin. “My knees are shit,” I told him. “Kneeling makes them hurt. Standing too long makes them hurt.” He looked slightly stricken, so I rushed on.“Elliot,sleepingwrong makes them hurt. Or not moving them. Or moving them too much. Especially the left one.”
He reached out a hand toward it, water dripping off his fingers from the tub, but pulled back before he touched me.
I caught his hand, then put it on my knee. “I’ll tell you if it’s bad,” I told him. “Or if I don’t want you to touch it. Or me. Okay?”
He looked up at me, eyes wide. “I?—”
I shifted, sliding off the side to sit on the bathmat, my right leg tucked under me. “Just like you’re going to tell me if anything hurts, right?” As I spoke, I reached one hand over the side of the tub and trailed my fingers lightly up the inside of his thigh, causing him to suck in a breath, the knuckles on his good hand white as he gripped the side of the tub.
“You what?” I asked him, my fingers finding the crease at the inside of his hip.
He expelled the breath he’d just drawn. “Shit.”
“I can stop?—”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled.
I couldn’t help the soft laugh that slipped from me, any more than he could help the soft moan that slid between his lips as I wrapped my hand around his cock, the water slicking my grip. “Any…” I said, squeezing. “Time…” A pull. “You…” He whimpered. “Want.”
He let his head fall back, steam and the rhythm of my hand making sweat pearl from his brow. Water sloshed a little around my arm as I worked him, watching the furrow form on his forehead between his closed eyes. In my hand, he was hard, thick and warm as the water. I could feel my own answering arousal rising between my legs, heavy and full.
“Seth,” he groaned.
“Mmm?”
