No desire or heat, just the ghost of everything I thought we were building. My stomach drops, shame chasing itdown in a sick, hot rush. I don’t see the ache I feel in him, no heat.
I want him.
And he doesn’t want me.
I can’t tell whether I misread everything or if he did want me, but I ruined it because I came on too strong, moved too fast, assumed too much.Hoped too much.
PetitCrews is the first to unfreeze, and the first thing he does is push my face away.
I let him.
Then he hiccups loudly, ducks under my arm, and bolts, unable to get away from me fast enough. Without a word or even a backward glance, he literallysprintsaway from me, and here I am, breathing hard, and just hard.
And humiliated.
What the fuck was that?What the fuck did I just do?
Toulouse shifts inside my sleeve, a faint rustle of fur and warmth against my wrist.
“Merde, sorry,mon amour. I forgot about you.”
I forgot about fucking everything.
Pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead, I lean back against the tree and try to remember how to breathe like someone who isn’t a complete fuckup.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alaina
Piper’s thumbs land like knives.
Not in the metaphorical‘wow, this massage is intense’way. Actual knives. Serrated, probably.
“Breathe,” she commands, all calm and spa-voiced as she digs into the meat of my calves as brutally as possible.
“Iambreathing,” I grit out. “Through the pain.”
“You’re fighting me.”
“I’m trying not to scream.”
She hums, sounding pleased. “Then it’s working.”
I’m face-down on a padded table that smells of antiseptic and lavender with my hoodie bunched up under my ribs, binder already stripped off because even I’m not masochistic enough to keep it on during this, but Ididforget to remove the socks I stuffed down my boxers, and now they’re pressing awkwardly into my crotch as a sock-shaped reminder of every bad life choice I’ve made.
Awesome.
It’s late, and Piper already had a long day with pit setup and her other sessions, so she only wanted to work a quick one on my legs and hips and told me to keep my clothes on.
My sports bra feels loose, my limbs are Jell-O, and my brain is a goddamn war zone. The thing about a deep-tissue massage is that it gives you nowhere to hide. No excuses. No distractions. Just knots being worked out of your body while your mind works knots out of everything else.
Like the Luc thing.
God.The Luc thing.
What thefuckwas that?
I can still feel his knee between my legs, the heat of his hand under my jaw, and the sharp scrape of his teeth where he bit me.
