Worried she’s hurt herself trying to get to the bathroom and isn’t within reach of her phone, I wrench the door open. At first I’m confused, because Avery’s expression isn’t one I can read. At least until another low sound escapes her, and what I’m finally seeing makes more sense. It’s also 100 percent not what I expect. And Avery most definitely did not hurt herself trying to get to the bathroom. At all.
Her nightshirt is pushed up high, exposing a few inches of toned stomach and a thin sheet covers most of the lower half of her body. Her uncasted leg is bent with her knee and calf peeking out from under the sheet. Her head is thrown back, exposing the smooth expanse of her throat. Her good arm is hidden under the sheets, but the angle and the way the sheets are moving tell me exactly where her hand is and exactly what she’s doing under there.
She’s so focused that she doesn’t notice me standing in her doorway. And I’m so shocked, and maybe a little concerned, or enthralled by how aggressively her hand is moving under that sheet, that all I can seem to do is gawk.
She groans again, and this time it’s one I’m familiar with because I’ve heard it a lot since the accident. Frustration.
“Come on!” The slap is unexpected and based on the sound, she isn’t hitting the mattress.
I jump back, bashing my elbow into the doorjamb.
Her eyes pop open and her head lifts, gaze locking with mine.
“Shit! Sorry! I thought you’d hurt yourself.” I back out of the room, slamming the door shut.
“What the fuck. What happened to knocking?” she yells from the other side.
“I’m really sorry!” I shout back.
I should move away from her door, but I don’t. Instead, I stand there, like a dumbstruck idiot, with my hand still on the knob, trying to wrap my brain around what I walked in on. I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I take care of my own needs at least once a day, so why wouldn’t Avery do the same?
I’ve seen the black packages that come in the mail for her periodically, which indicates that she’s managing her needs. Not once have I allowed myself to think about what that might look like or sound like. But now I’ve seen and heard it, and based on what’s going on below the waist, my body would very much like to witness that again. I shake my head, trying to make the images disappear and force my body to calm the heck down. “I’ll get breakfast started.” I figure the best way to deal with this is to go about things like normal and pretend it didn’t happen.
I’ve managed to get my body under control again by the time Avery appears in the kitchen.
“Hey!” I cringe at the high, almost-prepubescent pitch of my voice and the excessive chipperness.
All I get in return is a grunt. She adjusts her crutch under her arm, hops a couple of times as she finds her balance and opens the cupboard door.
“What do you need? I can help.”
She wobbles, and an elbow gets me in the side as she reaches up to open the cupboard. “I got it, thanks.”
She finally manages to grab the knob, but she loses her hold on her crutch in the process and hops perilously on one foot. I catch it before it hits the ground and wrap my other arm around her waist to keep her steady.
“I’m really sorry, Ave. I thought maybe you’d fallen and hurt yourself. I should’ve knocked first.”
“I should’ve locked my door,” she mumbles, face red, refusing to meet my gaze.
“You don’t need to be embarrassed about it, okay? We all masturbate.” I pull down a coffee mug and move around to her other side to grab the carafe. The last thing I need is Avery spilling hot coffee on herself.
“Please, Deck, I’m good without the pro–self-exploration pep talk.”
“It’s a good thing you’re getting your drive back, right? It means you’re healing.” I fight a cringe. There’s a solid chance I’m making things worse. While we’ve jokingly talked about my masturbation habits in the not-so-distant past, talking about it and witnessing it firsthand are two totally different things.
“Seriously, Declan, can you please drop it? The cheerleading isn’t really all that helpful.” She dumps a heaping spoon of sugar into her coffee and stirs it aggressively. Coffee sloshes over the side of the cup.
“You’re not mad at me, are you? It was an honest mistake.” I can’t read her right now.
She sighs and tosses the spoon into the sink. “I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated.”
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. “Shouldn’t you be relaxed?”
“Yes, Declan, I should be relaxed, but I’m not because I couldn’t finish. I can’t maneuver properly and it’s too freaking awkward to manage dual stimulation.”
“Dual stimulation?” I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I’m pretty sure where my mind has gone can’t be right.
Her face turns red. “Both buttons need to be pressed at the same time.”
“Both buttons?” What the hell kind of high-tech vibrator is she using?
“The G-spot and the bean! I don’t even know why I’m explaining this to you. It’s the girl equivalent of blue balls!” She waves her left hand around. “I’m probably not going to have a freaking orgasm until this stupid cast comes off, unless you’re planning to help me out with that too!” She spins around, leaving her coffee on the counter, and clomp-crutches back down the hall to her room, slamming the door behind her.
I don’t yell after her to stop, or try to apologize again. Frankly, I’m stunned and working to process all of this information.
I’m not sure how to deal with a sexually frustrated Avery, especially if it means I’m going to spend the next few weeks having my head bitten off on a daily basis. If this morning’s reaction is anything to go on, and her frustration grows over time—I’m imagining what it would be like not to be able to take care of my own needs for more than a month, and the prospect of that looks pretty damn grim—then I’m thinking the coming weeks are going to be rough.
This morning is definitely not going how I thought it would. And now, faced with what I walked in on, my body is telling me something I’ve been trying very hard to deny—I have feelings for Avery. Non-platonic, very unfriend-like, and nowhere in the realm of brotherly.
I don’t want her to be embarrassed or angry, so I steel my resolve and head down the hall, prepared to face her—with her coffee in hand, of course.
This time I knock on her door. “Ave? I have your coffee.” I’m met with silence. “Can I come in?”
I can almost hear her sigh. “Yeah.”
I poke my head in the door and find Avery sitting in bed, laptop tray in front of her, tapping away on the keyboard, her face red, her gaze unable to meet mine.
“Are you okay?” I glance around the room as I set her coffee on the nightstand, trying not to visualize what I walked in on not that long ago.
She pauses her typing and arches a brow. “Do you actually want the truth or do you want me to tell you I’m fine?”
13
IT’S A GREAT IDEA
AVERY
Declan is standing beside my bed with his hands jammed into his sweatpants pockets. It’s basically all he wears these days. Gray sweats that, depending on how he’s standing or sitting, sometimes give me a great view of what he’s packing behind that fabric.
I’ve been trying and failing not to notice how good he looks in those sweats, but this morning was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and apparently my resolve. I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s deprivation that makes him more appealing these days, but that’s a lie. We’ve been spending so much time together and he’s been so attentive, so good about anticipating all of my needs, there to motivate me with physical therapy, with everything really, that it’s become impossible not to see him through different eyes. And realize that what I’m feeling has been there all along. I just pushed those feelings down and tried to suffocate them.
He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to lie, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable either.�
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I sigh in defeat. “Unless you have the sudden magical ability to make me spontaneously orgasm, I don’t know that there is anything you can actually do.” I try to make it sound like a joke, but I’m not sure I’m successful. Spontaneous orgasms would be a great superpower, though.
“Uh, I was thinking maybe we could get some ice cream or something.” He chuckles nervously.
“At nine thirty in the morning?”
“What about chocolate chip pancakes, then? Chocolate is supposed to be a good substitute for orgasms, isn’t it?”
I arch a brow. “If you’d gone without an orgasm for weeks, would chocolate be a reasonable substitute for you?”
He makes a face. “Not really, no.”
I consider how much longer it’s going to be before I can get myself off on my own again, especially with my preferred arm in a cast and my limited mobility. I have a couple more weeks before the cast on my arm comes off, and even then, I’ll need rehab before my hand is up for the task. It’s an unreasonable length of time to go without an orgasm.
Especially not with Declan still helping me with showers and doing shirtless burpees, looking more and more delicious with every passing day. The attraction I once felt back when we were freshman in college seems to have found its way out of the friendship box I stuffed it into years ago.
I bite my nail as heat creeps into my cheeks. Declan and I have been more touchy-feely lately. We used to sit at opposite ends of the couch, but now he’s always next to me and keeps his arm around me. And whenever we pass each other, I find myself reaching out. But it’s gone beyond that. When he’s done rubbing my back, he’ll often pull me back against his chest and snuggle with me for a while. There’s been more than one occasion where I’ve felt him. It’s excited me more than I care to admit.
“Maybe you could help me.” The words pop out, more accidental than purposeful, but it’s too late to call them back.
Declan blinks at me. “I’m sorry, what?”
I swallow down my mortification. “Nothing. Never mind. I’m kidding. Obviously.”
He crosses the room to come to the edge of the bed, his expression shifting from shock to something I can’t read. “I don’t think you are.”
“Just forget I said anything. I’m frustrated and talking out of my ass.”
“What’s the longest you’ve gone without an orgasm?”
“I don’t know. Like the first seventeen years of my life.” I’m embarrassed, and I don’t want to get into this with him, but at the same time I do.
“I don’t mean when you first had an orgasm. What’s the longest you’ve gone since then?” His voice is quiet and low, and the way he’s looking at me makes it hard to hold his gaze, so I stare at his fingers, gliding across the fabric near my leg.
“Until this accident, maybe three days, but I had the flu and I could barely get out of bed.”
“I imagine that’s pretty uncomfortable, then.” His fingertips graze my knee and my skin breaks out in a wave of goose bumps.
“It is,” I whisper.
“Avery.” His voice is gravelly.
I lift my head slowly, gaze dragging along his forearm, catching at his waist, where I can very much see the effect this conversation is having on him. “I can’t focus on anything,” I admit. “It’s such a distraction.” He’s a distraction. The kind that makes my current predicament even worse. “Just forget I said anything. I’ll deal.” Or die of embarrassment.
Declan’s chest rises and falls with every uneasy breath, and he rubs his fingers over his bottom lip. His throat bobs with a nervous swallow. “Ask me again. I wasn’t ready before.” His heavy, fiery gaze meets mine.
I don’t know what’s happening here, but I feel powerless to stop the words from pouring out, and I’m not even sure I’d want to if I could. “Will you help me?”
“Be explicit, Avery. Ask me for exactly what you want so I know we’re on the same page.”
“I’ve already said it. Why do you need me to say it again?”
“You’re in a very vulnerable position. I don’t ever want to take advantage of you, so you need to be very sure about what you want.”
“I want you to touch me,” I say but can’t meet his eyes.
He puts a finger under my chin and gently urges me to raise my head so I meet his gaze. “If we’re going to do this, we need to talk about it. Let me be very clear that it won’t be like when I help you out with showers or back rubs.”
“You don’t have to—” I’m terrified. I’m the one who put this on the table, but I didn’t think about the consequences of actually going through with it.
“Listen.” He cups my cheek in his palm and covers my lips with his thumb. “I’m telling you if we do this, it won’t be because I only want to help you, which obviously I do. If we go through with this, it’s because I want to be the one who makes you feel good. Because I may need it as much as you do.”
“Oh.” I breathe the word.
He smiles a little; it’s nervous and maybe slightly chagrined. “Yes, oh. So, now that you know where I stand, tell me, what do you want?”
We stare at each other for a few heavy heartbeats, and his thumb strokes along the edge of my jaw. “I want you to touch me and make me feel good. Give me the release I need.”
“Because you think I can help?” There’s a waver in his voice, a hint of vulnerability.
“Because you’re my best friend and I trust you. And because I want it to be you.” I pause and bite my lip. “And because I’m attracted to you, and I don’t know how many more showers I can handle without losing my mind.”
He laughs a little. “I feel exactly the same way, about all of those things.”
“Can I have five minutes in the shower alone to get ready?” I’m already zinging below the waist.
“You can have whatever you need.” He kisses my temple. “You tell me when you’re ready for me and I’ll be waiting.”
14
I’LL MAKE IT BETTER FOR YOU
DECLAN
I glance at the clock again. Avery has been in there for seven minutes now. I rushed to my room, had the world’s fastest shower to rinse off the workout sweat, and put on a pair of swim shorts. Now I’m sitting on the edge of her bed, waiting for her to call me into the bathroom.
This isn’t a good idea. I know it’s not.
But I can’t deny this attraction anymore.
More than that, I don’t want to.
All the feelings and thoughts I’ve kept a lid on since I first met her are suddenly popping out like those stupid Whac-A-Mole things that are nearly impossible to bop on the head before they go back into hiding.
Except this time, all my feelings are right in front of me. Clear and painfully obvious. I don’t know when things shifted, but they have. And now I’m sitting here, waiting for her to call me into the bathroom so our relationship can be irreparably changed.
If I hadn’t interrupted her, I wouldn’t be sitting outside her bathroom, listening to the shower, waiting for her to call me in. I can’t decide if that is a good thing or a very bad thing.
“You can come in now!” she shouts.
I’m not sure if I imagine the uncertainty in her voice, or if it’s in my head.
I brace my hands on my knees and push up off the edge of her bed. My excitement and anxiety spike as I cross the room. There’s no going back now. For better or worse, this is going to happen.
I push open the door, expecting her to be dressed the same way she always is for shower time: in a pair of side-tie bikini bottoms and one of those tube bra things.
Except that’s not at all how she’s dressed.
Avery is naked. Totally, gloriously naked. And wet.
Wet and naked.
I’ve been in the shower with Avery countless times since she’s come home from the hospital. I’ve seen her in bathing suits plenty of times. But this is very, very different. She’s bare and vulnerable.
Her gaze darts from my f
ace to her lap, where she’s holding the showerhead, aiming it at the bottom of the tub.
“You’re fucking gorgeous, Avery.” My voice is gritty.
She peeks up at me, uncertainty and desire mixing with her nerves. So of course she makes a joke. “I think the casts really add to my allure.”
“They make you badass and a warrior.” I cross the room and climb over the edge of the tub and wrap my arms around her from behind. Bending, I kiss her temple. “You’re in charge, Avery. Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you.”
“Okay.” She exhales a tremulous breath and tips her chin down, focusing on her feet. I note the almost imperceptible shake in her hand, her peaked nipples, and the way the toes on her unbroken leg curl when my lips brush her cheek.
I give in to the urge to touch her in the ways I’ve tried not to think about over the past few years. I drag my fingers along her shoulder, up the side of her neck, watching her skin pebble under my touch. I continue along her throat, cupping under her chin so I can tip it up.
I move closer so her crown rests against my diaphragm. Her lids lift and she meets my gaze.
I stroke along the edge of her jaw. “Can I start by washing your hair?” It seems like a better choice than just jumping right into things. Besides, I have a feeling the hair washing gets Avery a little ramped up, and I want her to be that way because she’s turned on, not because she’s anxious and worried or embarrassed.
She nods once, and I release her chin, rinse her hair, and lather it up with shampoo. I have to force myself to slow down and take my time. I run my thumbs down the back of her neck and skim the sensitive spot behind her ear. She melts into my touch, head tipping back, eyes falling closed. Her good hand flutters in the air and lands at the base of her throat, then slides down, fingertips dragging gently over a peaked nipple before it skims across her stomach and settles on her upper thigh.
I rinse out the shampoo and finger-comb her hair before I twist it and pull it over her shoulder.
When Sparks Fly Page 12