“So that you don’t have to get up.”
“I’m…okay. I got this. Really.”
Wait, is he blushing? Is that color in his cheekbones?
It’s…cute.
Oh God.
“I’ll leave you to it, then, and start some dinner.” Turning around, I head to the kitchen and open the fridge to check what I could cook up. At least, that’s where my thoughts should be at.
Not on the guy in the other room. Not wondering what his bare chest looks like, what he looks like naked.
Because the one I want is Fred, and that’s all there is to it.
***
When I walk back inside fifteen minutes later, water for the pasta heating on the stove and the sauce simmering, I fully expect to find him asleep again.
He’s not.
He’s fumbling with the belt of his jeans, his sodden T-shirt already off. He’s bare-chested, yes, and that stops me in my tracks—not because his chest, shoulders and arms are thick with muscle and sculpted like a work of art, no, that’d be crazy—but because of the ink covering them.
A lot of ink. Dark, twisted, tangled—faces and demons and beasts on his chest and shoulders. And a snake, I realize. A snake on one shoulder, fangs dripping, forked tongue lolling.
The men I’ve known in my life were never covered in tattoos like him – and such scary
ones, too. It’s a little disturbing.
And fascinating.
Maybe that’s why it takes me a while to realize he’s struggling to push down his pants and not quite managing. His teeth are gritted, and his face is white.
Crap, he’s in pain.
That snaps me out of my slight daze—a daze I have no job being in—and I hurry over to help him.
“Here.” I kneel on the carpet and start on the ankles. “Let me.”
He hasn’t even taken off his boots, and really, Manon, if his leg hurts so much, how is he going to do this on his own? I shouldn’t have listened to him when he said he could handle it.
I take the boots and wet socks off. He’s still trying to push down his jeans, hands shaking. I really don’t like how pale he is.
“Stop pushing them down like that,” I mutter. “The fabric bunches up and makes it harder to get them off. Let me do it, it will be easier from this end.”
“Okay.” He lets his hands drop at his sides and puffs out a long breath. I work the sodden fabric over his feet and gently pull. He lifts his pelvis slightly to allow the pants to come off. He’s wearing black boxer briefs underneath, and for some reason my face gets hot at the sight of them.
And the bulge between his legs. Yeah, not looking at that. At all.
His legs. Safer place to look. Nicely muscled thighs, which are revealed as the jeans come off, really thick and cut, and…
A knee brace, the black material digging into the flesh.
“You said your leg was broken. When did it happen?”
“Two months ago. Right after Asher’s wedding. Had the cast taken off two weeks ago.”
Shit. No wonder he has trouble walking. “And the knee brace?”