Chalk Dirty to Me (Madd CrossFit 3)

Her hair felt like literal silk against my rough fingers.

“I think I like that I can be that for you.” I paused. “But Shine is an inch taller than me, and about the same body type. Are you sure I don’t freak you out? We can take it even slower…”

She pressed her lips against the middle of my chest, and my breathing hitched for a few short seconds.

“I don’t lie anymore,” she told me bluntly. “I’ll straight up let you know if what you’re doing is freaking me out. I’ll also be very clear on what I want. Because I’ve learned that I have to.” She went on, grimacing slightly. “I only get assigned female patients at the hospital, and it drives my coworkers insane.”

I swirled a piece of her hair between my fingers, letting it slide between callused digits as I said, “Surely they know that it’s nothing against them.”

“They don’t,” she disagreed. “That patient that you first came to me about? That woman? I wasn’t supposed to have her. Every time I went in the room with them, I had trouble getting anything done, despite the husband never coming near me. It was just a vibe he gave off that freaked me the fuck out. They are supposed to give me the patients that are female, and aren’t allowed visitors yet due to their conditions. And if they do give me the ones with male family members, those male family members are asked to leave the room before I can go in there by the charge nurse. But a few of the nurses started bitching that I was getting the easy patients, and then the regular charge nurse wasn’t on shift that day, so they gave Hester to me. I swear to God, I had a panic attack every single time I went in that room. When I got home, I was telling my brother, Shine, about it. And he called a lawyer, who then called the hospital’s lawyer, and threatened them with us suing them due to them not accommodating my disability.”

She caught my hand that was fisted at her waist and wrapped her small fingers around it. “Don’t worry. They don’t do it anymore.”

“It’s been a few weeks. I’m sure that they’re just trying to let the shitnado they caused to settle before they stir anything up again,” I grumbled.

She snickered. “That was definitely poor planning on their part. Trust me when I say, their HR department was not happy when they learned what had happened. I wasn’t going to bring it up, I mean, in the end, I did end up handling it. But Shine wanted me to make sure to hold them accountable so they didn’t try to do it again to me or do it to someone that couldn’t handle it next time.”

I smoothed my hand out and squeezed her hip, hating the feel of the cotton fabric of sweatpants covering her bare skin.

I would fuckin’ love to be able to feel her skin to skin.

There was even a small gap of skin around her middle that I could somewhat feel if I moved my hand just right, but I didn’t want to draw attention to it and freak her out.

In all honesty, I needed to have the talk of what was okay and what wasn’t with her sooner rather than later.

But I also didn’t want to bring up anything bad when I was having such a good time holding her like I was.

“I know that we need to get up,” I grumbled. “But I seriously wouldn’t mind lying in this bed for half the day instead of doing responsible adult things.”

She snickered. “Well, you have the day off, and so do I,” she pointed out. “And unless you’re on call, and there’s a murder, we could actually do that without getting into trouble.”

I loved the way she thought.

But…

“I haven’t worked out in too long,” I admitted forlornly. “And I’m supposed to be doing a competition with a friend in a few weeks. So, though I really, really love the idea of playing hooky, I can’t. I have to go in and work out.”

“Does that mean that I can go sit next to you and watch, and then we can go eat something afterward?” she asked hopefully.

I loved the way that she was running the tips of her fingers along the defined muscles along my ribs.

Just the feel of her skin on mine was enough to cause a distraction.

I groaned and sadly let her go, causing her to grumble in disappointment.

“I have to go home, change, then head to the gym,” I told her as I stood up. Every muscle in my body felt like Jell-O. God, what I would give to be able to crawl back in bed with her for the rest of the day. “When I’m done, we can go eat. Or, you can stay, and I can come back and get you.”