Chapter 2: The Unspoken Truth
The single word hung in the air, a fragile barrier between his professional duty and the roaring in his blood. His hands stilled on her skin, the warmth of her now feeling like a brand.
“Okay,” he said, his voice unnaturally calm. “That’s enough for today. We’ve made good progress.”
He started to pull away, the movement slow, deliberate, giving her space. But as she shifted to push herself up, a sharp, involuntary gasp tore from her lips. “Agh!” Her body seized, her face contorting as she collapsed back onto the cushions.
“Don’t move,” Harry said, his therapist’s instincts surging back to the forefront. “Just tell me where.”
Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. “It’s not the back. It’s… it’s the front. It’s a different pain, deeper.” She hesitated, her cheeks flushing. “When I tried to turn, it felt like it ripped.”
“I need to assess it, Anne. I can’t help if I don’t know where it is.”
With a grimace of pain and what looked like profound embarrassment, she slowly, carefully, rolled onto her back. The movement made her hiss through her teeth. She lay there, exposed, her black panties a stark contrast to the pale skin of her stomach and thighs. She kept her knees bent, a modest, defensive posture.
“Here,” she said, her voice small. Her fingers traced a line along the crease of her groin, high on the inside of her thigh. So close. So impossibly close to the shadowed junction he had been fighting not to imagine.
Harry’s mouth went dry. He could feel the blood pounding in his ears, a relentless drumbeat. He adjusted his position on the floor, trying to find a professional angle, but the movement did nothing to alleviate the tight, aching pressure in his own jeans. He was hard, painfully so, and the sight of her hand so near that intimate place made him lightheaded.
“Is it the adductor?” he asked, forcing clinical terminology into his mind. Gracilis. Adductor longus.
“I don’t know what that is. It’s just… sore. Really sore.” Her eyes were closed, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. “It’s closer to… you know. My… private parts.” The last two words were a whisper, almost swallowed by the room’s thick silence.
The admission sent a jolt through him. Private parts. The words were juvenile, but the image they conjured was devastatingly adult. He could almost see it, just beyond the thin cotton barrier: the soft, blond curls he knew must be there, the hidden lips, the warm, damp center of her. The desire to see, to know, to touch, was a physical ache, a hunger that threatened to devour his control.
He swallowed, his throat tight. “Anne.” He waited until her eyes fluttered open, meeting his. They were wide, vulnerable. “Look at me. I promise you, I will be professional. This is what I do. I can help this, but I need you to trust me.”
He saw the conflict in her face—the sharp bite of pain warring with her modesty, her trust in her friend battling a deeper, instinctual caution. She held his gaze for a long moment, searching for something. The friend. The professional. She must have found him, or a convincing enough facsimile.
She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoed, the word feeling like a vow and a betrayal.
He reached for the oil again, the ritual of warming it giving him a moment to steady his breathing. The scent of lavender was now inextricably linked to this moment, to the sight of her lying supine before him. He moved closer, his knees on the floor beside the sofa, his presence dwarfing her.
“I’m going to start here, on the quadriceps, and work inward. Tell me if the pain is too much.”
His first touch on the front of her thigh was gentler than before. Her skin was softer here, the muscle beneath less defined. He worked in silence, his fingers kneading the tense tissue, feeling the subtle tremors that ran through her leg. Each stroke brought his hand incrementally closer to the apex of her thighs. The air grew heavier, charged with a tension that had nothing to do with physiotherapy.
He could see the delicate shape of her mound now, clearly outlined against the black cotton. The fabric dipped in a soft V, and his eyes traced the shadowed lines where her legs met her torso. His thumb brushed the very edge of the adductor muscle, so close to the warm crease of her groin that he felt her whole body jolt.
“There?” he asked, his voice a low rasp.
She bit her lip, a flush spreading down her neck and across her chest. “A little higher.”
His heart hammered against his ribs. Higher. There was no higher without his fingers sliding into that intimate space, without his touch grazing the very edge of her panties, without feeling the heat that radiated from her core.
He shifted his hand, his fingers splaying. His thumb, slick with oil, pressed into the tender muscle at the very top of her inner thigh. The pad of his thumb was a whisper away from the dampening cotton that covered her. He could feel the incredible heat emanating from her, a furnace that promised a paradise he was forbidden to enter. He applied pressure, a steady, clinical pressure, but his entire world had narrowed to that single point of contact, to the millimeter of space that separated his professional duty from his deepest, most desperate desire.
Anne let out a soft, shuddering moan, her head tilting back against the cushion, her back arching slightly. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Whether it was from pain or something else, he couldn't tell. He didn't dare guess.
He held the pressure, his own breath caught in his chest, suspended in the unbearable tension between what he was and what he wanted to be.