Page 14 of Hearts Adrift (A Texas Beach Town Romance #4)

“I-I think I’ll—”

“I can definitely feel the knot.” His thumbs dig in.

For a second, it’s genuinely painful and I suck in air, wincing.

The next instant, pleasure pours over my muscles as I rock my eyes back with a sigh.

“Want me to work it out better? Feel free to decline. Not pressuring you into feeling bliss. It is, however, free bliss, yours to accept or pass on. And if I had the chance to accept some free bliss from a guy who learned a few tricks involving his elbow from a sweet pair of ladies and one very adorable guy in Thailand …”

“Okay,” I whimper.

His fingers stop. “Okay?”

“Yes. Okay. I’ll …” I swallow hard. “I’ll try the elbow thing. It sounds really … interesting.” Why isn’t my brain working? Interesting? That’s all I can come up with? “You are a man of many talents,” I go on, rambling now. “And I am one lucky guy to be at the receiving end of … of …”

Receiving end.

Now I’m just thinking about sex.

Body grinding. Dick grinding. Butt grinding sex.

River comes around the chair and extends a hand.

I must look like a spooked cat when I look up and lock eyes with him.

I take his hand—his warm, soft, capable hand—and rise from the chair.

He gives me this cute, charming, lopsided smile that causes my heart to dance everywhere—before his eyes flick downward, then back up to my face.

It’s such a quick thing, I barely notice it, and before I’m able to give it any thought, he’s led me over to the couch to lie down on my stomach.

I’m still thinking about the strange flicker of his eyes when he takes his phone off the coffee table and mumbles something to himself. “What is it?” I ask, turning my face, partly muffled by the couch cushions.

“Was talking to my friend Anya earlier and … I don’t remember ever hanging up. Odd.” He sets the phone back down, then crouches next to the couch. “You ready? You have no idea what you’re in for, by the way.”

My nerves are electrically charged. I’m jumping inside like it’s my birthday. “Is that so?” I manage to sound calm and cool, suppressing my excitement. “Talking up a big game, huh? What if your technique is a total letdown?”

“Oh, that’s not even a possibility.”

I’m about to make another teasing comment when his elbow gently presses into my shoulder, and whatever funny words I had are long gone, spilled out of my head like they were never there.

What comes next is a sensation that digs so deeply into my muscles, I feel like his elbow just took a dive straight into my pain and converted every ounce of it into an intoxicating ambrosia I instantly want more of.

It’s now that I finally cannot hold back the moans.

River has won. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say his elbows have.

It doesn’t seem like much on the surface—his elbow drawing circles into my shoulder, now and then applying more pressure.

Maybe it’s a rhythm thing. Or how he goes from quick to slow, making me anticipate the brief spurts of pressure.

But I can’t hope to lift a muscle off this couch, for as effectively as he’s melting me into it.

“Been a while,” I hear him quietly murmur.

My eyes pop open to ask, “A while since what?”

That’s when I realize his crotch is right in my face.

Right there. Right in front of me. Within inches.

He must be crouched down to get the right angle and strength with his elbow. My shoulder that he’s working on is the one closest to him, within reach.

“Since I’ve felt this normal,” he goes on. “Like there’s nothing going on.”

Nothing going on except your balls in my face .

“It’s honestly nice to be the one giving the massage for once,” he tells me with a light chuckle. “I kinda miss the honest work of just … putting my hands to good use.”

His hands among other things .

From the sound of his voice, I don’t think he knows the exact proximity of his crotch to my face. Or that with every circle of his elbow, it grows closer. Am I too far over with my face at the edge of the couch? Did I do this to myself?

My cock pulses beneath me, grinding into the couch.

Then it hits me.

I was hard. That’s what his eyes had flicked down at earlier. My bulge was showing through my shorts when he took me from the table to the couch.

“Any soreness in your other shoulder?” he asks me.

My other shoulder? The one farther away from him? “I think it’s … it’s probably …”

“I can work it out, too,” he decides. “Y’know, to keep you balanced. Don’t know about you, but I always feel so weird when I only get one side of me massaged.”

He leans forward even more to dig his elbow into my other shoulder—the farther away one.

And his crotch presses into my face.

“Wow, you seem even more tense on this side,” I hear him go on. Does he seriously not realize what he’s doing to me? “Are you sure it wasn’t this shoulder that you pulled?”

I’m not sure of anything anymore. He’s affecting more than just my shoulders.

My face is being gently fondled by his crotch.

My own dick is being smoothly grinded into the couch cushions whether I want it to be or not, just from the circular movements of River’s strong elbow, which itself is supplying so many waves of relief and pleasure from his efforts in massaging, radiating through my tense body.

“Sometimes,” he goes on obliviously, “I get so stressed when I act. You never realize how straining it is to perform and be ‘on’ for hours at a time—how much tension builds up in your body, even in places you don’t realize.”

Like your dick? “R-River …”

“And the emotional toll it takes, to pour yourself into a scene … Is there a kind of masseuse I can hire to work out the knots inside my mind and heart?”

I moan for an answer.

“Sorry,” he chuckles. “You didn’t ask to become my therapist. I’m probably chewing your ear off.”

“You … deserve …” I can barely make words. He has me melting into the cushions. “… someone to …”

“I deserve what?”

The massage has me in such a trance, I’m not sure if I’m even speaking anymore.

All I know is, I feel so good for the first time in weeks, and my stresses are miles away.

Theo is gone. Heather’s voice is gone. My dad’s worries, all gone.

Numbers I analyzed over so many spreadsheets.

It all floats away, carried out to sea, while my back ripples with pleasure and my face fills with the warm comfort of a famous actor’s bulge pressing against it.

It’d almost feel like a pillow, if I wasn’t so horny.

Maybe Chase was right. I really do need to get laid.

The thought is so ridiculous, I could almost laugh.

Except suddenly I’m not hearing anything. Not saying anything. Not thinking anything. Too exhausted for any of that. I’m simply adrift.