Bind (Manhattan Lux Book 1): Manhattan Lux (5 page)

“Oh my God buddy, oh my God,” Wyatt said. “I know, I know. Me too. I love you too.  Hey, let’s be best friends okay? Best buddies.”

The other dogs, no doubt jealous at this proclamation returned to Wyatt’s lap and engineered an assault on his chest that had him toppling back to the floor in a puppy pile of fur and sloppy kisses.

Goddammit.

There is no way you can continue irrationally hating on a dude when he’s covered in doggy slobber and loving every second of it. Jinx stood there, staring, helpless as she felt her walls come crashing down.

Goddammit.

And that, what was that?  That tingly warm sensation in her nethers? Oh, just her panties bursting into flames.

“
W
hat’s their story
?” Wyatt asked. “How’d you end up with these tough guys?”

Tough guys.
Jeez. He was killing her.

“I went in for one and came out with four,” Jinx said. She joined them on the floor, sitting cross legged opposite him, pulling the nearest dog into her lap. “I thought I’d get a cat, or a mid-sized dog or something. But there was this bulletin board, off to the side, and it had a photo of the boys on it. They’d all been brought into foster care as puppies, hand raised by a volunteer. Unfortunately she was moving out of the country and couldn’t take the dogs.”

“Oh man.”

“Yeah. She was working at the shelter the day I came in so…”

“So she marked you for a sucker and you got the hard sell?” Wyatt smiled at her.

“Kind of.” Jinx smiled back. “Ashley, the volunteer, she knew it was unlikely that they’d get adopted at all, much less together, which was what she was hoping for. They’d really bonded when they were with her.”

“Well yeah, they were already a gang. You can’t break up a gang.” said Wyatt, tickling the dog closest to him.

She nodded. “They are inseparable. This one,” she said, lifting the black Pomeranian in her lap, “is totally deaf and partially blind.”

“That one,” Jinx said, pointing to a one-eyed Pug with a chunk missing from his ear that was grinning up at Wyatt, “Well his challenges are obvious, but he also has asthma.”

Wyatt scruffed the pug’s head affectionately. “What’s the other guy look like huh buddy? Bet you held your own.”

Jinx picked up a pale, quaking Chihuahua that was trying, and failing, to crawl into her lap, gave him a cuddle and continued. “This one is also partially blind, and being albino, really has issues with the sun. If I take him out I’ve got to keep his eyes and skin protected. He can burn right through his fur.”

“Poor guy,” said Wyatt. “And my new best friend here? What’s his story?”

“Car accident,” Jinx said. “When he was a puppy. We got him the wheels and he just blossomed. Total road warrior now.”

“Yeah I noticed,” Wyatt grinned and pointed to the flames paint job on the dog’s wheels. “So is his name Mad Max then?”

“No.” Jinx shook her head. “Clyde.”

“Clyde? How’d you come up with that?”

Jinx hovered her finger over the black Pomeranian. “This one’s Inky.” She pointed to the one-eyed Pug “Blinky—”

“Oh my God!” Wyatt howled and patted the albino Chihuahua on the head. “I suppose he’s Pinky?”

“Yes.” Jinx bit her lip and nodded. “And of course Clyde.”

“You named them after the ghosts in the Pac-Man game.”

“I really love Pac-Man. The fact that the names sort of fit their traits, well that was just a coinci—”

“Awesome!” Wyatt said.

“Really?” She squinted at him. “You’re not judging me? You don’t think it’s mean? Some people think it’s mean.”

“Hell no! SEALs give each other nicknames like that all the time. It’s a guy thing.” He turned to the dogs as if he was soliciting their opinions. “Right fellas? You’re tough. You’ve lived through it. Like men, er, dogs. Warrior dogs! Those names are a badge of honor.”

Jinx clutched Pinky to her chest and gazed at Wyatt as he rolled Inky over and gave him an epic belly rub. He got it. He liked her dogs, and their names. Blinky scrambled up into Wyatt’s lap and began licking his free hand like it was covered in beef gravy.

“Make sure he doesn’t swallow your ring,” she said.

Wyatt laughed and shot her a thumbs up.

The dogs were in love. How adorable was that? Completely. They didn’t meet new people often, so it was pretty cool when they could make a friend…right? No harm in it. It’s not like she was a single mom to human kids and she needed to worry about boundaries and attachment or anything. No big deal.

Then why did she have a lump in her throat? Why were her palms getting clammy?

Because he’s really fucking beautiful. Inside and out.

Wow! Where did that come from? Jinx put Pinky down and rose to her feet. Alrighty, it was time to change the subject, and the scenery, before she needed to change her panties.

“So, the uh, the guest room,” she said. “I’ll show you where it is.”

“Nap time fellas, sorry I gotta go for now.” Wyatt gently extricated himself from the dog pile, grabbed his duffle bag, and climbed to his feet. But he did so with difficulty, rising stiffly, and with a crease between his eyebrows that suggested he was in pain.

“Just at the end of the hall,” she said, walking ahead of him and pushing open the guest room door. “You’ve got your own bathroom. Fresh towels already in there.”

Wyatt dumped the duffle bag on a chair and turned to her, his smile hard.

“Do you need anything?” Jinx asked. “Aspirin? Ibuprofen? Morphine?”

Wyatt raised an eyebrow.

“Obviously kidding about the morphine, but seriously, you look like you’re in pain.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just need to sleep it off.”

“If you say so. Still, yell if you need anything. I’ll be around.”

Wyatt nodded, his lips pressed together in a thin tense line.

Jinx closed the door but didn’t move away. Instead she stood there, still and silent, waiting for the sound she knew was coming. A few seconds later she heard it. A low moan, followed by hissing sounds and a gasp, and then a whispered “fuck, fuck, fuck, oh fuck.”

She opened the door.

He stood there in front of the bed, facing her, his pants hanging halfway down his legs, arms above his head tangled up in his shirt.

Jesus.

Washboard abs, tanned smooth skin with a sprinkle of dark blond chest hair over his pecs. She lowered her gaze, letting it glide over his stomach and down to that sexy muscled V at his hips, the one that pointed down to his groin, and the uh, the rather impressive bulge that—

“Boxer briefs,” she said, before she let her mind wander much further. “I thought you were an Underoos man?”

“Oh, you caught me. The one day I’m not wearing ‘em.” Wyatt smiled, and his time there was a little more light in his eyes. That was good, that meant he could be distracted from the pain at least a little bit.

“Yeah that’s a shame.” Jinx rolled her eyes. “So listen, cowboy, let me get a look at that knee you keep moaning about.”

“Why? You a doctor?” He asked, resuming his struggle with the shirt.

“Nope.” She shook her head.

“Well a nurse then? If you’re a nurse, please God, I hope you have one of those sexy nurse uniforms. I’ve always had a thing for that.”

Jinx crossed to him and began unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt, then helped him pull it the rest of the way off.

“Why didn’t you just unbutton it?” she asked.

“Because this way is faster.”

She arched a brow.

“Well it is if you don’t get stuck.”

They were face to face now, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. So close she could smell the faint scent of aftershave, mixed with shampoo and just plain old, sexy man scent.
Shake it off,
she told herself. He needs relief, and you can offer it. Stay professional.

“Why did you get stuck?” she asked.

Wyatt sighed heavily and dropped to the bed, his pants falling to his ankles. Jinx knelt in front of him and lifted one of his feet into her lap. He’d already removed his shoes, so pulling his jeans off was easy, and she did so now, one leg at a time, before folding them and tossing them on the chair behind her.

He let her do it, elbows on his thighs, those large hands tangled in his blond hair. He just sat, not saying a word. She knew he was embarrassed, not about being nearly naked in front of her, that didn’t seem to faze him at all.  No, it was a pride thing, a macho refusal to admit he was in pain. Pain equals weakness. A SEAL would find that intolerable.

“Wyatt?”

“Because my shoulder hurts.” He said it firmly, as if injecting the admission with anger would make it more manly, more acceptable. Still, she’d detected the faintest trace of a pout. Anyone else would’ve missed it, but she’d observed him enough by now to catch it.

“Why does your shoulder hurt?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Usually it’s just the knee that hurts, the shoulder thing, that’s new.”

“Okay let me look at you. Lie back.”

“You gonna wear that nurse’s—”

“Stop flirting,” she said, pushing on his chest so that he fell back against the pillows. “You’re using it as a defense mechanism, but I see right through you.”

He frowned at her, and shifting up higher against the pillows, tried to put both arms up behind his head, only to wince and then let them fall to his side.

“I am qualified to help, ya know,” she said. “I wasn’t always a nightclub manager. My former occupation was physical therapist, with a special focus in massage therapy and acupressure.”

“Cool.” Wyatt grinned at her. “So does this massage come with a happy ending?”

“Wyatt,” she warned. Moving down to the foot of the bed, Jinx rubbed her hands vigorously to warm them and glanced up at his knee. “You want to remove the brace or shall I?” She lifted the foot on his good leg, bent it gently and began massaging the sole.

“You’re the expert. You do whatever….” Wyatt’s head lolled to the side and his eyelids began to flutter. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “I could kiss you.”

“Heh, that’s what they all say,” she said.

“Jesus, that feels good.”

There was a little too much gravel in his voice, an edge that was a tad too close to what she imagined he might sound like during sex. The thought had heat rising in her cheeks, so she tipped her head down and focused on the massage, moving her hands up his calf, then switching to the other leg.

“You can just leave that on,” Wyatt said when she moved to remove his brace.

“Nonsense, I need to get a look.” Her fingers made quick work of the brace fastenings, and she pulled it away from his knee, tossing it to the other side of the bed. From the looks of the scarring, the swelling, the long sinuous trail of gnarled flesh that twisted down his calf this man was in constant pain. “Have you taken anything?” she asked.

“A handful of ibuprofen.”

“And does that help?”

“Not really,” he said. “It just takes the edge off.”

“And I bet you aren’t willing to take anything stronger?” Her fingers ghosted softly over the scars.

“Nope. That just takes the edge off of me.”

She looked up and met his gaze, studied him openly, assessing him like she’d done with all her patients in the past. The flirting, the silliness, she got it now. It wasn’t just his defense mechanism, it was his survival tool, it kept him focused on something other than pain. She knew what to do.

“What was that look?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Jinx retrieved the brace and put it back on his knee. The swelling was bad enough that the compression might help. But he was going to need more than that.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. Leaving the guest room she went to her own, and rummaged through her special chest of toys until she found exactly what she needed. When she returned, Wyatt’s eyebrows rose another inch.

“Rope?!”

Jinx flashed him a grin and held up a coil of soft black rope.

“Hey listen,” Wyatt said. “I think you’re sexy, too, and I’d love nothing more than to go all Fifty Shades with you kitten but I really do need that nap.”

“Shut up.” Jinx kicked off her heels, stood on the edge of the bed frame and threw a length of rope in the air, snagging it on a hook that was anchored in the ceiling. “This isn’t a sex thing, it’s a therapy thing. Your shoulder hurts because your knee hurts. You’re overcompensating because of the knee pain, and that’s throwing everything else out of whack. If I sent you to my chiropractor right now, she’d have a heart attack.”

“Well we wouldn’t want that.”

“She can help, but we don’t have time for that today. So I’ll make an appointment for you for tomorrow. For now…” Jinx flung the rope up again and again, snagging lengths on other hooks in the ceiling until she had a web of black rope hanging to the bed. “I’ll just have to fix you myself.”

“Yeah and what exactly does that involve?” Wyatt asked, eyeing the rope. “Because it’s starting to look a little medieval in here. Also, why do you have those hooks in your ceiling?”

“Remember your little joke in my office this morning?”

“Yes, mistress.” Wyatt grinned. “So you really are into bondage?”

“Kinbaku actually,” she said. Passing a length of rope under his upper thigh, she knotted it, dragged it down to his calf, marrying it with a section that she tied well below the brace. “Also known as Shibari, commonly referred to as Japanese Bondage. It’s an art form. I installed the hooks in here so I could use this room as a studio. I do private shoots sometimes, tie up models for photographers and that sort of thing.”

“And you thought that now was a good time for a photo shoot?”

“Nope, this is therapy.”

“I’m not following. How is tying me up going to make my knee feel better?”

Jinx stopped for a moment and looked at him. “Because I’m going to suspend your leg and elevate it, so the swelling can reduce. I’m also going to tie trigger knots.”

Wyatt scrunched up his nose and frowned at her.

“Knots that are placed at specific acupressure points in the bindings,” she explained. “With gentle pressure at those points to relieve the pain, as well as elevation, I think you’ll be feeling much better by this evening.”

“Did you make this shit up? Because I’ve
literally
never heard of that before.”

Jinx sniffed and averted her gaze, concentrating on wrapping the rope around Wyatt’s leg. A cinch knot here, a lock knot there. She was experienced, so it was quick work, but still patient, deliberate, exacting.

“I did actually sort of invent this myself,” she said, tying the last knot. “But it’s based on sound research and established therapies.” She glanced at Wyatt, and the height of his eyebrows said he was skeptical.

“Look,” Jinx said. Gathering one end of rope, she coiled the slack over her arm and pulled, raising his leg gently, slowly from the bed until it was elevated above heart level. “Bondage and physical therapy both address pain, but from different angles, and with seemingly different goals. But they have more in common than people realize.”