12 Days of Christmas With My Brother’s Rival

9 — OF HEAT AND FRICTION

ANAHERA

My phone buzzed against the dashboard of my electric snail, the derogatory nickname Bella branded my car yesterday, just as I pulled up to the curb of the Tower Noel lived in.

There was a message from Dominik. No two.

Dom: Break a leg today!

Dom: Wait, not literally. Do not break the patient’s leg. That would be bad PR for us.

Of course, our reputation would be ruined. I let out a snort that was supposed to come out as a laugh.

As I did, I felt some of the morning anxiety disappear. At least one of us still had their humor even if I was currently walking to my execution.

I grabbed my kit and smoothed down my scrubs. Today, I was going to be cool and clinical and professional. I was going to be medically indifferent to whatever Noel would do.

He was just a bag of bones and muscles. A puzzle to be solved. He was no different from Mr. Henderson and his titanium hip or Mrs. Gabe and her frozen shoulder.

Still, both of the previous patients I’ve mentioned didn’t look like they’ve been carved out of granite and neither have tried to tongue-wrestle me TWICE.

Shit. I need to turn back to my car now.

“No, Anahera. Treat the injury and ignore the man. You can’t back out of this,” I tried to coach myself.

When I got to the penthouse, the door was already unlocked.

I pushed it open to find Noel sitting on the edge of a massage table that had been set up in the middle of the living room.

He was wearing black athletic shorts and a bitter scowl.

If he was a bear, he definitely was the kind that just woke up from hibernating and couldn’t find their honey pot.

“You’re late,” he grunted, not once looking up from his phone.

Wonder what crawled up his ass and died.

Easy, Anahera.

“I’m three minutes early. Good morning to you too, Sunshine,” I countered gently, setting my bag down with a thud.

Now that’s a good girl, I gave myself a mental pat on the back.

He pointed a finger toward the coffee table without lifting his head. “My lawyer sent the papers yesterday. There is the initial on page three and signature on page five. It basically says you won’t sell my medical records to anyone and I won’t sue you.”

I walked over and picked up the thick stack of documents. I knew without a doubt that most of it was filled with a Code of Conduct written by Noel himself.

With a scoff, I signed so hard my pen nearly tore through the paper.

I should charge him double for this unnecessary distress since he wanted me so bad.

Bella thought the same yesterday when I told her about it. In her words, “He’s rich, babes. Make him pay for the headache tax.”

But despite how I saw it, I couldn’t.

The agency set the rates and I was the hired hand. If anyone wanted to increase, it’d be Noel doing it for me.

And I doubted that very much. No way was he going to make my life easy.

I was in deep s**t.

“Done,” I said, tossing the papers back onto the table. “Now can we work? Or do you have more for me to sign?”

“Just fix the leg, Hera.” He tossed his phone aside and lay back on the table, staring at the ceiling.

I washed my hands and snapped on a pair of latex gloves for hygiene. But who was I kidding?

It was to put a physical barrier between my skin and his.

“Okay. Walk me through this pain. Is it radiating or localized? Sharp or dull?” My voice turned professional.

“It’s a dull ache that turns into a stabbing pain when I pivot. Right here…” and then he pointed to his thigh.

High up. Very high up.

I froze for a microsecond, then relaxed. Of course it had to be the abductor. The muscles that pulled the leg outward.

“Right. I need to examine the area to assess tendons. You’re gonna have to relax the muscle.”

Placing my hands on his thigh just above his knee, his skin was warm and the muscle was hard as a granite.

Even in a relaxed state, his quads were massive. Why not? They’d been built from years of power on the ice.

I began to work my hand upward to knead the tissue and search for a knot or a tear.

“Hugger,” he murmured.

I moved my hands up a few inches. “Here?”

“Higher.”

I moved again until I was mid-thigh.

“Higher, Hera. Don’t be shy.”

“I am not being shy. I’m being thorough. Allow me do my job and handle the pain, Mr. Rautio.”

I slid my hands further up until my thumbs pressed into the muscle on the inside of his leg. I was dangerously close to the juncture of his thighs now.

Oh, good lord.

Of all places, it had to be the one close to the part of him I had been trying very hard not to think about since yesterday morning.

“Is this where it hurts?” I asked, pressing down on a taut band of tissue.

He sucked in a sharp breath, hands gripping the edges of the table. “Yeah. There.”

“Okay. You possibly have a strain in the adductor not the abductor. I need to do some friction massage to break up the scar tissue and then we’ll work on range of motion.”

I grabbed my kit for the massage oil so I could work on the muscle as professionally as I’d planned it to be.

It was a dangerous zone to have hands on.

“Relax the muscle, Noel. You’re guarding. I can’t break up the muscle if you keep clenching like that. You’re just fighting against me.”

“Im trying,” he grunted.

“Then try harder.”

Good lord, we were back to bickering again.

“You have sharp thumbs for such a small person.”

In petty retaliation, I dug deeper. He threw his head back against the table with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His hands gripped the edges of the leather so hard that his knuckles cracked.

“I have strong thumbs.”

I slid my palm toward to apply pressure to the aching tendon in a long, smooth stroke that ended dangerously high.

And that’s when it happened.

Under my wrist, there was a sudden twitch. I froze on the spot.

Noel let out a sound that was half-hiss and half-groan.

Don’t look up, Ana. Don’t look up. Because if you do, you’ll see that the patient is currently reacting to your touch in a very non-medical way.

Through the very thin fabric of his athletic shorts, I could see the outline of his rock hard evidence.

It was right there, just inches away from my face. Inches from my hands… if I could just lean a little to the side and—

“Ignore it,” he belted out with a rough voice. That did not sound like his usual arrogance. He was struggling.

“I’m ignoring it. It’s a physiological response to…to increased blood flow. It’s what usually happens,” I lied through my f*****g teeth.

He lifted his head to pin me with green eyes darkened with lust. “That’s not normal, Anahera. At least not for the profession. It’s because your hands are on me and you f*****g smell like vanilla. It’s driving me insane.”

My heart hammers against my ribs. Vanilla.

“I-I need to finish the friction massage,” I told him but my hands didn’t move.

“Then, finish it,” he challenged with that wicked gleam in his eyes returning. “Or are you scared of me?”

My cheeks burned. “I am not scared of you.”

“Then why are you stopping?”

He lifted his hips just a little bit enough for him to bring him closer to my hand.

“That’s not—”

“Touch me, Hera. Fix me. Or are you worried you might start something you can’t finish?”

That taunt…I’ll show him. He thinks he can embarrass me out of the room with a b***r?

“I finish what I start,” I snapped.

I moved my hand then but instead of digging my thumb into his thigh, I let my palm glide slowly up to the very top of it.

My knuckles grazed over the heavy tent of him. His hips bucked off the table in response and a curse tears out of his throat.

Good. Two can play.

“Hera,” he warned. Or was that a plea?

“Is this the spot?” I asked innocently, my eyes locked on his. I grazed down.

“You’re playing with fire,” he hissed.

“Maybe I like the heat.”

My professionalism dissolved like sugar in a cup of hot coffee. The hunger I felt in the kitchen returned this time in double folds.

I was tired of fighting him and pretending I felt nothing for him. It’d been that way since I was twelve.

I moved closer and stepped between his spread legs.

Placing his hands on his chest, I murmured, “You want me to fix you?”

My lips hovered just above.

“I want you to shut up,” he groaned, bringing his hands up to my waist. “I want you to stop talking and…”

“And what?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his hips jerked forward to find friction against my hands. That alone said everything.

Looking at his face, the enemy was gone. So was the patient. In this room with me was a man who looked at me like he was starving.

My brother’s enemy.

“You’re still an asshole,” I whispered.

My hand came down his chest, over his stomach and to the waistband of his shorts.

“I know,” he panted, c**k jumping in anticipation.

“And I still hate you.”

“Good.”

I recalled Dominik’s text this morning and laughed to myself. If only he knew.

Then I dropped to my knees.