told him I wanted to have my own conversation with Aston. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to her, but I felt like I owed her an apology of some kind, at the very least.
Ry’s chest lifted and fell under my cheek, and I heard him let out a quiet sound of pain. He’d spent the hours we were hashing out our differences alternately rubbing and rolling his shoulder. He switched from an ice pack to a heating pad at some point, but I could tell he was having difficulty getting comfortable. Having me sleep on his injured side for however long we’d been out couldn’t have helped the situation at all. I don’t know why he didn’t shake me off or scoot free instead of lying prone, trapped beneath me. It was a very Ry-type situation. He was determined to suffer silently if it meant I wasn’t going anywhere, and he could keep me as close to him as possible.
Now that neither of us was running from the other, we had to catch our breath and rest before we started chasing after the next butterfly. There seemed to be a million different ones, in all shapes and sizes, fluttering around our heads. All were beautiful and bright, but the number was overwhelming. It was hard to know where to look or which one to grab. All those twirling images represented a different opportunity and challenge we had to face head-on.
I put a hand on Ry’s rock hard abs and pushed myself into a sitting position. He gave a small grunt, but the muscles barely twitched under my fingers. I looked down at him, but his pale gaze was trained on the spot where the end of my long, colorful braid was dragging across his bare skin.
“How does your shoulder feel?” I reached out a hand and rubbed the furrow between his dark eyebrows that indicated he was still in a considerable amount of pain. I wondered how badly he got hurt during his actual games if he was this banged up after playing around with one of his teammates for fun. I could see that he was starting to bruise. The skin on his collarbone and around the curve of his shoulder had taken on a faint bluish tint.
Ry shifted so he could stack his good hand behind his head. He gave me a lopsided grin and wiggled his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “It still hurts. I think you should kiss it and make it better.”
I rolled my eyes at him and lifted my arms above my head to stretch the rest of the sleepiness out of my limbs. “Are you so bad at flirting because you’re so good looking you never had to learn how to do it?” He’d always had girls running after him. It wouldn’t be too surprising that he never had to go through the awkward phase of figuring out how to talk to the opposite sex the way most teenagers did. From what I remembered of him when he was younger, he never really had that stage of being caught between boyhood and awkward teenager. He seemed to have gone from a cute kid to a dangerously attractive young man overnight. And now, well, he was a man who was very aware of his appeal and knew just how easily he affected others.
“We all have to be bad at something. I guess you finally found my weakness.” His voice dropped even lower than it already was and turned a touch raspy as I leaned across his arm. I softly dropped my mouth so I could place a light kiss on the darkened skin that indicated where his injury was. “But I’m a quick learner. Feel free to teach me everything you know about flirting, Bowe.”
I kissed my way across his shoulder. I felt his abs flex under my fingers where I was still propped up against him to keep my balance. I moved my lips to the side of his neck and started kissing my way up to his ear. I felt him shiver under the gentle exploration of my mouth, and when I cast a look down the length of his strong body, I wasn’t surprised to see that there was a noticeable bulge stretching the black fabric of his nylon basketball shorts.
“You have enough of an advantage with that face and this body. You don’t need to know how to flirt effectively on top of all of that. You’re