Chapter 5

FIVE

Beingat home again was the best thing ever, as far as Oakley was concerned. It was quiet. The sounds outside the windows were familiar. Instead of having institutional white around him, broken up by abstract, pastel paintings that someone had probably purchased in bulk, he had the calming, grey walls of his own bedroom and the framed photographs of the vistas from Higger Tor, Blencathra, and Scafell Pike.

On second thought, maybe he would change the artwork in his private space to something a little less…reminiscent. Views from the beloved mountains he’d climbed weren’t exactly the images he needed to greet him when he woke in the morning and had to lie there, waiting for the morning nurse to come carry him to the bathroom so he could change out of the nappy he’d soiled in the night.

At least he was experiencing that gross indignity in the privacy of his own home. And maybe it was only his imagination and wishful thinking, but he was starting to feel as if he had just a bit more bladder and bowel control than he’d had at the start. He would have to ask Will about it later that morning, when he arrived for their daily workout.

A surge of something hit him at the thought of Will. The man was a horse’s arse most of the time. He was belligerent and crass whenever he worked with Oakley. His bedside manner was atrocious, and right from the start, he had refused to give Oakley an ounce of sympathy.

But that was exactly what Oakley wanted and needed. He felt it more and more with every day that passed. The nurses could fuss and flutter around him all they wanted, awed either by his condition or his wealth, as they saw to his every, simple need, but Will didn’t coddle him.

Heath was an absolute trial, as much as Oakley had come to rely on him. Even their mother wasn’t as much of a coddler as Heath was turning into. Marmie mostly just stared awkwardly at him, like he didn’t know what to do, but Heath was used to being in charge, and he had a way of smothering everything.

“Are you ready to get up, Mr. Manfred?” the stout and yet still attractive morning nurse greeted him as she walked into his room.

In the week since he’d been home, Oakley had setup ground rules with his carers that included permission for them to enter his house without waiting for him to get up and answer the door.

That part had been a joke. His first since the accident.

“Yes, thank you, Hillary,” he smiled at the woman, then helped her with the difficult task of lifting him out of bed by using his arms as much as he could.

That was something else Will had stressed. He needed to learn quickly to compensate for the lack of his legs by using his arms. Oakley used to work out before the accident, but he’d never really thought much about upper body strength. Now, that was the thing he had to rely on if he ever wanted to have a shred of independence again.

By the time Hillary got him washed up and downstairs for breakfast—and there was nothing better than sitting at one’s own kitchen table with decent coffee and fresh crumpets instead of the swill that hospitals served—Oakley had an hour before Will was due to arrive.

An hour that seemed like an eternity.

He scrolled through is phone, checking the daily headlines without really seeing them, anticipating the sort of work Will would want from him that morning. As his back stabilized, Will had started to work him harder. Oakley had the feeling Will was trying to provoke some sort of sensation in his lower extremities. As about half a dozen doctors had explained to him in the last month, there was a difference between sensation and motor function, and while he might never regain the latter, there was a lot of hope that he’d regain sensation below his waist.

God, he hoped he regained sensation below his waist. Losing his legs was one thing, but he was in no way mentally prepared to never feel his cock and balls again.

His phone beeped and buzzed in the middle of that horrific thought, and Heath’s name appeared on the screen.

“Sorry, I’m running late,” Heath said in a breathless voice once Oakley answered. “We’ve got a series of important meetings this week, and I’m doing whatever I can to rearrange my schedule so I can be there for you.”

An almost paradoxical twist of frustration spiked in Oakley. “I don’t need you constantly hovering around me, like I’m some sort of fall risk, Heath.”

“Yes, but I feel as if I ought to be there,” Heath said. Judging by the sounds in the background, he was dodging traffic somewhere in the City.

Oakley fought not to be jealous. “Why must you be here?” he asked. “Hillary is here until noon, then Stanley has a shift. And Will is coming in about an hour.” He tried to make his voice sound as disinterested about Will’s arrival as he was about his nursing crew.

“They’re strangers,” Heath argued. “Don’t you want family with you?”

Oakley sighed, fighting for patience. In fact, no, he did not want Heath constantly hovering. Somewhere deep within him, he had the uncomfortable feeling that Heath was getting in the way of him and Will.

That was a ridiculous thought, and Oakley wanted to brush it aside. There was no “him and Will”. But he couldn’t forget that first day he’d been home last week. Heath had been distracted elsewhere, giving Oakley and Will a few minutes with just the two of them. They’d talked. Not at first and not for very long, but they’d shared things. Oakley had told Will about the accident, and he’d been able to see that Will understood the anguish and guilt that he felt over not checking his seatbelt.

They’d connected.

And then Heath had come back into the room and ruined everything.

It was a horrible way to feel about his own brother, especially when Heath had sacrificed so much to be there for him, but Oakley couldn’t shake the feeling that his brother was a cock-blocker.

“You obviously have important production things to do,” Oakley said, trying to make his voice as light and banal as possible. “I have plenty of supervision over here. Don’t come over today. Or for the rest of the week, because you can’t keep babysitting me every day forever.”

“I…it’s just…are you quite certain?” Heath asked.

“Yes,” Oakley said. “Now bugger off and mind your own business.”

He ended the call feeling strangely hopeful. That hopeful feeling didn’t go away as he did what he could to help Hillary clean up, then practiced wheeling himself up and down the hallway, even though it made his arms ache. Will would praise him for putting in the effort to learn how to use his chair better. And, well, he would know how to use his chair better. He even practiced getting himself into the mad lift Heath had installed in his living room and taking himself upstairs and down a few times.

Even though Will was one of the people who now had the key and security code to his house, he still knocked. When he did, Oakley caught his breath…then immediately cursed himself for being a ninny. If Will was there, it would mean he’d spend the next few hours in some sort of pain. And despite having friends, like Jamison, who were into that sort of thing, Oakley was not.

“Let’s work in the gym today,” Will said as soon as they’d said their hellos, pointing Oakley toward the lift.

Oakley hung on a ledge of expectation, waiting for Will to say something else smarmy or sharp. He might have even held his breath and braced himself for it.

Nothing came. Will followed him into the tight lift and they went upstairs.

“Just the usual routine today,” Will said once they’d made it to the gym. “Give me your arms.”

Oakley was used to people manhandling him to get him in and out of the chair and where they wanted him to be. He reached up and let Will circle his strong arms around him…and he tried to ignore the warmth and stir of that intimacy. He blamed it on a shift in his awareness of his body and told himself that because he couldn’t feel his lower half, everything in his upper half was heightened.

That included his sense of smell. Will smelled of soap and skin and whatever laundry detergent he’d used on his scrubs. It might have been cold outside, but Will only wore a thin layer of fabric, and as he maneuvered Oakley to the matting on the floor, Oakley could feel the strength in his torso.

At one point, Oakley’s nipples brushed against Will’s chest, and it was like someone had zapped them with an electrical current. He sucked in a breath, but blamed it on the precariousness of the situation.

Which was utter bullshit.

“Comfortable?” Will asked, not quite looking at Oakley and definitely frowning once Oakley was on his back.

“More or less,” Oakley said.

Will merely nodded, then started in on the stretching and bending routing that Oakley now knew like the back of his hand.

It was necessary to keep his muscles limber. He understood that now and no longer questioned anything Will did. He knew each stretch, each flex, and each movement Will put him through to the point where he no longer paid attention.

“Should I try lifting weights while you’re on with that to make it a full-body workout?” he asked, stretching one arm above him to try to reach the shelf of free weights near his head.

“No, not yet,” Will said, his eyes focused on his work.

Oakley blew out a breath, battling disappointment. He hadn’t banned Heath from his home so he and Will could spend time alone like this.

“And what has you acting like such a sourpuss this morning?” he eventually asked, making his voice as annoying as possible to provoke a reaction,

Will snapped his head up to glare at Oakley, but the irritation in his look fell away to something harder and sterner. “None of your business,” he said as he shifted to hook Oakley’s ankle over his shoulder so he could lean in and stretch his hip.

Oakley huffed a laugh. “You’ve got me spread open like a porn star and your hands are all over me. I think the time for ‘none of your business’ is long past.”

Miraculously, Will smiled at that. “You know this is all purely professional,” he said, nudging Oakley’s resting leg a bit to open him wider.

Oakley caught his breath, expecting a surge of blood to his cock and the throbbing excitement that would come with it. The emotion of arousal was all there. He wanted it, craved it.

But his dick stayed as floppy and uninterested, as literally unfeeling, as it had ever been.

Fizzles of serious, raging anger began to bubble in Oakley’s gut, like beer that was about to be tapped.

“After all this time, I would have thought the two of us were something other than purely professional,” he said, half because he genuinely cared about whatever was affecting Will, and half because he wanted to provoke the man into flirting with him so he could force some sort of reaction in his useless body.

Will smiled again and sighed a little as he moved back and manipulated Oakley’s body a different way. “Alright,” he said. “But I don’t want you to think any less of me.”

“This should be good,” Oakley said with a sly grin.

Will’s smile turned edgy, and again, Oakley felt as if he should be feeling that in his cock.

“I just came from a work party,” Will said, moving and stretching Oakley’s calf. “It was a party for the man who was given the promotion that I applied for, that I really wanted.”

“Ah,” Oakley said. “Professional rivalry.”

“I deserved that promotion,” Will grumbled, as if he were giving himself a moment of permission to be a sore loser. “I wanted that job so desperately.”

“What job was it?” Oakley asked. “Chief Torturer at The White Tower?”

Will laughed softly and focused on Oakley’s leg for a second. “Chief of Therapy at GKH,” he answered at last. “They gave the job to Dr. Armitage instead.”

“Hang on,” Oakley said, remembering some of the patchy details from the hospital. “I seem to recall one of my nurses talking about that right around the time you were assigned to me.”

The guilty look Will sent him as he switched to work Oakley’s other leg was the answer to Oakley’s unanswered question.

“You caught me on a bad day,” Will said by way of an admission. “I may have been a little acerbic to you because I’d just found out I was passed over for promotion.”

“Poor baby,” Oakley teased.

In truth, he was more grateful than he could say that Will had been salty with him that day. It had been the shock to his system that he needed.

A few more minutes passed in silence before Oakley said, “Hang on. If you took me on as a favor via the Brotherhood, then that means you’re a member.”

“I am,” Will admitted.

He’d reached the point with the leg he was working on where he had to shift closer to Oakley and lift his leg in an otherwise obscene way. Oakley could have sworn he felt the heat and press of Will’s thigh against his balls.

“You can’t be,” he said, his voice a touch on the gruff side. “I’ve never seen you at the club. And I definitely would have noticed you there.”

“What, the Chameleon Club?” Will asked with a slightly surprised look. “That stuffy old place?”

Oakley frowned, half over Will’s reaction to the place he loved and half because he could feel the pressure of Will all over his genitals, but he couldn’t feel the sensation of it.

“I happen to like that stuffy old place,” he said in flat tones.

Will smiled teasingly down at him. “Of course you would, my lord.”

“Fuck you,” Oakley snapped.

But then he smiled.

And Will smiled back at him.

And Oakley’s cock definitely should have been standing at attention then, damn it.

“You know that not everyone who belongs to the Brotherhood chooses to spend their time at the club,” Will said, inching slightly back from the intimate contact. “There are plenty of other activities and benefits of membership that some of us take advantage of.”

“Like career opportunities?” Oakley snapped with a little too much venom.

Will’s smile dropped into a puzzled look. “What was that for? Are you really that protective of a pile of concrete facing Hyde Park?”

Oakley’s mouth worked, and he almost blurted an answer, but he held himself back. His chest ached with something far deeper than physical strain. It was like, in opening his body the way he had it, Will had pried open parts of his heart and soul that he’d been trying to keep tucked safely inside.

But above all, something inside him knew that he owed it to Will to be absolutely honest with him, even more honest than he was with his therapist.

He let out a breath and let his arms drop hopelessly to his sides. “I can feel the pressure of your leg against my groin, but I still don’t have any sensation in my cock. I…we’ve sort of been flirting, and I should…I should feel it.”

A look of horrible understanding came into Will’s beautiful, dark eyes, and he nodded. “Regaining sexual function is an even bigger concern to most spinal cord patients than regaining the ability to walk,” he said frankly. “Though you won’t find that talked about as much in the medical journals.”

“No one wants to hear anyone whining about how they can’t get it up anymore,” Oakley said, turning his head to the side. He hadn’t expected to feel so embarrassed by the exchange that he wanted to sink into the floor.

“Sexuality is a huge part of who we are,” Will said, as if he were arguing. “Don’t tell me that if you had to choose between your legs or your cock, you’d choose your legs.”

Oakley eyed Will uncomfortably. It felt like some sort of moral failing to admit that, but it was true.

Will took a breath and set Oakley’s leg down, then sat between them. “Okay, here’s what you need to know,” he said. “Yes, spinal cord injuries change your sexual function, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to get or hold an erection, or that you’ll never have an orgasm again.

“There are two types of erections that are fed by nerves at different points of your spine. Psychogenic erections happen in response to sight and thought and sound. Those sort pass from your brain to your genitals at the T11 vertebrae. The other sort, reflexogenic, happen because of physical stimulation to the genitals, purposeful and accidental. Those erections are controlled by the lowest part of the spine, around the S2-4 vertebrae, but reflexogenic erections are still possible with men who have injuries up to the T10 vertebrae.”

He stopped and grinned down at Oakley. “Congratulations, Mr. Manfred. You have an L1 injury, which is lower than either T10 or T11, so it is highly probably that once your compression resolves itself, you should be able to achieve erection and orgasm through a variety of stimulus. Though expect there to be serious changes to the way it feels, the strength of your orgasms, and the time it takes to complete.”

Oakley had never been so relieved and so embarrassed simultaneously in his life. His heart pounded against his ribs, and he was at a complete loss for words.

That feeling only intensified when Will surged forward, planting his hands on either side of Oakley’s shoulders, and leaned down so that their faces were only inches away, but their bodies weren’t touching.

“Incidentally, Mr. Manfred,” Will said with a fiery light of teasing in his eyes, “quite often, as function returns to a spinal cord injury patient’s lower extremities, they regain sensation and control in their rectum first. So I hope you like anal.”

He winked then pushed himself back to crouch between Oakley’s legs again, resuming their stretching routine as though nothing had happened.

Oakley was utterly at a loss. He was too stunned to do anything but lie there, swimming in mental arousal while his body felt numb. He had never really put a lot of thought into whether he liked anal or not. He was a top and liked it that way. But Will had just made him question everything…including the nature of the antagonistic feelings he’d been nurturing for Will.

Will was supposed to be the irritating motivation factor in his recovery, not…something else.

But something else was suddenly all Oakley could think about.

“You know you’re making great progress,” Will said a few minutes later. The gloom of earlier was gone from his voice and the edgy superiority that should have made Oakley want to do battle with him was back. “The next step in recovery is to try to get back to some of your normal routines. You said that you like this neighborhood because you like walking in the parks?”

“That was…yes, before,” Oakley said, trying frantically to think about something other than trying to sneak a peak at whether Will had an erection, or even part of one, after their exchange. That would mean lifting his head and obviously looking, though.

“Well, soon, tomorrow or sometime this week, I think we should go out for a walk and do a little physical therapy in the wild,” Will said.

Oakley jerked his head up, but not to sneak a peek. “I don’t want to go outside. It’s…it’s cold.”

Will saw right through his protest. “You’re going to have to face your friends and neighbors and colleagues eventually,” he said. “Might as well rip the plaster off.”

“Easy for you to say,” Oakley grumbled, flopping back to the floor.

“Easy for you to do if you’d just stop being stubborn and do it,” Will countered.

Oakley lifted his head again and arched an eyebrow at him. He had the feeling Will was antagonizing him on purpose now, possibly to cover over the sizzling awkwardness of what had happened between them. It couldn’t have been something Will did with all his patients…could it?

The thought that Will was a tease with everyone was worse than thinking he didn’t see Oakley as a sexual man at all.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, frowning up at the ceiling.

And he would think about it. He had the feeling he would be thinking about Will balanced over top of him, his face close enough to kiss, for far longer than was good for him.