The Billionaire's Private Nurse

Chapter Ten - Fitness Island

KAMERON

“Wow, you have a great gym,” Annie wandered through the open space. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the water, and the back wall of mirrors reflected that view, making it feel like you were on an island in the lake. A fitness island, with all the latest and greatest equipment. A hand-bike had recently been added to the collection, along with a therapy table.

I wheeled myself into the room and looked around. “I have a confession to make,” I said as I went to a shelf and pulled down a pair of gym shorts. “I haven’t been doing the exercises.”

She turned and looked at me in surprise. “But... why not?”

I shrugged, unable to articulate exactly why I had given up on the exercises after the first week. She wouldn’t understand the shroud of hopelessness and depression that had enveloped me since I left the hospital. The exercises were uncomfortable, getting in and out of the chair was stressful, but most of all, I couldn’t stand being brought face-to-face with everything I couldn’t do. I had been sure when the orthopedic surgeon had told me that my legs were paralyzed, that I could overcome the injury. Mind over matter, right? But after a month in the hospital and a week at home, I’d gotten discouraged. Nothing had changed. It wasn’t getting better. I was a man who was used to instant results, but I couldn't fix my own body.

“Okay, let's slide onto the table, and you can change there,” Annie said, getting down to business. She wasn’t going to allow me any time to brood over my circumstances. She brought the slide board and the gait belt. “I’ll be here to steady you, but you try doing it yourself.”

“You read my records,” I said gruffly, as I wrapped the belt around my waist. “Do you think there is any chance I might recover?”

She gave me a thoughtful look, “There is always a chance of recovery,” she said as she watched me position my legs for the transfer. “And your injury is incomplete. That means there is a higher probability of recovery.” She gave me a stern look. “But you have to work for it. The body’s healing abilities are amazing, but it is not going to happen by itself, and its not going to happen overnight.”

“Thanks for the lecture,” I grumbled, but secretly, her words gave me hope. I grabbed the edge of the slide board and pulled myself over onto the therapy table. My attention had been on her, and how much I really disliked her, so I hadn’t even put my mind on the transfer. I hadn’t thought about falling or tipping over, or the board flipping out from underneath me. Like in the morning, I had just moved easily onto the table.

She gave me a knowing smile. “Sometimes it helps if you don’t over-think it.” She passed me the gym shorts, and went to get her clipboard. “These exercises are good. I think we should add in more upper-body strengthening though. You’ve got great muscle tone up top, and you don’t want to lose that. The stronger you are, the easier everything will be.” She glanced up from the clipboard just as I finished unbuttoning my shirt and was sliding it off my shoulders. I thought for a moment that I caught a flash of something in her eyes. Was she... checking me out? Was that a flash of attraction I had seen? It was hard to tell, because she quickly covered it with that annoying polite and professional smile. She found an excuse to turn her back as I reached for the snap on my trousers.

Well, well...I smirked as I went through the process of lifting one hip at a time to pull my pants down off my hips and buttocks. It did good things for my ego to think that I could still interest a woman, even with my legs dangling like useless sausages. I grunted as I struggled to get the shorts up and over my feet. This was the hardest part of getting dressed. I was stiff, and couldn’t reach my feet nicely. I was breathless and my back felt tight before I managed to pull the waistband into place. “Okay, Nurse Annie, I’m ready.”

Her cheeks looked a little pinker than usual as she brought the straps and resistance bands we would need to use for the therapy exercises. We worked through the prescribed exercises slowly, and all thoughts of flirting with my nurse flew out the window. The woman was a demon. She pushed me harder than any of the hospital therapists ever had. I was sweating, and my muscles felt like jello by the time I collapsed on the table at the end.

“You are a mean, mean woman,” I huffed.

“That’s right,” she flashed a smile, and I noticed for the first time the way her cheek dimpled more on one side than the other. It was kind of cute. “But I’m going to make it up to you. Let's finish up with some massage.” she waved a bottle of oil at me.

“Oh yeah,” I sighed, “I could go for that.”

She spread oil on her hands and rubbed them together to heat it up. “Prepare to be amazed. Before I decided to become an RN, I went to school for massage therapy.”

She started at my feet. On the right side, I felt nothing, except occasionally I could feel the pressure in my hip. On the left side, I actually could feel the sensation of her fingers pressing into my skin. The places she rubbed felt slightly tingly, not in an unpleasant way. Once she got up to my calf, the sensation dulled down again. It was weird to think an attractive woman was running her hands up my quads, and I couldn’t even feel it.

Attractive?

I peeled open my eyes and watched the nurse. Annie Clarke wasn’t what anyone would consider a classic beauty. I couldn’t help making a mental comparison between Catherine and Annie. They were of a similar height, but that’s where the similarities ended. Catherine was willowy and graceful. She would have been naturally flat chested, but she’d had her breasts surgically augmented. The only hips she had were the pelvic bones that poked out. Her hair was the color of golden wheat, thanks to a team of professional stylists that touched it up every other week, and the woman spent at least an hour on her make-up every morning. Annie, on the other hand,-her curves were all-natural, and I didn't think she was wearing any make-up. Her scrubs did a bad job of hiding her womanly shape. In fact, the way she was bent over my thighs at the moment, I could stare right down her shirt and found myself eyeing the soft sway of her breasts.

Jeezus. I pulled my eyes back up to the ceiling. I was like a horny teenager trying to catch a sneak peek at anything with t**s. I had to stop thinking about her in that way, especially when her very strong and capable hands had reached my feeling zone. Her face was a mask of concentration as she dug her fingers into the sides of my hips. “You are really tight here,” she grumbled, working on my hip flexors. I was going to be really tight somewhere else if I didn’t get my head out of the gutter.

Luckily, she moved away from his lower body and started working on the muscles in my arms and shoulders. I tried to relax and disassociate her touch from anything and everything s****l. She was just a nurse, just a masseuse. Her touch was only meant to be therapeutic. And sometimes torturous, when she found particularly tight muscles and worked deep into the fibers. When she had finished on the front side, she instructed me to roll over.

At least if I was face down, I wasn’t going to embarrass myself. However, the situation got even trickier when she climbed up on the table with me. “Its too wide,” she grumbled, “I can’t reach.” I couldn’t really see what she was doing, but I sensed she had straddled my legs with her knees so that she could work on my hamstrings and the back of my thighs. I groaned despite myself, and her magic hands stilled.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No. Not at all,” I mumbled into the table. It was torture, but I didn’t want her to stop. Especially when she reached the tight muscles in my lower back. Sitting in the wheelchair all day long was really bothering my back. It always felt tight and sore, and it just added to my overall feeling of misery. Her expert hands dug out all the knots and kneaded them into submission. She worked her way up my spine, smoothing out the muscles, gently separating the vertebrae as she went. When she reached my shoulders, she worked her fingers up under the edges of my shoulder blades, eliciting another groan from me.

“Its good, right?” there was a certain smugness to her voice. “I told you it would be worth it.”

“Mmph,” was all I managed as she started massaging my neck. I let my head fall back onto the padded surface of the table. “Best I’ve ever had.”