-12-

 

Ginny grinned to herself as they trooped down the stairs. So far, things had been a lot easier than she’d anticipated. She’d been worried that the guys would be back home before she’d even managed to convince Ash to take a look at her plan, let alone sign up to it. Of course, it wasn’t a legally binding contract, so his signature didn’t mean a lot, but it was something, and she had faith enough to believe the secondary rewards would motivate him enough to stay focussed, without having to worry about the ultimate goal of getting him fit and well and able to rock again, for long enough that the tasks might actually make a difference.

First off though, she needed to correct him of the notion that this was purely about sex, and preferably before he’d wriggled out of his black jeans, so she didn’t end up distracted and lose her focus either.

“Where’d you want me?” Ash asked once they reached the bedroom.

“Floor’s good.”

“Not on the bed?”

Ginny stalked past him, and collected the item they’d need from a drawer, then she perched on the edge of the bed and took off her stockings.

Ash’s mouth fell open in outrage. “Wha—what are you doing? You know I love those things. Leave them on.” He claimed one of the stockings she’d discarded and brushed it against the thick beard growth on his face.

“You can put them back on me later. They’ll get in the way of the task. Here, take this.” She handed him a small pot of coloured-nail polish, the same maroon shade that she currently had on her fingernails. Then she planted her foot on his knee and wiggled her toes. “I need you to make them match.”

Ash stared at her, apparently under the impression that she was joking. “You want me to paint your nails. What the fuck? I was writing, you know? And you’ve dragged me away from that to do this.”

She made a pinching motion with her forefinger and thumb. “That’s how you hold the brush.”

Splinters of hyacinth flashed in the blue of his irises.

“You agreed to the rules of the G-plan.”

“I suppose it was foolish of me to imagine it had anything to do with G-spots.”

At least he’d brought his sense of humour along, even if the remark was delivered with a distinctly petulant snarl.

“Another task might,” she replied cheerily. “Now, the quicker you get on with this, the sooner you’ll earn a reward.”

“This sucks,” he grumbled, nevertheless bowing his head to the task.

“No, I suck good boys when they finish their homework.”

He muttered several more grumbles, but set to applying himself. The first challenge was to get the lid off the bottle. This particular shade always cemented itself closed. It took him several minutes, during which he bounced the bottle off the carpet a couple of times, and clasped it between his teeth. Eventually, it was his fingers that secured him the victory. Ash loaded up the tiny brush and daubed paint on the first of her nails.

Ginny expected him to talk, or rather she expected him to gripe as he worked, but he did neither. He painted in silence, with his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth. Her big toes didn’t cause him too much trouble, but the smaller toes had him sneering and shaking his hand out repeatedly to ease the tightness in his fingers. He growled when he overloaded the brush while attempting to paint her littlest toenail and splodged nail varnish all over her toe and his knee.

“Oh, fucking fuck!”

“Suck it up, big boy. It’s just a smear.” She passed him a tissue.

Ash mopped up the mess and started over.

In the end, he did a decent job of it. He was actually not bad at nail-painting. Him and Spook probably did each other’s black before playing gigs. On the other hand, his issues with his hand did mean there were definite lumpy blobs in places where he’d daubed too much varnish onto one spot and then attempted to spread it out, but hadn’t done so evenly. Also, most of her toenails weren’t actually that long.

Importantly though, it had proved that a pincer grip wasn’t beyond him. If he could grip a paint brush, he could grip a pencil, he could grip a plectrum, ergo he’d eventually be able to play guitar again.

“So, does that get me a sticker on the chart?” he enquired petulantly.

“You already stole five.” She pointed at his T-shirt. “But if you complete three tasks today, then we can talk about a proper reward.”

“Three!” He groaned. “Fine, go on, tell me what’s next. Do I have to thread your eyebrows? Wax your moustache?”

She prodded him in the stomach with her toes. “I don’t have a moustache.”

“Change your clit piercing?”

Ginny padded over to the chest of drawers and got out a pair of stockings. “Put these on me.”

Ash looked at them and frowned. “Why them? Why not the ones you took off?” He retrieved the discarded pair of fishnets from the floor.

“Because, they’re harder to put on due to the holes. You should start with something easier and work up to the fishnets.”

“I prefer these.”

“The seamed ones are sexy too.”

Ash gave his head an emphatic shake. “They’re not even vaguely in the same league. Seamed stockings are like, ‘I’m a bit kinky when I’m not at work, and I either like to have my arse smacked or I’m into whipping your cock with a flogger,’ whereas fishnets—” He stretched them across his face, sighed and shivered. “—they’re like ‘I’m going to wild hump you until you’re floating on the moon, and I’m gonna stick my tongue in all the places you love feeling it, but shouldn’t like it going, and I’m going to talk dirty to you the whole time we’re doing it.’ Seams are all prim and proper. Fishnets are dirty. In fact, they’re the ultimate in sleazy fun. Therefore, they win. They always win.”

Ginny knelt on the floor before him, so that they were on the same eye level. “Ashley Gore, is it me you love, or just my fishnets?”

Bugger actually made like he was considering for a minute. “You in the fishnets. They’re not nearly as exciting when they’re not encasing a pair of nice legs.” He fluttered his long eyelashes at her. “Though, I do remember you offered me a Popasockaloo once with them, if you recall.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure how well that would work.” She grimaced, with her teeth pressed together. “You have a long memory. That was what, the night we met?”

Ash got a whimsical look in his eyes. “When it comes to my faves, I have an infinite memory.” He took hold of her hand and pressed it to his fly. He groaned when she pinched, and again when she pulled away. “So,” he said huffily. “You recommend sticking to using your panties to polish it?”

Ginny sucked on her lower lip, suppressing her urge to laugh. She’d probably upset him again if she gave in, and he was acting like the old Ash right now, the dorky, crazy hot boy next door rock god she’d fallen for.

Also, the thought of him with his jeans around his ankles stroking his cock with a pair of her silky knickers got her hot around the collar. She’d always liked watching men come. Watching him come as a result of something he was doing with her stolen underwear would be a definite treat. “Do you actually do that? Steal my underwear and jerk off holding it?”

Ash raised the stockings again, so that they covered his eyes and peeped at her through the weave. “Don’t you just love these things and how they have all these handy holes in them that you can use to hold on?”

“Ooh, evasion!” She dragged the nylons down so that she could properly see his face. “Is there a confession you need to make?”

He angled his head slightly, so that his gaze was cast down towards the floor. A streak of pink coloured the ridges of his cheekbones.

“Ash?”

He jerked his chin up, all sense of humour gone from his expression. “Your knickers are unadulterated. I’m shit at wanking left-handed, okay.”

Fuck, he was tetchy. She dropped what she hoped was an apologetic kiss onto his sad pout. “Shall we set aside a nice pair so that I can rub you off with them later?”

His gaze softened. Suddenly, his arms were around her, and his hands pushing into her hair. “Ginny, Ginny, Ginny… God, I swear you were sent to torment me.”

“Which ones are your favourites? The rose-coloured ones, the purple satin shorts with the black lacy bits, my teeny tiny pink thong?”

“What pink thong?”

“I think it’s the frilly French knickers that really get you going. Well, those and the ones I currently have on. You know, you do seem to have a thing about stuff with holes in it.” She opened her legs and drew her thumb down over the front of her panties to where a slit opened right over her slit.

Ash puffed a breath out hard. “Okay, no more tease. I can’t take the tease. Life’s torment enough already.”

“Not even a weeny teeny bit of a tease?” She climbed into his lap and drove her pussy up against the swell tenting his fly.

Ash groaned from the depths of his belly.

“These last weeks have killed me.”

“Me too,” she admitted. “Did you think when I warned you off the day you were released that—”

He nodded. “I thought maybe you didn’t want me anymore.”

“Dope. I just thought it would have been selfish of me to ignore medical advice and put your health at risk so soon into your recovery. You were pretty fragile still, and you’d totally over done it that day.”

“Yeah, well depriving me of nookie turns me into—”

“—a wookie.” She giggled.

“—a sad son of a bitch was what I was going to say.”

“Well, you are pretty furry.” She rubbed at his beard. It was a beard, and not just a bit of sexy scruff despite what he might imagine.

“Do you hate it?” he asked earnestly.

Ginny tipped her head from side to side as if considering. “Ash, you idiot, there’s not a single thing about you that I hate.”

“You hate it,” he confirmed.

She rolled her eyes. “Visually, I prefer you without. But, I reserve final judgement until I’ve felt it against my lady bits.”

Ash stroked his hand over his beard growth. “Are you suggesting you want to get pussy juice in my fur? I thought the next task involved stockings.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to get your beard wet?”

Humour flicked through his eyes. “Sorry, whose beard are we talking about?”

Ginny flicked a finger against his chest. “Pfft! I’m baby smooth.”

His gaze briefly dropped to the apex of her thighs. “Yes, yes you are, aren’t you? He jiggled her against his hard-on again. Ginny felt him swell.

“Feels so good.”

There was no denying the truth of that. She leaned forward, meaning only to briefly kiss his lips, but Ash clung onto her and refused to let go until their tongues had done some serious sparring. It was she who stopped him, when his kisses progressed down the side of her throat, and his fingers started seeking passage beneath her corset. “I’m all yours, Ash, but only after you’ve earned it. Three tasks first.”

“Spoilsport.”

Maybe in the short term, but long term he’d hopefully thank her. “Seriously, you don’t want to go getting a black mark for being naughty, now do you?”

He actually considered. “What happens if I do? Do I have to forfeit watching Danger Mouse for a week?”

“Ash.” She scurried out of reach and threw one of the balled-up stockings at him. “Just do the task. And by the way, the timer resets at midnight.”

“You’re no fun at all.” He retrieved both fishnet stockings. “Fine, let’s do this. You sit your dainty butt back up there.”

Ginny resumed her former perch upon the bed. “Just remember, no twists or tears.”

He nodded. “Babe, I’m going to ace this. Just get ready to be pounded.”

“My rules, tiger. I get to decide when the pounding happens, and I reckon three completed tasks is the minimum required to earn a shag.”

He cast her some serious side-eye from under his fringe, made a noise low down in his throat, then plastered on a beatific grin. “Okay. Fine. Right foot, please. Not that I see how shagging has anything to do with fixing me.”

It might shore up his mental reserves, and restore his self-esteem.

Ginny held her foot up and let him work on his task. The key was to gather the stocking up so that you could slip on the toe part, and then gradually pull the rest up the leg without snagging your fingers in the holes. The pair he was working with were at least fairly finely woven. Some of her others had larger holes and were a real bugger to put on even if you were well practised.

Ash managed to secure a fairly speedy victory with the first stocking. He grinned smugly at her as he clipped the top of the stocking to her suspenders. He attacked the second with too much cocky zeal, and hit a snag halfway up when he got the nylon twisted, and then put his fingers through the holes right after he’d straightened it out. The result was a ten-inch ladder.

“Shit!”

“Oh no, such bad luck. Looks as if nookie is off the agenda.” She crossed her legs.

Ash pulled at her knees until he was able to wriggle between her thighs again. “We’re not done yet. There were boxes for up to five challenges a day on your chart, and you said passing three of them would get me laid. That means I just need to secure victories on two of the remaining three.”

“I wasn’t going to give you five every day, and definitely not today. I thought I’d break you in gently.”

“Gently.” He rolled the word from his tongue riddled with scorn. “Fuck that. Give me it all. Come on, Ginny. What’s the next one? If I’m gonna do this, then it’s better to go all in.”

“It’s never a good idea to push too hard.”

“I’ll let you know if it gets too tough.”

Chances were that the stubborn bastard wouldn’t, but when he pleaded like this, with his big blue eyes peeping at her through the strands of his hair, and his expression filled with eagerness, she was powerless to resist. The truth was that she didn’t want to resist. Shagging until they were both senseless sounded pretty great, actually.

“What do you wish of me, O’ great and glorious mistress?”

“Jenga.”

“What?” His nose wrinkled as if she’d told him he had to scoop dog poop for the next hour.

“The game, Jenga. That’s the third challenge for today.”

She stood and offered him her hand so that he could also rise.

Ash clasped her hand, but didn’t immediately stand. His mouth remained set in a sour pout. “Do I have to win?”

“No. You only have to take part and take it seriously.”

“So, I have to attempt to win.”

“We are doing it for a reason, Ash.” It wasn’t as if she was Jenga obsessive or anything. Board games weren’t exactly her thing, though she didn’t mind the occasional pub quiz. This was about him practising those all-important fine motor skills, just in ways that weren’t quite as obvious as sitting down with his sheet of physiotherapist prescribed exercises.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer me to practise hooking and unhooking your corset? It has a ton of tiny hooks, right? ’Cause that sounds like it’d be far more fun.”

“We’ll stick to Jenga for now,” she insisted, though she filed away his suggestion for another time. Those hooks could be tricky, and alternatively, she could have him thread and unthread the ribbon fastening at the back. “Let’s play on the table in the lounge.”

“The one with the wonky leg? Ooh, extra challenge.” He opened his eyes wide, aping excitement.

“Let’s just play. Okay? If you pass this test, then I’ll make sure the next one is more to your tastes.”

“It better involve tongues,” he said. “Just saying, ’cause I totally have issues with my speech to fix as well as my fingers, so you know, tongue exercises are going to be essential.”

 

***

 

In the end, they played three rounds of Jenga. Ash won two, the last one as a result of her bumping the table and felling the tower. Having achieved her goal of making him work, there was no sense in over doing it, and while he’d not complained, it was clear that he was finding play increasingly difficult. He’d given his fingers more than one surreptitious rub under the table.

“How about we take a break and I’ll fix us something to eat,” she said once the playing blocks were back in the box.

“Do you want help?”

“No, you can chill for a while.”

Ash settled himself in front of the TV, and flicked channels until he found a film. He was asleep when she set the pasta medley she’d concocted before him. “Hey, sleepy head. Eat up.”

Ash roused, and they ate. He insisted on opening a bottle of wine, but he stopped after one glass to prove he was a good boy.

“Still want to go for today’s gold star?” Ginny asked. He’d worked so hard and had been so surprisingly amenable to her plans that she wanted to give him a reward. Actually, she relished the chance. He wasn’t the only one hungry for some action.

Ash turned his gaze on her again. A wan smile played across his lips. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…” He covered his mouth with his curled fingertips and very slowly shook his head. “I just… Ginny, what if this is me from now on? What if there’s no getting better, no regaining my ability to play? What am I supposed to do?”

Ginny wrapped her arm around his back and rested her head on his shoulder. “I don’t believe that’s going to happen. I genuinely believe you’ll get through this.” She caught hold of his hand and linked their fingers. “We’ll get through this.” She squeezed his hand tight. “Whatever happens, I’m here for you. I hope you know that. I’m not going anywhere, Ash. I know you have some weird ideas about me getting tired of you, and casting my lot in with someone else. It’s just not going to happen. I’d completely given up on the idea of ever having any sort of long-term relationship again before I met you.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but she covered his lips with her fingertip, hushing him into silence. “Before you put yourself down. I know that’s what you mean to do. You’ve never disappointed me. You won’t. You’re too selfless for that.” She’d not forgotten how hard he worked to bring her pleasure, even at the expense of his own needs.

“I’m going to disappoint you right now. I can’t face anything else tonight, I’m sorry.”

“Not even a hand job?” She offered him a saucy smile.

Ash shook his head. “Sorry.” He turned away from her.

“We could cuddle instead. I could make us some hot drinks, and we could give that film from earlier another try.”

“Cuddles are almost as good.”

He must think she was blind and deaf if he thought she couldn’t see he was in pain. Tension riddled his whole body. He had his shoulders pulled in and up and the tendons in his jaw were pulled taut.

“Ash, are you okay?” She rested her chin against his shoulder again.

“Fine!”

“I’m a girl. I know that fine doesn’t mean fine.” She got off the sofa so that she could walk around him to see his face. His teeth were gritted, and his eyes were narrowed to mere slits, courtesy of his intense grimace.

“All right, no. It fucking wrecks!”

“Has this been happening a lot?”

He shook his head. Probably because the only thing likely to come out if he opened it was a scream or some serious blasphemy.

“Do you ever think that maybe flushing your meds wasn’t such a hot plan? Yeah, I know why you did it, but putting yourself through this is nonsensical. I’m going to find you some painkillers.”

“Don’t.”

“We’re talking about a couple of paracetamol, Ash. Not a morphine shot.”

He shook his head, which made him wince even more. “Don’t want it. It’ll be fine. It’ll pass in a moment. Just need to ride it out.”

“I think you’re taking this a bit far. I’m sure you’ve downed plenty of Resolve after a heavy night on the tiles before. You were a student. Everyone has. And you’re not telling me you’ve never taken any painkillers to get you through a head cold or to sort you out so you could get on stage when your head’s been ready to explode.”

“I don’t want them now. This isn’t like that. This isn’t going away. It’ll be too easy to keep taking them and wanting more.”

“Fine, tough it out, but I’m going to call Rock Giant tomorrow and ask him if he’s any thoughts about natural methods of pain relief.” He was bound to have some ideas. Some of them might even be good ones.

“I don’t want you to tell any of them anything, and I already know what he’ll say—masturbation.” He huffed a ghost-like laugh. “Course, you’ll have to tug it for me, ’cause we both know how well my hands work.”

“How about I stick to rubbing your big toes? That’s supposed to work for headaches.”

“It isn’t my head that hurts.”

“Okay, well maybe if you just rest.” She settled at one end of the big sofa, and tugged him against her, so that he was squeezed between her legs with his head resting on her chest. “Ash, this is madness.”

“It’s not very often it happens now,” he whimpered, snuggling in to her body. “Probably over did it, but it was fun.”

“Yeah.” Ginny gently brushed her fingers through the longer strands of his hair.

He was asleep within five minutes.

“I love you,” she muttered, kissing his brow. “It’ll be okay, Ash. We’re going to figure this out. And we can have mad sex tomorrow, all right?” She pulled a fleecy throw over the pair of them. Neither of them stirred from the sofa until the sun streamed through the window the next morning.