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My hands shook as I lifted his faded cotton T-shirt upward, trying to ignore the warmth and steel of his tautly muscled chest and shoulders beneath my fingertips. I yanked it over his head, tousling his dark hair that my fingers longed to touch, to see if it was as silky as it looked.
He straightened. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” I couldn’t stop my eyes from lingering over his hard-muscled form laced with dark hair. I licked my lips.
Then our eyes met.
Our bodies were still so close together. The upper half of his body was now naked.
And Edward suddenly smiled.
Not a friendly smile. A dangerous one, full of masculine power that threatened all kinds of things. Things I would like. Things that would pleasure my body. Things that would break my heart.
But I’d already had my heart broken once. And if Jason Black had broken it, Edward St. Cyr would crush it, smash it, light it on fire and then laugh, as he watched the ashy remains float softly to the ground.
“Are you going to take off the rest of my clothes, or shall I?” His dark sapphire eyes gleamed. “It might assist in your massage to take off your own clothes as well.”
A selfish man may try to tempt the unwary virgin into sensual pleasures beyond her imagining, Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley had warned. There is only one means of resistance. The weapon of icy courtesy.
Coldly, I lifted my chin. “This isn’t a date. Your muscles need to be massaged after all your exercise today, and the fall. Otherwise you’ll hurt.” Grabbing a large white towel, I flung it at him. “Don’t lift your shoulder again today. Let me know when it’s safe to turn around.”
Folding my arms, I turned the opposite direction. Furious at myself.
Why did I let him have this effect on me? No other client, and there had been some good-looking ones, had remotely made me feel like this. Even Jason had never made me feel like this. The times he’d kissed me had been pleasant. But he’d never made me feel so confused, off-kilter, and well, burning hot....
“You can turn around.”
I did so. And wished I hadn’t.
Edward was stretched naked, facedown across the massage table, as I’d ordered, covered only by a white towel across his backside, between his powerful back, his slender hips and thickly muscled thighs. Leaning his elbow against the leather cushion of the table, he propped up his head and looked at me darkly.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he said huskily. “Me naked and at your mercy?”
I opened my mouth for a witty comeback, but only a squeak came out. I coughed to cover, then nervously went to the table. It’s no big deal, I told myself fiercely. I’d massaged him many times over the past few weeks.
But something felt different. Something had changed. My skittish sexual awareness of him had managed to penetrate the gym. Why? How?
Edward lifted a dark eyebrow. “Be gentle with me,” he said mockingly. Closing his eyes, he propped his chin on his folded arms and waited for me to touch him.
Touch him.
I looked down at my hands, which felt suddenly tingly. I knew how to give a professional massage. Why were my hands shaking? I didn’t feel like a competent physical therapist. I felt like what he’d once called me—a frightened virgin.
Edward St. Cyr, my boss who’d inspired me and irritated me in equal measure, who was way out of my league and didn’t see me as anything more than someone he could casually flirt with, and perhaps casually sleep with, and casually forget, was naked beneath my hands. And I feared if I showed a moment of weakness, he might roll over and devour me. I pictured a lion devouring a gazelle in a documentary, the flashing jaws digging into the meat and sinew.
If he felt my hands shaking... All he had to do was turn around on the table and pull me down hard against him in a savage kiss.
Don’t think about it, I told myself fiercely. Flexing my fingers, I poured oil in one palm then rubbed my hands together to warm them. Slowly, I lowered them to his back.
Edward’s skin was warm, like satin. I heard the soft whir of the nearby space heater as I ran my hands down the length of his spine, feeling the smoothness of his skin over hard muscle.
I wondered what his naked body would feel like, pressed against my own.
Muscles. I tried not to think of him as a dangerous man I was longing to kiss, but focus instead on the individual parts of his body, muscles, the tendons, the ligaments. I tried to see him only as a patient.
Yes. A patient. Just a body, like a machine. Tissues connected to ligaments connected to muscles. Cells.
Not an amazing masculine body, rippled with muscles and power, attached to the soul of the man who’d teased and challenged me for the past seven-and-a-half weeks as I lived in his castle. The man I thought of before I slept, aware of his bedroom down the hall from mine.
As I ran my hands down the trapezius muscles of his upper back, I tried to calm the rapid beat of my heart. I looked across the room, past all the shiny, modern exercise equipment and weights and yoga mats. Outside the windows, the noonday sun was peeking through the clouds, a soft pink through the bare black trees, leaving patterns and shadows across the winter-bare garden.
But as I stroked and rubbed Edward beneath my palms, I felt hot as summer. I closed my eyes, trying not to imagine what it would be like if he were my lover. How it would feel to sink into the pleasure I imagined he’d give me. Afterward my soul might be ash, but I’d finally know the exhilaration of the fire.
For all these years, I’d guarded both my body and my heart, afraid of ever again feeling the pain of losing someone or something I cared about. But it turned out I hadn’t really managed to shield myself from pain. Could anyone?
Sadness and ash came into life anyway. People died. People broke your heart.
Edward sighed. “That feels great.”
“I’m glad,” I said hoarsely. Dripping more richly scented oil onto his skin, I rubbed the length of his back in silence, the long muscles of his legs, one at a time, to the soles of his feet. Then I lifted the towel a few inches above his body. “Roll over.”
He didn’t move. “It’s, um, not necessary.”
“Of course it is.” It was difficult to stand there holding the towel away from his naked backside and not look. My tone was waspish. “I have to do your other side. Do you want your muscles to be lopsided? Your back relaxed, your front all stiff?”
“Um...”
“For heaven’s sake, just turn over!”
So he did. Exhaling with relief, I gingerly tossed the towel over his front for modesty.
And I saw that his front side was, indeed, stiff. My eyes went wide.
Oh my God, was that—him?
I’d never seen any man naked before. I wasn’t seeing him naked now, just the shape of him jutting from his body, almost pornographically explicit beneath the white terry cloth towel, cylindrical and huge. Were all men that large? My cheeks burned, but I stared down at him, fascinated, unable to look away.
Then I felt Edward’s gaze. “I took you for a virgin, but you truly don’t have any experience at all, do you?”
“I’ve had lots,” I lied. Our eyes met, and my shoulders sagged. “If you mean work. With men—none.”
“Not even with Jason?” he said incredulously. “No experience with sex, of any kind?”
The burn of my cheeks had turned radioactive now, and I couldn’t meet his gaze. “I’ve been kissed once or twice.”
“You’re twenty-eight!”
“I know,” I snapped. To hide my embarrassment, I turned away to grab the oil. He’d had a purely physical reaction, I told myself, the automatic response of his hungry male body to the touch of any female. It wasn’t that he wanted me. Not in particular. It couldn’t be.
Could it?
I did a quick comparison between his perfectly chiseled body, his power and wealth and his incredible masculine good looks—and what I had on offer.
Nope.
If you lose an inch of moral high ground, rush back to it as quick as you can, Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley advised. Clearing my throat, I said reproachfully. “Keep this professional, please.”
“You first,” he said, sounding amused. Leaning his head back against his palms, he closed his eyes, and I remembered how he’d caught me staring.
Feeling foolish, I tentatively massaged the muscles of his chest, his arms, his shoulders. I was gentle with the injuries that still hadn’t completely healed, but even those were starting to disappear. He was no longer wearing bandages of any kind. There was nothing to keep my hands off his skin as I traced over the twisted muscles, the jagged scars. He was powerful, virile, sexy. He’d nearly vanquished the accident that had devastated his body. Heaven only knew what gaping wound still remained in his heart.
I looked down at him on the massage table. His eyes were still closed, but there was a twist to his lips I couldn’t read.
“What are you thinking?” I blurted out. I bit my lip, but there was no taking it back.
His dark blue eyes slit open infinitesimally.
“A dangerous question,” he murmured. “Better perhaps for you not to know.”
Was he thinking about the accident? The woman? Or something else entirely? “That’s silly.” I gave a stilted laugh. “Knowledge is never bad.”
“In that case...” His lips curved sardonically. “I am thinking, Miss Maywood, that it would be amusing to seduce you.”
A shiver ripped through my body. Wide-eyed, I stepped back from the massage table. “I work for you.”
“So?”
“I’m—in love with someone else,” I said weakly.
He abruptly sat up. “Not that it matters, but...” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
I stared at him. “Of course I’m sure.”
“You saw their picture, two movie stars gleaming together on the red carpet, entwined, stupid with love. He cheated on you, left you months ago, you never even slept together—but after all this time, you still love him? You’re still faithful? Why?”
Yes, why? My body echoed. Swallowing, I looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“It’s true what they say,” he said harshly. “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”
“Really?” I looked at him steadily. “And have all the women you’ve slept with burned the image of her from your brain—the woman you loved? The woman you almost died for?”
His lips curled, and a low growl came from the back of his throat. “Don’t.”
“Love doesn’t just disappear. You know that as well I do.”
“It can. It has. And you’re stupid to let it do otherwise.” Holding the towel around his hips with one hand, he rose to his feet. His eyes narrowed as he went on the attack. “How does it feel, knowing that your stepsister has everything—the career you want, the man you love?” He tilted his head. “And he probably wanted her from the beginning. He was likely using you, to get to her....”
“Shut up!”
“I feel sorry for you. How it must hurt to know they’ll never be punished for hurting you. That while you suffer, they’re making love in oblivious joy.” He snorted, his lip curling. “You’re so meaningless, they’ve forgotten you even exist.”
His face was close to mine, his expression cruel. My heart pounded with grief and pain. Then looking at him, I suddenly understood.
“You’re not talking about me,” I breathed. “You’re talking about yourself.”
The air between us was suddenly cold in a way that had nothing to do with the wintery bluster rattling the leaded windows, and the weak afternoon sun falling behind the bare black trees. His lip curled. He turned away.
“We’re done.”
“No.” Reckless of the danger, I grabbed his arm. “I’m trying to make you better,” I said in a small voice. “How can I, if I don’t understand the depths of your injury?”
Edward looked at me, his jaw tight. “You can see it. You’ve touched it with your hands.”
“Some wounds can’t be seen or touched,” I whispered. I took a deep breath. “Some go deeper. Let me help you, Edward,” I said pleadingly. “Tell me what you need.”
His dark blue eyes stared down at me, haunted. Then they turned cold and cruel as the Arctic. Still holding the towel loosely over his hips with one hand, he wrapped the other around the back of my head.
“Here’s how you can help me,” he said huskily. “Here’s what I need.”
And he pulled me against him in a hard, hungry kiss.
I didn’t have time to resist, or think; my body tightened, then melted against his. Edward’s lips were like silk, hot and fiery with need, his tongue brushing against mine. He held me against him, towering over me, strong and powerful and nearly naked.
Then his towel fell to the floor, and there was no nearly about it.
I was wearing a zip-up cotton hoodie, a T-shirt and knit workout pants, as always. But his skin scorched right through my clothes.
His hand moved slowly down my back, as the other cradled the back of my head, his fingers moving through my hair. I felt a whoosh and realized he’d pulled out my ponytail. My hair tumbled down my shoulders. He murmured words against my lips, his voice low, almost a growl.
“I want you, Diana,” he breathed, and claimed my lips savagely.
I’d never been kissed like this before. The pallid, tentative kisses of a brief college boyfriend had left me cold. Jason’s kisses, as I said, were pleasant, nothing more. This?
This was like fire.
Edward St. Cyr wanted my body. Not my soul. Not my heart. There was no respect in his embrace, no concern for my feelings. There was no emotion at all—just physical need and reckless desire.
But my hunger matched his. He made me forget everything—the past, my broken heart, my pain. When he kissed me, I almost forgot my name. He brought me to life, like a single hot ember from cold ash. He made my body blaze like the sun.
I gripped his bare shoulders with an answering fervor that belonged to some other bolder woman—someone fearless—and kissed him back. With everything I had.
I heard his low hiss of breath, then a rising growl at the back of his throat as he pulled me tighter against his naked body. His hands ran over me possessively. He kissed my lips hard enough to bruise, then nibbled my lower lip. He flicked his hot tongue in each corner of my mouth before he slowly moved down, kissing my chin. Kissing my neck.
My head fell back, my hair tumbling down my shoulders. The cottage seemed to spin around me, as if I were at the center of a tornado. My skin felt hot, burning like the desert. I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t open my eyes. If I did, I’d see Edward St. Cyr—my handsome, arrogant boss—kissing down my neck to my chest. If I saw that, I was afraid my mind would explode—along with my body....
His hands brushed roughly over my breasts, over hard, aching nipples. He cupped them over my thin cotton shirt and bra, stroking the sensitive tips with his fingers. My breathing became ragged.
“Take it off,” he murmured in my ear, and I felt the flick of his tongue against my ear. Prickles of desire, flashing cold then hot, raced up and down my body. Leaning forward to kiss me, he whispered, “Take it all off.”
