LITMIR.BIZ

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a grin, he stepped back and reached up to pull his T-shirt off his body. “So you want me naked, huh? I knew sooner or later you’d be begging me to—” He flinched, and exhaled, dropping his arms. Gritting his teeth, he started to try again.

      “Stop. Is it your shoulder?”

      “It’s fine,” he ground out, an obvious lie. He must have hit his shoulder harder than I’d thought.

      Coming to him, I ran my hands over his shoulder anxiously, then exhaled. “It’s not dislocated.”

      “I told you.” He started to reach up to pull off his shirt.

      “Stop. Let me do it.”

      He tilted his head, his eyes gleaming. “Be my guest.”

      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

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