“Uh,” I mutter. “How you want me?”
“On your back,” she answers, moving away from me, leaning over to light a single candle before circling the room.
There are candles everywhere, I realize. She touches each wick delicately with a spark of flame that flicks in little gold tongues.
“Don’t worry, Fire Chief Silver Tongue, there’s nothing flammable near the candles.”
“Silverton,” I snarl, correcting her.
Why the fuck are my ears burning?
Even with her back to me, I can hear the grin in her voice. “I don’t know, I’ve heard your show. Silver Tongue sounds about right.”
I make a sputtering noise. Is this girl openly flirting with me now?
I’ve gotta ignore it.
So I focus on shifting to my back instead. The massage table feels a little small for me, but it doesn’t wobble as I ease myself back with my bum leg stretched out, smoothing my towel. Peace turns back toward me.
And immediately bursts out laughing, pressing her fingertips to her lips.
I scowl. “What?”
“You’re stiff as a board, my dude,” she says, stepping closer to the table. Her soft fingers brush my bare arm, my inner elbow, and rest there in little pinprick points of warmth. “It’s like you’re taking up planking as an Olympic sport.”
“Planking? No clue what you just said.”
“Of course not.” With an amused sigh, she presses down on my inner elbow. “Just relax.”
I start to say something.
Only for something about that pressure to click, and a sudden looseness flows through my entire body. Just like all my joints decided to pop and turn liquid.
I groan, sinking against the warm linen cover of the massage table, gasping out in something close to pleasure. “What the…what was that?”
“Chakra point,” she answers simply. “Almost like a switch, isn’t it? It’s a quick release of tension. Some folks say it’s all psychological, kinda like a placebo. Others think it’s from some mystical, higher place. For me, it’s a good place to start, whatever you want to believe.”
She leans over me then, a few wisps of her hair falling down to tease against my cheeks as she looks at me searchingly.
“Are you feeling any better?’ she asks. “Like it might be safe to get started?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I nod shakily.
Shit.
I think this girl might be about to ruin me in more ways than one.
“Okay,” she murmurs, pressing her slim hands flat to my stomach. “Close your eyes, then. And try to relax.”
It’s almost a relief to close my eyes—at first.
With my peepers shut I can’t see her bent over me, the heavy curves of her tits on the verge of falling out of that damnable tied-up shirt, her body this pure graceful siren call and her face too pixie-like.
You know, everything that’d make the brutal pain in my dick a hundred times worse.
But it’s actually harder with my eyes closed and nothing left to my senses but the imagination.
Underneath the scent of whatever she’s pouring into her hands, this musky semi-sweetness that makes me think of sand and heat and spices, I can smell her.
She’s almost got this creamy-thick scent, something I could sink my tongue into. It’s as radiant and real as the warmth of her body leaning in close, the soft sound of her skin and her clothing against the edge of the table as she works.
And holy damn, her hands.
Her hands are hell on my skin as she strokes me from neck to shoulders to chest to hips. Just like she’s waking me up, bringing my body back to life one square inch at a time.
I’m sizzling, prickling, electric charges in the shape of her palms left everywhere she touches. I don’t think it’s the oil warming slick against my skin, smoothed on in a soothing layer.
It’s her.
And if she keeps it up, no frigging pain’s gonna stop me from embarrassing myself under this flimsy towel when my cock spikes up a tent.
“Hey,” I growl without opening my eyes. “That ain’t my thigh.”
Peace stops, lower, somewhere near my knees.
When her hands lift away from my body, she sounds almost wounded. “I’m trying to help you relax so the treatment will be more effective.”
“Peace,” I sigh. “Please. Humor me.”
There’s a pause before I hear her moving, her heat shifting, and then those soft hands rest just above my knee. “All right,” she says. “If that’s what you want…but it may end up hurting more.”
“Don’t see how that’s possible.”
I damn well find out a few seconds later.
I don’t have to open my eyes to know the shape of the scar.
It’s like a gnarled knot in a twisted tree trunk, blazed against my skin, starting a few inches above my knee and snaking in a strange contortion halfway up my thigh. The muscle somehow swirled into place around where that chunk of metal slashed my flesh.
Muscle ain’t supposed to knot like that. It goes straight up and down, sometimes with a twist.