I’m now getting an up-close and personal look at her in that delicious yoga garb and that killer body beneath. Her skin is slick and glowing, her eyes sparkling in the low light. Nothing makes me hungrier than seeing this stunning creature sweat.
She tsks. “And here I was trying to do you a favor. Trish had to go out of town—her father’s in the hospital—and I know how desperately you need your bodywork, so I kept you on the schedule. And this is the thanks I get?”
“Baby, if you want to get your hands on me, all you have to do is bat those pretty eyelashes my way.”
She drops one hand to her hip and uses the other to nudge the sheet a little lower on my right side, brows raised and a devilish little grin tilting her mouth. “I have been hearing about this scar you have… Seems half the women in town know it intimately.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” I say, wondering where she heard about the scar. One that resulted from a fucker high on meth with a knife. While I’ve hooked up with a few women in town, I’ve really just been waiting—and hoping and praying—for Chloe to pull me out of the friend zone. “You pull that sheet down much farther and you’re going to get more than you bargained for. If that’s what you’re going for, I’m all in, beautiful.”
She actually looks like she’s thinking about it, and that only pumps more adrenaline to places that should really calm down, because I know Chloe Hart. Not only isn’t she going to hop on this table and rock my world, she won’t even kiss me. Hell, she won’t even go to dinner with me—at least not on a date.
“Tempting for sure.” She returns the sheet to the small of my back and sighs. “But you’re right about getting more than I bargained for. Move up and put your head in the brace.”
Damn. The sexual energy between us evaporates. “I hate that thing.”
“Do you want the best work over you can get or not?”
“I’d kill to have you work me over, girl, but we’re talking about parallel universes.”
She smirks and taps the oval brace at the top of the table.
I use my elbows to crawl a foot forward, then try to find a comfortable position. As soon as I feel her hands on me again, all thoughts of discomfort vanish. Except for the one between my legs. That’s just getting worse.
The heel of her hand makes its way down the other side of my spine. Relief flows in its wake, and I groan.
“Now what’s this story about Misty?” she asks, using the name Jed Bixby gave his pet dairy cow. “You really shouldn’t be bad-mouthing a lady like that.”
“She wasn’t acting like much of a lady yesterday. She was grazing on a patch of grass growing through the asphalt in the middle of Old County Road. She’s got an entire pasture of beautiful green grass, and she has to go find a tiny little patch in the road? As logical as any woman, I suppose.”
Chloe laughs. “You really ought to weigh your comments, Officer Wilde. At the moment, you’re at my mercy.”
“In my dreams. Very, very vivid dreams by the way.”
“Back to Misty.”
“She didn’t like me pulling on her halter to get her moving. She threw her head back and took me with it, tossing me to the other side of the median. Came this close”—I lift my hand and create an inch between thumb and forefinger—“to becoming a hood ornament on Buck Taylor’s Silverado.”
“That’s what you get for rushing a female.”
She eases her elbow into my trapezius, and I grit my teeth against the pain. “Jesus freaking Christ—”
“Yep, you’re jacked, all right. But you still would have looked pretty as Buck’s hood ornament.”
“Pretty?”
“You’re pretty, and you know it.”
I stop trying to keep up a conversation, because the things she does to me are enough to make me cry like a girl. My eyes are watering by the time she works the last stitch of pain from my right side.
Before moving onto the other side of my body, she gives me a break by working on my neck. It feels so good, it’s a miracle I’m not drooling on the floor.
“Jesus,” I moan. “Not to dis Trish or anything, but I’ve never felt anything like your hands on me.”
“Bet you say that to all the girls.”
“I don’t. Ask around.”
“I don’t have to ask around. Everyone is plenty happy to talk about you all on their own. Somehow, our friendship seems to be an open invitation for every woman interested in you to start up a conversation with me. Like I’ve got insider information or something.”