“Shimmering Marigold.”
He nodded. “Very apt.”
Then he slid the pad of his thumb along the arch of her foot and it took all Viv’s willpower not to moan out loud as a pulse of electricity swept from her toes to the top of her head. A strange kind of sizzle was left in its wake, prickling at her nipples and tingling between her legs.
Holy guacamole.
She was pretty sure she was already wet and if this was how she was after one touch, she was going to be a puddle on the couch in a few minutes.
If he noticed her reaction, he didn’t say. In fact, he didn’t really look at her at all. Delivering a very thorough, impersonal massage, his fingers working their magic on her feet as he steadfastly watched the television. He laughed from time to time, keeping up a light commentary filling the void of her silence but the fact was, he could recite chapter and verse from the John McClane lexicon, and her body was in happy-ending territory.
The long, languid stroke of his thumbs might as well have been the brush of his mouth, the slide of his tongue. Hell, the man was nudging her closer to orgasm just from touching her feet.
His words from earlier came back to her. Oh no, that won’t make you weep. That’s what he’d said out on Main Street and she’d known then what he’d been alluding to but experiencing it was something else. The ache in her arches and her heels had ebbed quickly beneath his ministrations and the massage had morphed into something far different.
Something sensual. Something decadent. Like warm chocolate and expensive body oil and satiny lingerie.
It had become a seduction.
And it didn’t matter that John McClane was being all larger than life, bringing the testosterone as he blew shit up in the background, Reuben was the only man in the room.
“How are your calves?”
Viv dragged her eyes open, lifted her head up a little to find him watching her, his gaze lingering on her mouth and her throat. She sucked in a breath, which sounded loud and ragged despite the background noise of explosions, and Reuben’s gaze dropped to her breasts, to the uneven rise and fall of her chest and she thanked God for the camouflage of cashmere hiding her impossibly tight nipples.
Her calves were fine. Absolutely fine. Not that she thought for a moment this was about her calves. He was asking for permission to stray from the original plan. To touch her more. To move his hands higher.
A brief thought about their pledge flitted through her mind and out the other side. “They could do with some attention.”
Chapter Four
It was possible Viv whimpered when his fingers breached the hem of her loose sweats. For damn sure she lost all ability to hold her head upright as his thumb pushed from one end of her calf to the other in a long, languid stroke.
“How’s that?” he asked as he repeated the stroke, increasing the pressure a little, going deeper into the tissue. “Not too hard?”
Viv gave a quiet moan as the sensations caused by his touch rolled through her body like the low roll of thunder heralding a summer storm. Every part of her throbbed in the aftermath. Her heart beat hard and slow, her breathing was hot and heavy, her limbs felt leaden, weighed down by sticky fingers of desire.
He chuckled. “I take it that means okay?”
Okay? She was pretty damn sure there was some kind of weird chakra meridian voodoo thing that was running in a direct line from her calf to her clitoris. “Uh-huh,” she agreed because she couldn’t really word right now.
There was more chuckling as if he knew exactly the kind of storm going on inside her as he worked one calf then the other. Viv tried really hard not to gasp and moan and arch her back and demand he go even higher.
Or strip all her damn clothes off.
It was getting mighty hot in here what with the fire and the heat in his hands and the roaring freaking inferno of her libido. Viv felt like she was being cooked alive inside her cashmere and sweats and she squirmed a little as her body temperature kicked up a notch.
“You okay?”
She pried her eyes open to find him, once again, watching her intently. “Hot.”
“Maybe you should lose some of your clothes?”
Viv was pretty sure he said it as a tease but he seemed suddenly serious and, the truth was, she was not only fast approaching flash point as far as body temp went but also the point of no return with him. There’d be no turning back from here if she decided to tear down all those boundaries she’d put up to keep this thing between them in a straitjacket because of how it was affecting the business.
And because she was only here for six months.
But the way she saw it, there were only two choices, here. She either got her ass off the couch, reminded him of their pledge again and sent him on his way or she peeled off her cashmere sweater and invited him to come closer.
And she wasn’t sure she was strong enough for the former.
What Reuben said earlier came back to her. “Does everybody really think we’re sleeping together?”
He nodded. “Pretty much.”
And that was the clincher. If she was really going to be damned for the continual debauchment of one of the sons of Marietta, then she might as well be reaping the benefit from this apparent liaison.
“Well…if you can’t beat them…”
Viv performed the quickest sit-up she’d probably ever performed in her life. She hadn’t even done one in years and, had she been pressed to do one by someone else or for some other reason, like imminent attack by a grizzly, she probably would have failed. But this craving beating like a drum through her belly and her breasts was a powerful motivator. Once upright enough, she grabbed the hem of the sweater and pulled it off over her head, tossing it on the floor.
She had a bra and a cotton tank on underneath but Reuben was looking at her as if she was naked. Collapsing back against the couch she lifted her hips a little and said, “You want to do the honors?”
The words seemed to snap Reuben out of his trance. “So the pledge…?”
Viv shrugged. “What pledge?”
The words had barely left her lips and he was reaching for the waistband of her sweats, pulling them down her legs, dragging them off her feet. And then he was looking at her again, at the plain navy boy leg underwear hiding her from his full view.
The fact Viv had put this particular pair on after her bath gave her some kind of comfort that what was happening now hadn’t been premeditated. Nobody wore three-year-old plain cotton panties to a seduction which meant, even subconsciously, she hadn’t planned on breaking their pledge.
Then his hand slid onto her thigh and all thoughts of culpability fled.
“God,” he whispered. “I’ve been fantasizing about you ever since that night in Bozeman and my memory does not do you justice.”
Viv’s heart tripped. She knew how he felt. Reuben had been in her dreams a lot of nights but nothing beat the reality of him filling up her vision only a hand reach away. “Oh yeah?” She lifted her foot and planted it flat against his chest, her knee bent. Then she deliberately let her knee flop out so he could see right down the inside of her thigh to those nothing-special cotton panties. “What have you been fantasizing about?”
He smiled, his hand sliding onto her foot, lifting it to his mouth and dropping a kiss on her instep. It was light and wispy but it snaked like electricity down her inner thigh, puckering her skin and earthing at her clitoris, causing her to suck in a breath. Then he lowered her foot to his lap, reached for the band of her underwear with two hands and pulled.