“It’s working,” I tell her. “How come you never used it before?”
“The smell’s pretty strong,” she says, flicking an almost nervous glance at me from under her lashes. “I’m always worried people won’t like it.”
“I do,” I answer. “It’s deep shit. Intoxicating. Sultry, kinda. Helps me limber up.”
Her eyes ignite, even if that pixie smile of hers doesn’t change.
“Yeah?” she whispers. “I’m glad.”
I am, too.
Not for the reasons she’s thinking.
I’m just happy to be up in her world tonight.
Glad that she’d take something tied to an important memory and turn it into something she can use to ease people’s pain.
It’s like this girl was born for that name she carries.
She really is a peace to the world and to me.
And she’s everything as I close my eyes and settle into silence and let her go to town.
I don’t know when I started trusting her hands this much, but I do, just like that big ol’ pissed off lion in the story with a splinter in his paw.
I let go.
Drop my pride, drop my defenses, and let Peace Rabe fix my hell.
Boy, does she ever. Every time her hands glide across my flesh, I feel like she’s reaching inside to soften my soul.
I know what she told me, when those bad memories hit during that one session. Massage can stir up old pains. It’s only natural that touching those trigger points in the body unlocks things that were buried away.
Thing is, pain’s not the only thing that’s been branded in me.
I haven’t been calm or truly happy for a long time.
But she’s coaxing that out, reaching down to where the better stuff’s buried. She dredges them up and lets them spread through me in a blissful wash of warmth, rolling through my flesh until I’m a relaxed, lazy mess sprawled on the couch.
No pain.
No hurt.
No heartbreak.
No anger, no tension, no loss.
Just me and this fine ass woman.
Her hands on my skin, my body throbbing, and fuck, I can’t stop how that wonderful feeling pools in my gut and pulses in my cock again.
This time, it’s slow and riled instead of urgent and tense.
Best of all, she never stops touching me.
Telling me, with every tender press of her fingers, that she’s not afraid.
Not repelled by whatever this insane, unspeakable thing is between us.
I don’t know how long I lie there, letting her turn me into a mess of contentment.
It seems like forever and too soon at the same time when she slowly eases, stopping with her palms resting lightly over my scar.
“How you feeling?” she asks, her voice pure silk in the darkness behind my eyelids. “Better?”
“Oh, yeah,” I breathe, opening my eyes, looking up at her hazily. “Doesn’t even hurt now. Feels like hot butter.”
“Good.”
She looks down at me with her eyes half-lidded, her lips parted, and—
Shit.
There’s something there.
Something blazing in the rapid pace of her breaths, the way her tits rise and fall, the thinness of her shirt and bra over nipples that press hard little swells against the fabric.
Peace just holds my eyes for several long moments before her gaze darts away. She pulls her hands back, standing and reaching for a towel from her kit.
“Give me a second,” she says, a throaty burr darkening her voice. “I’ll get everything cleaned up.”
Her tongue slides over her lips, her gaze slipping over me for a drawn out second. Then she turns and walks away just a little too fast, vanishing into the kitchen.
I push myself up on one arm and stare after her.
The sway of her hips, the tightness of her sweet, thick ass in her jeans...
Sweet hell, they’re pulling on me like gravity.
Something more, too—this intangible thing between us, this connection I can’t ignore.
And it’s urging me to her.
I don’t even realize I’m getting up till I’m up. My body feels light, fluid, like she’s taken away every scar and every burden I ever had. She’s left me stronger.
Strong enough for her.
When I step into the kitchen, she’s washing her hands in the sink.
She glances up as I draw closer, turning to face me, wiping her hands off on a towel. “Blake?”
I can’t find the words.
No damn words ever made would matter right now. Words can’t express this yawning hunger.
It’s every kind of wrong and I know it.
She’s too young. Too sweet. Too temporary.
I’m too broken.
None of it means dick as her smoky eyes flick over me with lingering heat. That blush comes back, enticing, telling me I’m not the only one who feels this. Begging me to shut the hell up and do something about it.
So I do.
As her breaths catch.
As her lips part.
As the temperature flares to a hundred degrees.
And I can’t resist that strawberry redness of her lips any longer.
I lean down to claim her with a kiss that shatters both our worlds.
15
Crank Up the Bass (Peace)
You don’t know torture until you’re undressing the most gorgeous man alive and trying to ignore the thick ridge of his cock pressing up against his boxer-briefs.
I don’t know how I kept calm during that massage.
Not when every time I touched him, I was fascinated by the feeling of coarse skin under my palms.
The hard sculpture of his body.
The way his face relaxed in bliss and his muscles went loose until he looked like this portrait of lazy passion, from the liquid flow of corded muscle to the part of his lips.
Blake Silverton could mess me up for life without even putting that Silver Tongue to work at all.
Everything in me wanted him so freaking bad, it’s a miracle I didn’t straddle his lap and kiss and caress him everywhere, spreading that sweet-cinnamon oil all over his body until we slid together in a slick mess.
But I managed to control myself. Somehow.
Control myself, ease his pain, and walk away.
Only for him to follow me, stalk me like a panther, that tall, honed body hovering over me, still nothing but tawny bare skin and bristling hair and jagged scars and those barely there boxers.
Until now, I never believed a kiss could be indescribable.
But oh, baby, Blake is one hell of a teacher.
Ever since our first rough taste of each other, I’ve wondered what it’d feel like to kiss him without any distractions like work or Andrea in the house or some new crisis.
Nothing I’ve ever imagined matches up to the truth.
His searing heat, the masculine fullness of his lips, his mouth firm in its claiming, needy pressure and yet so soft in the way his lips mold against mine with a fury.
Oh.
My.
God.
As walled off as he’s been, as withdrawn, now, a beast is out.
There’s no hesitation in his kiss.
Only a dominant, utterly certain yearning, a compulsion, a demand.
It’s given to me in stroking lips, in taunting dives of tongue-tip to tongue-tip, in the slow curl of his hands against my waist. He strokes slowly down my hips, electrifying me with the texture of his palms, the strength in those fingers, the way he touches me like I’m his new addiction with every graze of skin to the fabric over my flesh.