She never took off his sweatshirt, yet somehow it handily dropped to the ground. She swore she never volunteered to touch him, yet somehow her hands were freely running over his chest, his back. She’d touched him before, but she’d touched him as a masseuse.
Now she learned him with a woman’s hands, inhaled him the way a woman breathes in her lover. Her fingertips chased over muscles and tendons, over the flat of his stomach, the ridges of ribs, up to the column of his neck—not to chase away knots this time, but to inspire some. Not to ease away sore spots, but to ignore other tactile sensations entirely.
The skin on his shoulder had the vague scent of soap and the naked scent of him beneath that. She caught the hint of musky sweat as he struggled with the heat rising between them, as shocking fast as the gush of a volcano…but that hint of sweat was an aphrodisiac for her. It wasn’t work or stress sweat, but simply man sweat, him sweat, the scent of a man on fire.
And still he kissed her. His lips trailed her neck, making necklaces with his damp tongue. His rough, long fingers pushed at her sweater, eased it up and over her head, and on the way back, slowly tugged at her hair. A clip tumbled, then another and another, until her coiled-up hair came apart. So did she.
Mop suddenly clawed at her side. Duster stayed snoring, but Mop tended to worry that her mistress needed rescuing at odd times.
“Lie down, baby,” Fox said, in the same tone she used for the dog. Mop obeyed as if she immediately recognized it was okay, it was Fox, not a danger…although he was a danger, Phoebe knew. She’d opened her eyes at the pup’s interruption. Now she could see Fox’s expression. He stopped moving for that instant, stopped touching her, just took a long, long moment to just look at her.
The last she remembered, they’d both been sitting up, facing each other. Now they both seemed to be lying on the scratchy rug, face-to-face, both of them bare from the waist up. Her yoga pants were tied at the waist, but the ties had loosened and the waistband had dipped below her navel—not revealing anything but the swell of her hip—but he saw that promise of nakedness. He looked. He savored.
He desired.
And so did she. She passionately wanted to be the one who healed Fox. Who made him feel. Who made him want to feel again.
She pulled his hand to her breast, encouraged the palm to shape her, to own her. At the same time she pushed at the snap of his jeans, then chased down the zipper. She’d have lowered the zipper a ton slower if she’d known ahead that the wicked man wasn’t wearing underwear. His jack popped out of the box so fast it risked being clawed with the zipper teeth—but she quickly protected him by wrapping her palm around his long, smooth shift. The flesh was warm and sleek and pulsed violently inside the circle of her palm.
He hissed in a breath. “Don’t.”
“Hmm…is that one of those no’s that really mean yes?” she murmured.
“Don’t tease.”
“You know what, Fox? If there was ever a man who needed some teasing, I think it’s you.” As if to prove her point, his shaft released a single drop of warm, soft moisture. “Oh, yeah, you like this fine,” she whispered, and then suddenly froze.
In seconds she went from tropic heat to icy Popsicle. The trigger was hearing her own throaty chuckle, seeing his responsive lunge to pay her back with the same kind of explosive caresses. Only…she didn’t want to be a seducer. Didn’t want him thinking of her as an inhibited easy lover.
The conflict shot anxiety in her pulse with the speed of a bullet. She wanted him. She totally wanted to make love with him, to invoke wonderful and healing emotions with him, to share those feelings together. Only, she didn’t want to…give in, surrender. She could. But she was afraid of feeling ashamed, the way Alan had made her feel ashamed. She knew Fox wasn’t Alan. Knew it wasn’t the same situation at all, but…
“What’s wrong?” Fox whispered between kisses, tracing the shell of her ear.
She couldn’t think when he was touching her. Not like that. Not really think. “Fox. You want to make love?”
“You bet the bank I do. With you. Now. If you’re willing.”
“I am willing. In theory.”
“I’m happy with theory,” he assured her, as he forged another trail of kisses down her throat.
“But I just don’t want you to expect…”
Finally he lifted his head. “Is this that deal from last time? That you don’t like sex?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like sex. I’m just not a very sexual person, so if you build up a whole bunch of expectations—especially since we barely know each other—”
“Phoebe. You know me better than anyone ever has—whether I want that to be true or not. I may not know you half as well. But how you’ve gotten through my defenses—my brick walls—tells me this is right. That something is totally right between us. Maybe crazy. But still right.” He hesitated. “I can’t promise you any kind of future.”
“I’m not asking for one.”
“It’s not you. It’s nothing I have against commitment. It’s…my life right now.”
“I’m not asking for a future,” she repeated.
He frowned suddenly, swiftly, as if he were determined to pursue a serious conversation on this. Only, it just wasn’t going to happen. Nothing less than a tornado was likely to dim the bright, fierce light in his eyes—the need—not at this moment. “So. You’re just not a sexual person,” he said in a soft patient tone, as if he were talking a climber down from a perilously tall cliff.
“I’m not.” At least, she was determined not to be. For him.
“Okay. I’ll tell you what. Anything I do that doesn’t ring your chimes, sing out. Will that work?” When she didn’t immediately answer—it didn’t seem as if he were really expecting an answer—he dove straight for the gold. From those kisses he’d branded on her throat, he worked down, between her cushioned breasts, down into the dip of her navel, then up for the plateau of her white, smooth tummy.
His hands chased down her yoga pants as his tongue and lips continued the same inexorably wicked path. She had no time to tighten up, prepare, brace herself to freeze. She just couldn’t make it happen. The breath ached out of her lungs on a lonesome, hungry sigh. Her hands reached for him, needing to touch, to care, to share. To unite.
She tugged the rest of his jeans off as he stole her sanity and inflamed need inside her hotter than a devil fire. She desperately wanted Fox to think she was a good woman. A responsible woman whom he could respect, whom he could count on. He didn’t have to love her, but his regard, his respect, mattered more to her than she could even explain.…But this passion between them mattered, too.
She didn’t remember ever feeling a burning this hot before. Frustration clawed at her pulse, made her heartbeat go begging. The connection to him…there was just no way to explain, even to her own mind, why she felt so compellingly connected to him.…
But it was as if she understood his pain.
It was as if he understood hers.
They rolled off the carpet, back on. Rolled under the soft yellow pool of a lamp’s glow, then back in the shadows. It was a good thing she’d been living relatively frugally, because there wasn’t much furniture to collide with—still, she would have been more careful with him if he had just let her. For a man who needed no more bruises, he seemed singularly uninterested in anything but greedily sipping up every tactile sensation, every sound, every taste, every cry from her he could earn or cause.
You’d think the guy had just figured out what was worth living for.
She had fears. She had seriously sound fears and worries. But she simply had to give them up. When he loomed over her, her bare legs wrapped tightly around his waist, she could no more have denied him than stopped breathing. There was joy in his eyes. Intense frustration, need sharper than a knife—but joy, too. That life-shouting zest that only sharing with another could conceivably inspire.…
She took him in. Closed her eyes, lifted her mouth for his, lifted her hips for h
is and shimmied until he was seated inside her like in a tight, smooth glove. He let out a growl like a lion just freed after years in the zoo. She let out a murmur like a kitten thrilled with her own power.
For an instant they hovered, holding that moment when he was deep inside her and they were meeting each other’s eyes.
And then they flew. Both rocking to the same rhythm, beating to the same music, riding the same emotional mountain crest. Sweat gave a sheen to his skin, gilded hers. A phone rang somewhere. A car backfired. The refrigerator ice maker clattered a new round of ice cubes.
But not in their world. She held on, eyes squeezed tightly shut, feeling release pulse through her like a jolt of sweet, hot electricity. Feeling Fox pulse through her…like a jolt of love so hot, so sweet, that it sucked her in and under to a whole new emotional place.
And then she sank back. As he did. Both tried to remember how to breathe normally again.
Minutes ticked by.
She didn’t fall asleep, she didn’t think, yet it seemed when she opened her eyes, time must have passed, because there was a sweatshirt covering her and Fox was lying on his side, one arm anchoring his head, his other hand drifting through her hair. His eyes had lost that fierce hot intensity and instead simply looked moody dark and fathomless.
“I let the monsters out,” he said.
She glanced up, to note both puppies—with wet feet—had taken the best seat in the house while the humans were still on the floor. More moments passed while she absorbed a huge, crazy feeling of total well-being and simple happiness. It felt right, his being with her. Felt perfect, their making love together—like nothing in her life before.
“Hey, you,” he murmured, and nuzzled a kiss on her temple.
“Hey, you, back,” she whispered.
“Phoebe,” he said soberly, “I didn’t know that could happen.”
“Sex?”
“You’re laughing…but yeah. Sex. I really, really didn’t know if it would happen for me again in this life.”
She sobered, too, then touched his cheek. “What happened to you in the Middle East, Fox?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.”
He hesitated. “I lost me. Lost my belief in myself, my judgment, what I valued about myself. As a man.”
“Because of…?”
“It doesn’t matter why.” Again he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “What matters is that I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to make love again.”
She flushed from the toes up, on the inside. From the core of her heart, she’d wanted to help heal him. “I hate to tell you this, big guy, but you gave me signals more than once that your body parts were interested and functioning just fine.”
“A hard-on is one thing. Following through is another. And feeling—really feeling—is another.” His mind seemed to suddenly change directions, because he went still. “But it’s bugging me, Phoebe. That making love wasn’t exactly…fair.”
She swallowed. “We’re having a few regrets, are we?”
“This is the South, red. My mom didn’t raise any sons to take advantage of women.”
“You didn’t take advantage of me.”
“Yeah, I did.” Mop, as if figuring out the humans were finally, finally returning to real life, scooched over next to his bare hip and resumed the napping position. “I hadn’t had sex in a long time. You went totally to my head. That’s not an excuse. But it is what happened.”
“I invited what happened.”
“You didn’t invite getting involved with a guy whose head is screwed on backward. Who has no life, at least temporarily.”
“I knew you were on a recovery track, Fox. Nothing happened that I wasn’t allowing to happen.”
“That wouldn’t count worth beans with my mama, let me tell you.” He was joking, doing the Southern gentleman thing. But he’d stopped playing with her hair, stopped touching her. Stopped staying in touch with her. “You’ve got a right to more than I offered you, Red…but it’s not that easy for me to come through. At least not yet. I need to think—a ton—before even trying to talk more about this. For tonight…I’m going home.”
“Yes. I assumed you would.” She didn’t freeze inside. She’d never—once—assumed that he’d stay after making love with her. It was just sex they’d had. It wasn’t a relationship. It was what it was, and there was no hurt spiking its way into her heart.
“For the record, though…I’m going to try your recovery program.”
“Good. I think it’s worth trying. It’s all stuff that’s good for you.”
“It may be. You haven’t had a wrong idea about my state of health yet—even if you’ve been aggravating the hell out of me.”
“You’re awfully easy to aggravate, Fox.”
“Then how come other people can’t seem to do it? I know you won’t believe this, but everyone who knows me thinks I’m the most patient guy this side of the Atlantic.”
“You’ve fooled all of them?” she said with surprise, and made him grin. But not for long.
“I’ll do your program. But this is the deal. First, I’m going to pay you by the hour.” He mentioned a sum.
“I don’t need to be rolling in diamonds, slugger. This is what I charge—”
“I don’t care what you charge. That’s what I’m paying you. And another thing—”
“What?”
He motioned to the far archway, where the hall led down to the business part of house. “I’ll build your waterfall.”
“I don’t think you’re up for that kind of heavy work—”
“If I can’t, I can’t. But I’ll try. When my dad died, he left my mom financially secure enough, but she was still determined that we’d all know how to do things, not be dependent on others. So I know some plumbing and carpentry. Depending on how my body holds out, I can do the work. And that’ll be part of my payment to you. Money. But the waterfall, too.”
When he left, she found herself standing naked in the dark window, watching the lights of his vehicle pull out and then disappear into the night. All that extraordinary postsex euphoria and closeness seemed to vanish faster than a light switched off…and a sick feeling of fear replaced it.
Mop moaned next to her ankles, until Phoebe picked up the disgraceful whiner and cuddled him under her chin. Still, she stared out the dark window, thinking fiercely that she felt good about making love with Fox. She did. Totally good. Really. It was just…
Vague memories zipped through Phoebe’s mind, of her childhood. Her mother had been a hard-core earth mom and emotional hedonist. Her dad had adored those qualities in her and valued her in every way. It was so easy to grow up believing that sensuality was healthy and a wonderful part of being a woman. Her dad called her pure female, and meant it as the warmest of compliments.
And every media source in the universe taught a girl that men wanted a sensual woman. A hot, willing, uninhibited woman who freely expressed her sexuality was the ideal, right? Every man’s dream, right?
Wrong.
At her feet, Duster suddenly yipped, clearly miffed that Mop was being held and she was being ignored, so Phoebe had to scoop her up and cuddle her, too…but that sick, wary feeling inside kept turning in her stomach. Men wanted a “hot” woman, all right. But only to sleep with, not to keep. Something in a man distrusted a woman who was too open with her sexuality. They feared she wouldn’t be faithful. Feared they couldn’t trust her. Something deep inside just didn’t respect a woman like that.
Phoebe had learned it all the hard way from Alan. The part that really bit was his accusing her of being a hedonist and sensualist—because she couldn’t defend those charges. She very definitely was those things. He’d made her feel so dirty that she’d started to think of herself the same way…until she switched her career from PT to massage work with babies.
She hadn’t thought of Alan in months…until Fox entered her life. She knew the men were completely unalike. But she still fear
ed ever falling for someone again who didn’t, or couldn’t, completely respect her.
Abruptly she turned around and aimed for the back door so she could let the pups out one last time before bed. The cool draft of air on her bare skin made her shiver, helped her face more reality.
She refused to regret making love with him. Helping Fox regain his life really mattered to her—no matter what she had to do, no matter what the emotional cost to herself. She just had to remember how this night had ended.
He hadn’t wanted to stay all night with her after making love.
And he’d pretty damn violently been insistent on paying her—hugely—for her services.
She got it. If she could heal his wounded soul, she wanted to. She just couldn’t kid herself that he valued her as more than the hired help. For a few hours, there, she’d felt such an extraordinary connection to him.… She’d felt like a soft, fragile rose, petals opening inside her that had been sealed shut for so long…but she knew better. Really.
To Fox she was a masseuse. As long as she guarded her heart from wanting to be more in his life, there was no problem.
And she wasn’t about to forget that again.
Seven
I n a single week, nature had blown off winter and poured in spring. Bright-yellow azaleas bloomed everywhere. The sun shone through sassy-green fresh leaves. Sleepy, sneaky breezes teased the senses.
The earth and grass smelled pungent, as if every spore and root under the surface was having sex and about to burst into life.
Except for him, Fox thought glumly.
Just because he’d had heart-destroying sex with Phoebe once, of course, was no reason to assume they’d have it again. There were compelling reasons why they shouldn’t, besides. Only…
Only, he wanted to have sex with her.
Immediately. Regularly. Preferably on the hour. For several weeks nonstop.
Right or wrong had nothing to do with it. His hormones only understood that issues of values were inconsequential. Having had her, he wanted more. He wanted. Her. No one else. Nothing else. And his hormones kept beating that same drum, day after day after day.
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