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“Your outer clothes,” he clarifies, his tone so measured that you’d think he were giving his accountant instructions on how best to screw over the government during tax season.
“Well… turn around, then,” I say to the glistening of his eyes.
Dammit, this man has the most piercingly intelligent eyes I’ve ever seen. If you told me he had x-ray vision and could see into your soul, I might just believe you.
“I’ve already seen your body at the pool. And I’m about to see it again. Up close.”
“I don’t care,” I snap, channeling my ungrateful little brat in the hopes of not melting into a puddle of raspberry jam before him. “I’m not performing some sordid striptease for you. Now turn around.Please.”
Amusement floats around his pale eyes for a moment until he turns around, allowing me to slide my shorts down my legs, followed by my strappy tie-dyed T-shirt, both of which I attempt to fold before giving up due to sudden untamable hand tremors and just general clumsiness, and place on the wicker table.
I take a cheeky moment to scan his frame from behind—muscular and long, and his back—broad, like an upside-down triangle. I saw his ludicrously dense body when he climbed out of the pool, the armor of him slick with water dripping down hard muscle which has clearly spent way too much time at the gym.
Now wearing nothing but my still-slightly damp black bralette and panties, I wrap the towel around me and climb onto the makeshift massage bed on which I watched the canopy of glistening and occasionally shooting stars last night with Fran and Rami, unaware that within twenty-four hours, one of Washington’s prominent bachelors would suggest being my own personal massage slave on it.
I get on all fours before lowering myself down onto my stomach, loosening the towel from around my front and making sure it covers my back and all the way down to the knees.
“Okay,” I say upon a deep breath in, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest and defeat the whole relaxation point of this. By the scrape of the bowl of oil along the wicker tabletop and the shift in weight on the thick cushion beneath me, I know that he’s sitting down next to me in the darkness, the only light being the faint tinge of moonlight, dyed red due to the drapes.
Without warning, his fingers reach for the bottom of the towel and slide it up to the top of my thighs. I feel relieved that he doesn’t expose my ass, but am suddenly hyperaware of my body and its imperfections, wondering whether hair has started to grow in from when I waxed my legs last week, or whether I have any bruises from falling over while attempting crow’s pose for the tenth time this week.
I mean, I shouldn’t care. All bodies are beautiful. That’s what I’ve always said… but being touched by something you usually see walking out of the sea in a cologne commercial will apparently make you self-conscious in a way you’re not used to.
I tilt my head, placing my clammy cheek on the top of my hand, as I suck in a sharp breath at the first unfamiliar touch of his palm on my leg.
His hand is so large that it envelops the entire back of my thigh, his fingers curving around the inside of my leg as he slides oil up and down so firmly that I swear I can feel this touch recalibrate every cell in my body.
As his warm hand makes it past the inner crook of my knee and down my calf, I close my eyes as knots begin to dissolve as if by the alchemy of his touch. He sweeps his hand back up, stopping at the top of my leg and gliding back down again, making my body undulate at the unfamiliar feeling of a man taking his time just to ease tension from my body.
His firm touch makes it to my ankle, but this time, he doesn’t go back up, instead bending my knee and taking my foot in his hand.
I flinch to move it, but he holds it firmly in place as I pray it’s still clean from the pool and the sole doesn’t look discolored from my flip-flops. I mean it shouldn’t; they’re clean… but I’ve never cared this damn much about how I look to a man.
I try to ignore how unimpressed I am with the kind of thought patterns I regularly gripe about society inflicting upon women as Grey runs both thumbs up and down the sides and the top of my feet very gently, tilting them from side to side as if to inspect them.
“What are you doing?” I ask as he tilts my foot in his hands.
“You have beautiful feet, Indigo,” he responds, gently running his fingertips along the sensitive sole of them.
And if a choir of angels hadn’t just gone falsetto in unison in my chest, I’d have enough voice to tell Mr. Everitt to cut it out. But that’ll have to wait, for the compliment makes me feel like I’ve just drunk a flute of the world’s best champagne, and the kneading of his fingers on my tired yoga-worn feet unravels the aching binds therein after hours of Sun Salutation poses I’ve pretzeled my way through this week.
“My nail polish is chipped,” I say, as if to excuse myself.
“It suits you,” he replies, running this thumbs up and down the tops of my toes. “And the next time you apologize for something about your perfect little body,” he growls, “I’ll pause the massage to give you a small taste of the discipline I have planned for you.”
My eyes open wide as he works my foot, and I wonder what “discipline” means to a man bearing that lethal combination of being highly emotionally unavailable while simultaneously one of the hottest pieces of ass to ever grace the East Coast… and why, after everything I went through with my ex, I’m even curious to know.
He places my foot down and shifts his weight to between my feet at the end of the bed, taking hold of my other foot and beginning to tend to it. It feels tiny as he holds it in his giant hands, gently caressing it at first before working it with his thumbs more persistently, the sole, the ball, the front pad, even my toes, as if kneading away the tension I’ve stored there since running away that first time my ex’s degenerate cousin approached me in a car after I left him those months back. I feel like I’ve been running ever since, even in the weeks he went silent and I’d hoped it was over.
I relish the sensation until Grey shifts again, kneeling between my lower legs and grabbing both ankles from the top.
I whimper without meaning to as he slowly parts my thighs, gliding his warm palms up my leg, an inch per second, the flesh melting beneath his touch like butter under a warm knife. His hands move up the inner seam of both thighs at the same time, and I swear to God, despite him stopping inches from the gusset of my panties, now thoroughly drenched not only from the swimming pool but from the arousal he’s inflicting upon me, the anticipation of his fingertips suddenly makes me want to beg…
His fingertips skim the flesh below my ass cheeks and he pauses there, a low sound rasping in his throat, before he finally lifts his weight, straddling one of my legs and then the other, pushing mine together and sitting his weight down onto the back of my thighs. He pulls the towel off me swiftly and throws it onto a chair nearby as my body seizes again and I pivot my neck to look up at him.
Before I can find his eyes, he grabs my ponytail, pulling my hair back and leaning forwards.
I can’t help but whimper as his lips meet my ear.
