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Pressing the heels of her palms deep into his silken flesh, she began to move her hands, glad he couldn’t see her face. Wouldn’t he laugh himself silly to know that she was flushed with embarrassment?
It was distracting seeing him like this—wearing nothing but a pair of close-fitting black briefs. Catching sight of him and his billionaire buddies lounging around the pool during one of the few hot days last summer while she carried out a tray of drinks was not the same thing at all.
She thought how pale her hands looked against the olive hue of his skin and noticed that her fingers were trembling slightly as they moved over his warm flesh. But to her surprise her nerves soon left her once she got into some kind of rhythm. If she concentrated on the healing aspects of the task, it was easy to push away her uncomfortable thoughts. In a way, it was the opposite of working with pastry, which needed cool, quick movements. For this, her hands were warm and oily and her movements slow and deliberate. She pushed deep into his latissimus dorsi muscles and he gave a little groan.
‘Is that okay?’ she questioned nervously.
He gave a grunt and she wasn’t quite sure if he was agreeing with her or not.
‘I’m not hurting you, am I?’
Luis shook his head and shifted a little, the rough towel rubbing beneath his crotch, which was precisely where he did not want to focus his attention. Santo cielos! No, she was not hurting him—but he wondered if she was trying to torture him. Resting his cheek against his crossed arms, he closed his eyes, unable to decide whether this was heaven or hell. Or perhaps a mixture of both.
What the hell was happening here?
He could feel her hands moving further down his back, skating tantalisingly over the taut lines of his buttocks before alighting on the tops of his thighs. He swallowed as the minutes ticked by and suddenly he found himself lost in the sensations she was producing. If she was nervous, you would never have guessed it. Apart from that nervous flutter of her fingers at the beginning, she had taken to it as if she had been born to stroke at a man’s skin like this. Who would ever have thought that his mousey little housekeeper had the touch of an angel?
Yet she had been the model of brisk proficiency from the moment she’d greeted him, with nothing but a brief smile as he had lain face down on the bed. She certainly wasn’t flirting with him, which made him wonder what was making him feel so aroused. How could Carly—plain little Carly—manage to make him feel like this? Was it because she wasn’t flirting with him and he wasn’t used to that? For a moment he imagined her requesting briskly that he lift up his buttocks, so that she could slide her hands underneath him. He thought about her taking his rapidly growing hardness between her fingers and stroking him to a blessed and swift release.
His mouth dried.
‘No, you’re not hurting me,’ he said eventually, when he was certain his voice wouldn’t come out sounding like some kind of strangled groan.
She continued to work in silence. He could feel her fingers sinking deeper into his flesh and as the muscles began to loosen up beneath her touch he couldn’t seem to stop himself fantasising about her some more. He wondered what her breasts might look like if she were to remove that hideous overall she was wearing. An image of pale mounds tipped with rosy points swam into his mind with disturbing clarity. He pictured his tongue tracing a slow, wet circle around one puckered nub and he shifted his aroused body again in a vain bid to make himself comfortable.
The movement must have registered, for her hands stilled.
‘You’re sure I’m not hurting you?’
Against the lavender-scented doughnut of a pillow on which his cheek was resting, Luis shook his head. ‘No,’ he said huskily. ‘You have a very...natural touch. I can’t believe you haven’t done anything like this before.’
‘Mary was very helpful. She showed me exactly what to do. She said that if I pressed firmly on key parts of the body...like this...that it would be effective. And then last night I studied lots of technique and tips on my computer.’
His instinctive groan of satisfaction made his words come out as a muffled drawl. ‘You have nothing better to do on a Friday night than look up massage technique?’
There was a pause.
‘I like to do a job properly. And you’re paying me a very generous bonus to do this.’
Her emphasis on the financial made him feel comfortable about interrogating her, although it didn’t occur to him until afterwards to wonder why he should be interested in her social life. ‘So is there no irritable boyfriend wanting to know why your boss is demanding so much of your time?’
There was another pause, a slightly longer one this time. She seemed to choose her words carefully. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, no,’ she said. ‘But if I did, I don’t really think this job would be compatible with it. Not if it was a serious relationship.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because when you’re here the hours are long and erratic and because I’m living in someone else’s house and—’
‘Not why a live-in job isn’t compatible with a relationship,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘You wouldn’t need to be a genius to work that one out. No, I meant why don’t you have a boyfriend?’
Carly rubbed some more oil into the palms of her hands. It was difficult to come up with a reasonable answer to his question. Difficult to come up with anything which sounded sensible when her hands were in contact with his skin like this. If she hadn’t been feeling so disorientated by what was happening, she might have told him that her social life was none of his business. Or she might even have hinted that one dreadful experience had put her off men for ever. But she couldn’t really think of anything except how gorgeous he felt. She was being bombarded with powerful sensations and none of them were welcome—or expected.
All the blinds had been drawn and the semi-darkened room felt claustrophobic because the dimensions seemed to have shrunk. Candles were wafting out a subtle sandalwood scent and there was faint whale-like music coming from the sound system, just as Mary had suggested. She knew these small additions were intended to create a relaxed atmosphere and maybe it was working for Luis, but it certainly wasn’t working for her.
Because the unimaginable was happening. Instead of being frozen with fear, all she could feel was a slow-building pleasure whenever she touched him. She stared down at his olive-skinned body, because where else was she going to look? And even though he was wearing a pair of black briefs instead of those three terrifyingly small towels which had been covering him yesterday, they weren’t nearly as much of an advantage as they should have been. Because yes, they provided a necessary barrier of modesty—but they also emphasised the very masculine outlines of his body. They made the rocky globes of his buttocks look as if they’d been coated in liquorice, and liquorice had always been her favourite kind of sweet.
‘I’m not really interested in men,’ she said at last, her words making a mockery of her thoughts.
‘Ah. You prefer women?’
