by Jess Dee
“You know the whole story. You’ve known all along.”
“Not everything. I think Lexi gave me a ‘watered-down’ version.”
He rolled his eyes. “Funny.”
“Okay, she may have ‘slipped’ in a few extra details.”
“Yeah, yeah. Very cute”
“Aw, what’s the matter? Is this conversation driving you ‘batty’?”
“Lady, your sense of humor gets worse everyday.”
A witty retort flew to her mouth just as the phone rang and she experienced a sudden stab of guilt. Lexi. “Oh, bugger, it’s your sister. She said she’d phone to see how you were doing. Listen…don’t tell her I told you she told me. She begged me not to. She’ll kill me. In fact, don’t answer that. I will. I’ll tell her you told me. Yeah. That’ll work. I’ll just tell her you told me the whole story.”
She grabbed the phone, keeping one eye on Daniel’s now bemused face. “Hello?”
It wasn’t Lexi. The voice on the other side of line was male and unfamiliar. She handed the phone over to Daniel. “It’s for you,” she said in a small voice, completely embarrassed. “Why don’t I just get that water while you talk?”
She hightailed it to the kitchen and grabbed some glasses and plates. Okay, she admitted to herself, she was useless at keeping secrets. But at least Daniel seemed a little less tense. She took some water and a soft drink from the fridge and walked back to the lounge. By the time Daniel hung up the phone, she was eating her second piece of sushi.
“Nice of you to wait.” Daniel hobbled to the couch.
“Yeah, it was also nice of me to get the food in the first place. And organize drinks and plates. And come and visit a sick friend.”
He grinned. “You’re right. It was nice of you. Thanks. Look, I’m sorry I was in such a bad mood. It’s my sister I’m irritated with, not you. You were here and she wasn’t, so I took it out on you. I apologize.”
“That’s okay.” She smiled. “I quite enjoyed your misery. How are you feeling now?”
“Not bad, I guess. My shoulder’s quite stiff though.”
“Your shoulder? Lexi said she barely touched you when she took a swing at you.”
“She was just relieved she didn’t connect the bat with my head. D’ya want to see the bruise?”
Without waiting for an answer, he whipped off his shirt and dropped onto the couch next to her. He twisted around so she could inspect his shoulder. And what a shoulder it was. Broad and smooth and muscular.
Amy’s mouth dried and the sushi she was chewing turned to sawdust. She swallowed the now-tasteless lump. Before she could help herself, her hand skimmed over his shoulder, relishing its warm texture and contained strength. Her eyes closed involuntarily. A month. She hadn’t touched him in a month. An electric fence between them couldn’t have stopped her from reaching out now.
“Can you see the bruise?”
Her eyes flew open. “Um…well, er…” She stared at his shoulder in surprise. “To be truthful, no. I can’t see a thing.” It wasn’t a lie. Apart from the tempting flesh she had a hard time not nibbling, she could see neither mark nor blemish.
“What do you mean? Maybe you’re looking in the wrong place. Here, let me show you.” He reached his good arm round and grabbed her hand, pressing her palm down on the curve where his neck met his shoulder.
As her hand closed over his smooth skin again, she almost groaned in pleasure.
“Yeah. Just there,” he directed. “Don’t push too hard. It’s a little tender.” He pulled his arm away, leaving her hand to cradle his neck.
She ran her palm over his hot flesh, sliding it along with a feather-soft touch. Lord, he felt wonderful. How would he taste? She leaned her head in and opened her mouth.
An inch before her tongue made contact, he asked, “Can you see the bruise yet?”
She jerked her head away so fast she whacked it on the back of the sofa. God knows how she didn’t get whiplash in the process.
He twisted around. “What’s going on back there?”
“Uh…nothing?” Well, that was awkward. “Sorry, I still can’t see anything.” Please, please, please, don’t ask anything else.
He didn’t. “That’s odd. It’s so sore it’s throbbing.”
That was something she could identify with. She throbbed too. With awareness. So aware of him it hurt. She ached to touch him again, to run her hands over his body, face, lips. Kiss him. Dear Lord, she wanted to kiss him. So bad.
Crap.
All her well-laid plans to just be friends and here she sat, quietly simmering with desire. “Tell you what.” She squirmed. Was that really her voice? That breathless whisper? “Why don’t you pass over those peas and let me put them on the tender area. The ice should help with the bruising.” If she could just get her hands on the packet, she could rub it over her neck and get her body temperature down below boiling point.
He just had to foil her brilliant plan. “Actually, Lexi stopped by a pharmacy to get some anti-inflammatory cream for my knee. Perhaps you could rub some into my neck?”
“Sure. Where is it?”
“In the packet next to the TV.” He pointed to a white paper bag.
She retrieved the bag and pulled out a small tube, squeezing a blob of cold gel onto her fingers. Quietly reluctant, she sat down behind him again and pondered the wisdom of what she was about to do. Could she work her hands over the muscles in his shoulders and stop there? She seriously doubted it. There were other muscles she wanted to get her hands on but knew she shouldn’t. Couldn’t.
Bugger. How could she back out now without him seeing straight through her? Knowing the exact reason for her cowardice? The best way to keep their friendship on track was to just be friends. Friends helped each other out. It didn’t go beyond the call of duty to massage gel into a friend’s injured shoulder, did it? Even if it was the most unbelievably sexy shoulder ever created.
She rubbed the gel between her hands to warm it up before turning her attention to his invisible bruise. “Here?” She touched his neck lightly.
Oh boy. This is a bad idea. A very bad idea. Couldn’t he just rub it in himself?
At least the medicinal smell reduced the temptation to take a bite of him.
“A little lower…just there.”
She gently massaged his neck and shoulder, trying her damnedest not to relish the feel of his skin as she moved. Velvet-covered steel. She kneaded the gel into his knotted muscles, resisting the urge to follow the sinewy line down his back and onto his buttocks. The hard curve of his ass was just visible beneath his low-slung shorts. Visions raced through her mind of her massaging him there, rubbing and caressing before moving her hand around his hips until she found his cock.
She squeezed her hands into fists as she felt a tug of desire deep within. Shit, she shouldn’t feel this way. Not now, not when they’d come so far. They were really, truly and honestly just friends again.
So why had her nipples tightened into little buds? Why was she so aroused—?
“Ouch!” Daniel’s wince of pain brought her crashing back to reality. Her fist was clenched around his shoulder.
“Oh…sorry!” She stared at her hand, willing it to relax. “I was, um…distracted. Forgive me?”
“That’s okay.” His voice sounded strained.
Christ, he felt it too.
This massage was so over.
She gave a last gentle squeeze then stood up and raced to the bathroom. To wash her hands and throw some cold water over her face.
“Would you like some dinner now?” she asked when she returned. “You must be starving.” She needed to keep busy or she’d just head straight back to the couch and resume the massage. If she did that, there was no way she’d just stick to his neck and shoulder.
“In a minute.” Daniel turned on the couch until he faced her. He rolled his shoulders, testing for stiffness. Amy’s eyes glued to the shift of muscles as they rippled beneath his skin. When he stretched, the sinuous
movement pushed her restraint to the limit.
As he watched her the blue of his eyes turned a dark gray. “You have very effective hands, Morgan. I don’t know what you did, but I’m not so…” He gave a wry smile. “My shoulder’s not so stiff anymore.”
How was she supposed to respond to that? Offer to take care of other stiff parts of his anatomy?
No!
She used her effective hands to pile some sushi on a plate and passed it to him, hoping he didn’t notice the tremor in her grip. “Eat.”
He watched her with a knowing smile but wordlessly accepted the dish, setting it down on the arm of the couch. Before she could pull her hand away, he caught it and turned it around, studying it, stroking it.
“Magic hands.” His soft voice reverberated through her jittery belly. He held her hand, palm up, in his and ran his thumb seductively over it, using just the right amount of pressure to send tingles racing up her spine. The subtle gesture both relaxed and aroused her. Her arm went limp.
The air between them was supercharged.
He looked at her with dark, hooded eyes and Amy had to remind herself to breathe.
Friends. Friends, friends, friends, friends, friends.
With all the force she could muster, which was almost none, she pulled her hand away.
“Eat,” she commanded in a whisper.
Daniel did as he was told. He lifted a piece of sushi to his open mouth and closed his lips around the rice. She’d eaten sushi with Daniel a hundred times before. Why was the very action of his chewing and swallowing now the most erotic thing she’d ever seen? Why the sudden urge to lie down, remove her shirt, put the remaining sushi on her stomach and let him eat it directly off her? Then encourage him to lick off the soy sauce?
She was staring. Gaping more like it.
Talk. Say something—anything. “You forgot the wasabi.” Her voice trembled.
He eyed her lazily. “Sweetheart, I am so hot right now, a little wasabi would not make one jot of difference.”
She swallowed convulsively. “Don’t, Danny. You promised,” she whispered. “We can’t go there. We can’t do this.”
“We’re adults. We can go wherever we want.”
“Not together. Not us.”
Silence filled the room. She stared at him, willing him not to take it any further and at the same time, wishing he would.
After an eternity, Daniel seemed to relax a little and a glint entered his eyes. “All right, Amy.” Her name rolled off his lips, like a kiss. “We won’t go there.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. Or was it regret? “Thank you.”
He winked at her and ate another piece of sushi.
Sizzle.
“Can I just ask one more favor?” He flashed his devilish grin.
Amy felt her guard go up again. “What is it?”
“It’s my knee.” His dimple played mischievously on his cheek. “It’s starting to burn. I think it’s beginning to swell. The pressure’s radiating up my thigh.”
She glanced at his leg. He was so not talking about his knee. It looked about as bruised and swollen as his unblemished shoulder.
“Morgan…” Daniel smiled impishly. “You did such a great job with my shoulder. Would it be too much to ask you to massage my leg as well?”
Chapter Eight
She would have given just about anything to massage his leg and Amy knew how she would’ve massaged it too. First, she’d push him back on the couch and bend his leg. Second, she’d climb on and straddle his knee between her thighs. Third, she’d settle back down and apply a tiny amount of pressure so that every time she moved, she would connect ever so erotically with his knee. Then finally, she’d gyrate, rubbing the muscles around his knee. Hell, she’d throw her life and soul into working that knee. She’d massage it so damn well he’d forget it was even injured in the first place.
Oh, for God’s sake. She was fantasizing about humping his knee. Things had degraded beyond the point of decency. There was no way she was going to massage him again. Not his shoulder, not his knee nor any other part of his anatomy.
There was a better way. It involved Daniel taking off all his clothes.
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ve come up with another plan. Give me a few minutes to prepare.” With that, she headed to the bathroom.
There was something incredibly intimate about drawing a bath for him. As she ran her hands through the heated water, she couldn’t help but imagine Daniel lying here, his head resting against one edge of the bath, his feet stretched out against the other end. Visions of steam as it swirled around his chest and face raised her body temperature. It spiked even higher when she saw his cock float just above his balls. A moan escaped her throat and echoed throughout the bathroom at the vivid vision.
It was a good thing she closed the door. The last thing she needed was for him to hear her fantasize about him. She turned off the taps, walked to the sink and threw a little more cold water over her face and chest. Better. Much better.
Composed and body temperature lowered, she went back to Daniel.
“My mother always claimed a bath’s the perfect place to soak away your aches and pains.” She offered him a hand to help him up. “I want you to go and climb in. The water’s hot and I’ve turned down the lights. I guarantee by the time you get out of that bathroom, you’ll feel like a new man.”
The question was, how would she feel, knowing he lay meters away from her, submerged in steamy water, naked as the day he was born?
Just fine. Just bloody fine, thank you.
“Thanks, Morgan, that’s pretty decent of you.” Daniel limped towards the bathroom but stopped before he went in. “Just one question.”
“What?”
His smile revealed an evil flash of dimple. “If I have trouble washing all those difficult-to-reach places, will you come and help me?”
Choosing to ignore him, she switched on the TV, sat down and spent the next twenty minutes obsessing about which places would be difficult for him to reach, and how she would use the soap to make sure she got them really clean.
Fortunately the phone rang, interfering with her increasing obsession. This time it was Lexi and Amy assured her Daniel was just fine—his ego more bruised than his body.
When she hung up, she heard Daniel ask, “Who was that?”
“Your sister.” She turned around. “She wanted—” Her tongue hit the floor, making intelligible speech pretty much impossible.
He stood before her wearing nothing but a white towel. It was wrapped low around his hips, the color accentuating his tanned skin. Below it, beads of water clung to the golden hairs curling on his long, muscular legs.
Water ran in tiny rivulets from his shoulders down his chest. Mesmerized, she watched a drop trickle over his nipple and slide down his hard, flat stomach only to disappear into the towel. Warm heat hummed in her belly and she repressed the urge to quench her sudden thirst by catching one of those droplets with her tongue.
God. He looked good enough to eat.
Desire shot through her. She wanted him. Wanted to run her hands over his wet torso, rip the towel from around his waist and devour him in all his naked, very male glory.
“Like what you see?”
“Huh?” She jerked her gaze up to meet Daniel’s and saw amusement dancing in his eyes.
“Just asking if you like what you see.”
Shit! She was ogling him and he had busted her.
What was she supposed to say? She loved what she saw? So much so she was almost as wet as he was? Not likely.
“I was looking to see if your, um…bruises were more visible than earlier.” To reinforce her point, she lowered her gaze to his knees. The only problem was that her downward gaze snagged on the towel. Was it just her imagination or was there a bulge there? Did he have an erection, or was it just the way his towel hung against his hips?
“Are they?”
It certainly looked like an erection to her. “Are they what?�
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“More visible now?”
“Huh?” It was most definitely an erection. A substantial one at that, given the way the towel just moved.
“The bruises, Morgan, can you see them now?”
“What bruises?” He was hard. That meant he was aroused. And if she was aroused and he was aroused, then—
She heard him chuckle. “A little distracted, are we?”
Bruises. Damn, they were talking about his bruises. Focus. She looked him dead in the eye and lied. “Not distracted, no. Just trying to make a point. I can’t see any bruising.” Well, at least that part was true. “Not on your shoulder or your knee. I’m sorry.” She shrugged. “They’re just not there.”
He said nothing, raising his eyebrow instead. Her gaze hadn’t taken in either knee or shoulder. The lift of his brow told her he knew exactly what she was thinking. But how could he not? Her tongue was still plastered to the floor. “You gonna stand there dripping all over the carpet? Or are you going to get dressed?”
“That depends.” He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get his clothes on.
“On what?”
“On you.”
“On me?”
“Yes. On you. Do you want me to get dressed?”
Hell, no! “What kind of a question is that?”
“A logical one. I saw you watching me. You just don’t seem particularly eager for me to put my clothes on. In fact—” again with the infuriating dimple, “—you seem to have developed a certain affinity for my towel.”
It wasn’t the damn towel she had an affinity for. If he could just lose the towel, she’d be happy.
No. She wouldn’t.
“Yeah, Dan. What can I say? I’ve fallen for the towel. I’ve always been a sucker for a good towel.”
Daniel looked surprised. “You have? Well, I tell you what. I’m a nice guy and I’d hate to get in the way of you getting what you want. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m gonna go get dressed and I’m gonna leave you with my towel so the two of you can have a few minutes alone to get acquainted.”
Ever so casually, he pulled the terry cloth from around his waist and handed it to a dumbfounded Amy.