Cash did a double-take when she looked up to see who had walked through the front door the next day. It was not Hadley Callahan.
‘Cash,’ Linc greeted her calmly. Too calmly. Something was going on.
‘Can I help you with something, Linc?’ she asked pointedly when he simply smiled confidently at her as though it made complete sense for him to be standing in the reception area.
‘I hope so,’ he said, coming over to lean one elbow on the counter. ‘I’m here for my appointment.’
‘Your app—’ Cash scanned the book in front of her quickly, as though she’d not have somehow seen Lincoln Callahan written there earlier.
‘Hadley booked it.’
‘She booked it for herself,’ Cash said tightly.
‘She must have forgotten to mention it was for me,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Funny that,’ Cash said sarcastically, before the realisation hit her that the appointment was for a massage. Uh-oh. This was not good.
‘Is there a problem?’ he asked innocently, holding her gaze with a silent challenge.
‘Not at all,’ Cash said, straightening her shoulders as she stood up and led the way through to the room she’d just set up. The candles flickered gently, and a delicate scent of coconut oil and lemongrass floated through the air. Suddenly, with Linc filling up the small room, the relaxing ambiance felt dangerously seductive.
‘Please take off your shirt and trousers and cover yourself with the towel, then lie face down on the table. I’ll be right back,’ she said, slipping out of the room and congratulating herself on sounding so normal, when inside she was a mess.
Linc let out a long breath as the door closed behind Cash and gave a low, self-reproaching chuckle. When Hadley had told him she’d booked him a massage, he’d thought she was crazy, but the more he’d thought about it, the harder it had been to convince himself that it was a bad idea. Having an opportunity to get Cash all alone … with oil? There had been pretty much nothing his head could come up with that would have overruled the rest of him. Now, though, faced with the fact he was about to lay pretty much naked on a table and have her hands running all over him, he wasn’t so sure this was a great idea.
With a fatalistic shake of his head, he pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his shoes, then unbuttoned his jeans, before climbing up on the table. Come on, Callahan, you can do this. Just focus on something that doesn’t involve being naked with the hottest woman you’ve seen in a long time, in a candlelit room with soft music playing.
The door opened and he clenched his jaw as parts of him began to stir in anticipation. For the love of God, you’re not fifteen-bloody-years old, he told himself with a measure of disgust. He could hear her moving quietly around the room preparing the things she’d need, but even though he could sense her every move, the moment she touched him, he almost jumped clear out of his skin.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘Just relax,’ she said, keeping one hand on his shoulder while he heard her reaching for something with the other, moments before he felt the sensation of warm oil and hands running across his skin. He bit back a moan. Jesus, this was going to be torture.
‘You’re very tense,’ she commented, and he wondered if he was imagining the note of amusement in her tone. ‘Seriously, you need to relax.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ he muttered.
She added some more oil and continued moving her hands over his back and shoulders, up to his neck. He couldn’t stop the groan that escaped, it felt so damn good.
‘I’m going to have to work out some of these knots,’ she said calmly. ‘You’ve got a lot of tension stored in your neck and shoulder area.’
‘Weddings are stressful,’ he said as he felt her fingers working the muscles between his neck and shoulder. He was glad he was face down because he was pretty sure his eyes were rolling back in his head as she skilfully manipulated the tightness in his muscles.
When she’d significantly warmed up the area, she began applying deeper, harder strokes and another groan broke free from his chest; however, this one was more pain than ecstasy.
‘Is that too hard?’ Cash asked.
‘No,’ his words came out sounding slurred. ‘It’s great. You’re good at this.’
‘I should be, I’ve been doing it long enough,’ she said dryly.
‘How long would that be?’
‘Since I was eighteen. Now stop talking. You’re supposed to relax. That’s what you’re paying for.’
He read the message loud and clear. This wasn’t foreplay—this was a job. It was an effective mood douser. She was doing this because she got paid to do it. A rush of annoyance followed the thought and even though he knew it was stupid, he felt somehow cheapened by it, which made him scoff at himself—cheapened? He was sounding like some teenage drama queen. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the irritation. He didn’t want to be a paying customer. Linc pushed himself up off the table and sat up, noticing the surprised look on her face.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I just remembered something I have to do,’ he said, sounding gruffer than he’d intended, throwing the towel aside and reaching for his trousers.
‘Are you sure?’
He felt bad about the uncertainty he heard in her voice, but he couldn’t risk a glance at her face or he’d feel like an even bigger idiot. ‘Yeah.’
‘Okay then, I’ll wait for you outside.’
If there’d been a window in the damn room he’d have climbed out that, but he knew he’d have to face her sometime. How could he tell her the reason he was acting like a spoilt brat was because he wanted her to want to massage him? She’d think he was nuts. Who was he kidding? He was nuts!
Cash stared at the closed door to the treatment room, trying to work out what had gone wrong. Had she somehow said something out loud? Oh God, she hoped not. She’d been drawing on every ounce of her professionalism to remain focused, despite the fact her fingers felt as though they were burning as they moved across his back and shoulders.
The door opened and she busied herself looking down at the appointment book as he approached the desk. ‘So I can reschedule you tomorrow, or let me know a day you’d prefer and I’ll tell you what times I have available.’
‘Ah, no … thanks. I don’t need to reschedule.’
‘Oh.’ What? No way was this because of any issue with her professionalism. Now she was just plain annoyed. What the hell did he mean he didn’t need to reschedule?
‘How much do I owe you for today?’ he asked, pulling out his wallet, and Cash noticed that his shoulders were as stiff as his tone.
‘Nothing,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I owe you for your time.’
‘You weren’t in there long enough to warrant an appointment.’
Linc frowned, finally looking at her. ‘Look, I’m sorry I wasted your time.’
‘Forget it. I’m sorry it wasn’t an enjoyable experience for you.’
‘Cash—’
‘Linc, I said forget it. I’ll just finish early today. You did me a favour.’
‘It wasn’t because I wasn’t enjoying it,’ he said.
‘Then what was it? And don’t say because you suddenly remembered something you had to do, cause I’m not buying that.’
He gave a low noise in his throat and ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s not y—’
‘You, it’s me? Yeah. Okay. Fine,’ Cash snapped, turning away but looking down in surprise as he reached out and took her arm.
They both seemed to freeze as Cash locked eyes with him. She didn’t realise she was holding her breath until he dropped his hand and she was able to breathe once more. He didn’t step away from her and she could smell a faint scent of some kind of masculine fragrance; deodorant or aftershave, she wasn’t sure which, but it went straight to her head.
‘Trust me, I want nothing more than to have your hands on me,’ he said, and his voice had a low gravelly quality that sent a stab of longing through her. ‘I’ve wanted it from the very first moment I laid eyes on you.’
He leaned in, the movement so slight she barely caught it, until suddenly she felt his warm breath against her cheek. The room was so quiet, all she could hear was the beating of her heart. Her breath caught, then came out in an uneven rush, making her feel light-headed. He smelled so good. She felt her body sway towards his, and before she could prepare herself, his head lowered and his lips were on hers.
She could feel the coarseness of his stubble as his mouth danced across her own. It was a slow, almost hesitant kiss, but the swell of need that it sparked inside her dulled the last of her commonsense and she slid her arms up around his neck, pulling the back of his head lower. If he’d had any thoughts of taking things slow, Cash had just ended them. To hell with safe and careful. She needed Linc and she needed him now. Ever since that first night they’d been circling around the attraction that flared between them. To hell with her bad-boy ban. She’d get back on track tomorrow. For now, she needed this—needed him. It felt like eons since she’d last felt the flame of desire touching her skin and setting her on fire. She wanted to feel alive again.
When he tried to pull back and slow it down, she pushed closer and tightened her fingers through the short hair at the base of his neck, inciting a low groan from him in surrender. There was no need to encourage him further, he took the cue and his kiss became deeper, rougher. His stubble rubbed the soft skin on her face, but the burn felt good. Still it wasn’t enough. She moved her hands from his neck down the front of his shirt and gathered the bottom edges in her hands, lifting them. Without breaking their kiss, Linc manoeuvred his arms from his shirt, pulling away only briefly to pull it over his head, before gathering her back against him.
His chest was wide and there was a hardness to his body—muscular but not sculptured like the men she usually met who owed their six-packs and impressive pecs to the gym. She ran her fingers from his waistband up the centre of his chest, and felt the soft hair there.
He was like a drug. The more she tasted of him, the more she wanted. This was madness—and yet it wasn’t. This was lust. Pure, unadulterated lust.
Cash squirmed her arms out of her work blouse, slipping it from her shoulders after working the buttons free of their holes, without breaking the kiss. Linc’s big hands spanned her waist, holding her firmly against him, the heat of his skin against hers sending a shiver through her body. She shimmied her work pants down her legs and stepped out, kicking them to one side along with her shoes.
Linc walked her slowly backwards, back into the room they’d just came out of, their mutual sighs and moans the only communication necessary. She heard him kick the door shut behind them, moments before she was lifted onto the edge of the bed.
For the briefest of moments Linc pulled his mouth from hers to allow his eyes to roam across her body, letting out a low, guttural curse before reclaiming her lips. Impatient for more, Cash’s hands went to the buttons of his jeans and unclasped them, smiling smugly beneath his kiss as she heard his rough intake of breath at the touch of her cool fingers against his hot skin.
Linc bit back another low groan. Every time she touched him his minimal grip on restraint was tested. She was so damn hot. He knew she had some curves, but seeing them in the flesh, so to speak, was better than anything his imaginative mind had mustered up in the nights he’d spent thinking about her.
He ran his hands up her rib cage and along her arms, wanting to take the time to read the delicately inscribed words written around their circumference, but he was too impatient to do so now. He moved one hand up to the back of her head and found the band that secured her dark hair, watching as it fell like a curtain across her shoulders.
He swore again. He couldn’t help it. She blew his mind, and she’d barely even touched him yet. God help him when she did. He liked that she wasn’t shying away from her near nakedness. It was such a turn-on when a woman was confident in her own body. As his gaze reached her face once more, he realised she’d been watching him, through those sexy, lowered eyes, but there was no sign of discomfort—in fact she seemed content to simply allow him to look his fill.
As tempting as it was to explore every tantalising inch of her body, now was not the time. With a knowing, sultry look that had his pulse skyrocketing, she reached behind her and unclasped her lacy black bra without breaking eye contact. It was So. Damn. Hot.
A tiny voice tried to get his attention but he ignored it. He didn’t want to think about what he was doing right now. He didn’t want to examine the fact she’d turned him away once before because he was apparently the wrong kind of man for her. Clearly at the moment he was the right kind, and he wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth. He’d deal with all the other stuff later. Right now, he had a woman he needed to satisfy, and he was not about to back down from the mission.