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  Peggy’s mouth went dry as her gaze flew automatically to a dusky crevice exposed by the movement, and she jerked the sheet over him before her brain could even process what she’d seen. Dark curls and thickness. He was well-endowed in the diameter department, that was certain.

  She stood next to him and looked down at him as he lay prone, memorizing the little details of his human terrain. The swells and valleys, the faint creases in his neck, his perfectly formed nose and lips. His eyebrows grew a bit wild, which only added to his manly appeal.

  He raised an arm a little as if he wanted to curve it around her, but then stopped. If he hadn’t, then nothing further would have happened between them.

  But he did stop, seeming to remind himself that it was she who’d do the touching; that anything else was inappropriate and out of the question. He flattened his hand on the sheet and waited.

  Peggy scooped massage cream out of a jar and warmed it in her hands before putting them on his shoulders and applying it in effleurage, the term for the gentle stroking that initiated a body treatment.

  Troy closed his eyes briefly and sucked in a breath. Then he opened them and stared into hers. Her hands stopped without her even realizing it. Abruptly she began again.

  She wanted Troy to touch her. She’d never, ever wanted a client to do that. But he was different. His skin was hot beneath her fingers, his breathing as shallow and quick as her own.

  No matter how she tried to tell herself that this massage was like any other, nothing personal, just business—it was a lie. She poured herself into this treatment as if she were making love to him, slowly, thoroughly and deeply.

  She rubbed oil into each of his arms, silently stunned at the hardness of the muscle, the ropiness of the veins that stood out in clear relief against them. Steroids? She still wondered. Or just an intense daily workout for years upon years of playing football, basically from the time he could walk?

  He wasn’t puffy and bulky the way Eddie had been, especially toward the end when she’d left. Troy was hard and solid but streamlined. He looked like a man of endurance, patience and intensity.

  How could just a single arm turn her on like this? But Peggy felt her breasts grow heavy and insistent against the cups of her bra. A trickle of perspiration ran down the small of her back, even though it wasn’t hot in the room.

  She reached Troy’s wrist and then his hand, working the oil into his palm and wrapping her hand around each of his fingers in a warm, pulsing cocoon. She dipped into the valleys between his fingers, too, and the contact between them grew more intimate without a word or a move on his part.

  It was just that she could sense his response, long before he curved his hand around hers and then interwove his fingers with her own, riveting her with his eyes while he did so.

  Peggy froze, and after a moment he slipped his hand from hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to do that. It just…came naturally.”

  She nodded without speaking and moved to the other arm, smoothing the oil down it in one long motion. His skin glistened with it under the light, glowing like temptation itself. She traced one of his visible veins from elbow to wrist and tried to break the mood with conversation.

  “You work out a lot.” She said it as a fact, not a question.

  He nodded, then reached up and laid a finger across her lips, whisper-soft.

  She could have gotten angry—after all, who was he to give her orders, even if they were nonverbal? But she understood perfectly, and when he traced her bottom lip with that same finger, she felt the sensation at her core.

  Slowly, not believing she was doing it, she took his index finger into her mouth and sucked the tip of it while he exhaled, his eyes riveted to the sight.

  Mind, body, spirit. Impulse control.

  But she knew sleeping with this man was inevitable. Her body didn’t give a rip about her mind or her spirit right now—it had taken over. To hell with impulse control!

  She moved her hands to his chest and lightly rubbed her thumbs over his nipples while his pupils widened in shock. She swept her hands over him, raking over his rib cage and following the indentations of muscle at his abdomen. She spread her fingers over his lower belly, diving slightly under the sheet and tickling the strip of hair that led down, down, down.

  Troy tensed, pulled his finger from her mouth and clenched his own hands into fists. He waited to see what she would do, and she waited to see what he would do.

  He was fully erect now, straining at the sheet. She struggled with the ethics of the situation. But hadn’t she already thrown ethics to the winds?

  Peggy closed her eyes and tried to resist this particular impulse of hers. It was dangerous and it was a form of self-betrayal.

  But Hot Sex Personified lay on her massage table in front of her, ready, willing and clearly able. And she hadn’t had any in so long. Instead, she’d had a dysfunctional relationship with a dysfunctional man, and she still wasn’t sure why she’d stayed in it.

  When she opened her eyes, Troy’s gaze burned into hers, hot and amused and challenging on the most primal level. Do me, it said. I’ll make you scream.

  She was wet, and he knew it, and she knew he knew it.

  She grasped the sheet, the cool white cotton against her heated skin. Should she remove it…or not?

  6

  HAD SHE LOST her mind? Peggy dropped the sheet as if it were scalding and backed away. “No,” she said out loud. “I cannot be doing this, and especially not here.”

  On the table, Troy closed his eyes. “Okay. I can respect that,” he said, then grinned. “But I sure don’t have to like it.”

  She stared at him with something like despair. “Do you have to be so reasonable and calm? Why can’t you be a total jerk and call me a cock tease or something? Give me an excuse to kick you out of here?”

  Troy sat up again, propping himself up on his elbows, and smiled at her. “Do you want me to leave, Peggy?”

  She swallowed. “No.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “No.”

  He laughed and swung his legs over the side of the table again, dangling them with his knees apart. Thank God the sheet was still in place. “What do you want? C’mere, babe.”

  She shouldn’t have gone anywhere near him. But his eyes drew her, moth to flame. He grasped her hands and pulled her to within six inches of his chest, so that she stood intimately between his knees. They touched her hips.

  She could smell the faint musk of his skin, see every bit of stubble on his face, the slight circles under his eyes and the laugh lines at the outside corners. He had heavy, lazy lids and lashes any woman would kill for. His jaw stretched wide and stubborn, his nose curved, slightly Roman, and his lips…God, those lips. They were parting, tilting and coming toward hers.

  They took her mouth gently but firmly, not asking permission. He poured his desire into her and sought hers, licking it out from between her teeth and nipping it out of her lower lip. He sucked on her desire, pulling it from her until she gasped and tried to snatch it back, hide it again in all her secret places.

  They wrestled over her attraction to him as if it were a live thing, but he finally took it hostage and she was forced to admit defeat—for the time being.

  Satisfied, he relinquished her mouth, took her face between his big hands and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “It’s gonna be okay, Peggy. It really is. Better than okay.”

  It was his kindness, his reassurance, his understanding that weakened her resolve again. He turned her hesitation into something charming instead of irritating and embraced it.

  When he took her mouth again, the room seemed to drop away and she melted into him, conscious of nothing but his tongue stroking hers; his hands warm on her scalp, sifting through her hair; and the press of her breasts against his naked chest.

  Soon his hands left her hair and he parted her lab coat, spanned her waist and then moved up to cup her breasts. The heat of him burn
ed through her shirt and bra. She wanted desperately to feel his hands on her bare skin, and strained against them.

  Troy tugged her blouse out of the waistband of her skirt and unbuttoned it, making a guttural noise of satisfaction when he discovered that she wore a front-clasp bra underneath. He made quick work of this, too, and her breasts were suddenly bare to his gaze, his hands and his mouth.

  He held them with something close to reverence, rubbing his thumbs lightly over her nipples, and she almost came on the spot when he licked one and then finally, gloriously, fastened his mouth to it. She felt the pull of response at her sex, deep in her uterus and even in her veins as he triggered a flood of sensation with the one simple act.

  Soon he’d moved to her other breast, and he squeezed them together, taking both peaks into his mouth. Her legs turned to rubber.

  He pulled her against him so that she was caught between his powerful thighs and could feel his desire, pressing like a rock against her diaphragm. A series of sexual flashes tore through her, rogue electricity looking for an outlet.

  Troy groaned softly, cupped her breasts in his palms and traced the inner rim of her ear with his tongue. His breath warmed and titillated the hundreds of tiny nerve endings there and seduced her utterly. She was his for the taking, and when he issued a command in the guise of a request, she obeyed.

  “Lock the door, Peggy.”

  She stumbled back from him, her hair in her face. With one hand, he caught her upper arms to help her balance. With the other he tenderly tucked the renegade strands behind her ears. “You are so gorgeous.”

  She swallowed, caught her upper lip between her teeth, and somehow the door loomed in front of her without her being conscious of taking a single step. She saw her fingers turn the lock as if they were somebody else’s, and then she was back against him.

  Troy was standing now, naked and proudly, hugely erect. The sheet lay in disarray on the floor and he stepped on it as he turned her, slid his hands under her skirt. She felt his hands on her bare bottom, fingers sliding under the elastic of her panties, exploring her secret crevices. He brushed, featherlight, against her sex and she gasped for oxygen against his seeking mouth, hoping she hadn’t robbed him of his breath.

  He bit her lower lip gently and rucked her skirt up around her waist. Then he lifted her and set her down on her own massage table, legs spread to accommodate him. He snugged his heavy cock against her damp panties.

  She pushed against it, feeling it twitch with urgency as Troy kissed her again, flattening her breasts against his naked chest.

  He withdrew from her mouth and placed his hands on her thighs, thumbs inward. He flicked them up and down over her mons and drew teasing circles with one, then the other, around her clitoris.

  Her breath coming in shallow gasps, she convulsed helplessly when he took a nipple into his mouth, too. Just as she quieted, he ripped her panties in two and slid the head of his penis against her. She came again instantly with glad shock, her eyes flying open as he drove deep into her. She clung to his shoulders for dear life, impaled, and his eyes seemed to pour into hers, drowning any trace of resistance she might have had left.

  For a long moment he was content to simply rest that way, buried to the hilt in her. Then he moved, slowly and languorously pulling out, sliding in the slick honey of pleasure.

  Troy’s eyes went blind for a moment and then focused again on hers. “Condom,” he groaned.

  She didn’t want him to go anywhere, do anything but what he was doing to her at that moment, but logic and responsibility prevailed. She swallowed and nodded. “I don’t have one. Do you?”

  He nodded, moving within her again. Then he kissed her and reluctantly pulled out. “Anybody in the locker room may be in for a rude shock,” he said, his voice rough. Then he grabbed the spa robe off the hook on the back of the door and slung it around his body. He went off in pursuit of what they needed.

  Peggy pulled the edges of her lab coat together and huddled on the massage table in the full knowledge that she’d lost her mind. What in the hell was she doing, having sex with a client on the job?

  Troy didn’t give her much time to think about it, though. He returned almost instantly. Seeing the look on her face and reading her body language easily, he took her clenched hands from her lap and kissed each white knuckle before unfolding them and giving her palms the same treatment.

  His tongue slicked along her lifeline and told her exactly what his intentions were: pleasure and pleasure alone, no embarrassment or regret allowed. She melted into the moment, didn’t resist when he spread the edges of her lab coat wide and slid her arms out of the sleeves, pushed her body back on the table and eased into the delta of her thighs once again.

  She stared up at his chest and a ripple of a coming climax spiraled through her just at the sight. There was something about his sheer masculinity that melted her. She felt the pressure of his cock against her, seeking penetration. Shamelessly she lifted her bottom, spread her thighs until they ached and met the smooth, slick head of him. His blunt, thick penis sank into her and a streak of pleasure rippled through her to her midsection, eddying outward throughout her body.

  She welcomed the sensual invasion and moved with him as he slid in and out. He toyed with her nipples as he set the rhythm, and nothing had ever felt quite so good.

  A slow, liquid pressure built within her as she met him thrust for thrust, the root of him stimulating her outside while he stroked her inside as well. But what excited her most was his simple desire for her. She could read it in his touch and his gaze.

  Footsteps and voices traveled through the hallway outside and kicked her former anxiety into play again, but Troy just grinned, laid a finger on her lips and pushed deeper, cupping her bottom to brace her.

  “I’m gonna come, babe,” he whispered. “It feels too good and I can’t hold on anymore….”

  She grabbed his butt and wrapped her legs around him until she could cross her ankles, holding on to him as if she’d never let go. A glow began to surface from some primal place within her, and it grew brighter and brighter.

  Perhaps it was the possibility of discovery that sent them both flying over the precipice at the same moment. Troy opened his mouth in a silent curse, arched his back and impaled her in one sudden motion. She exploded with a cry that he smothered with his lips and echoed with a groan. They lay like that for a long moment, their hearts beating wildly against each other.

  Oddly enough, it was the supposedly calming music that brought Peggy’s anxiety back in a wave.

  She felt pinned by his big body, and put her hands against his chest as if to push him off. He seemed to note the change in her mood immediately, and pulled out, his gaze assessing her face.

  He picked up the sheet from the floor and wrapped it around his waist as she struggled up and pulled her skirt down again. She slid off the table, and an awkward postcoital moment ensued as she snapped her bra back together and buttoned her blouse. What could she possibly say?

  Thank you, Troy, for the three orgasms?

  I’m really not this kind of girl?

  So, do I tip you thirty percent this time?

  She backed away from him, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. “Troy, I just want to say…I’m not a groupie. I’m not a bimbo.”

  “I know that,” he said, putting on the spa robe and tying the belt.

  “I shouldn’t have done what I just did. I’m at my place of employment.”

  He moved toward her, gathered her hair in his hands and kissed her nose, of all things. “Will you have dinner with me later?”

  Peggy froze. The sexual encounter was bad enough, but to actually follow up on it? Act as if this was all in a day’s work? She licked her swollen, thoroughly kissed lips. “I don’t date football players, not ever.”

  “Why not?”

  Her three reasons were years in the past, but she wouldn’t talk about them. Not to him, not to anybody. “I just don’t.”

  “That’s ri
diculous.” He crossed his arms over his chest and squinted down at her. “And a guy buying you dinner once doesn’t mean you’re dating him. Besides, as long as we’re splitting hairs, you should keep in mind that I’m no longer a football player.”

  She stared at the floor and then her shoes, which were scuffed on the toes.

  “Fine,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be dinner, just a drink. One. That’s it. If you still feel the same way after that, I’ll leave you alone.”

  She hesitated, then capitulated. “Okay.”

  “What time do you get off tonight?”

  “Ten-thirty, after my last appointment.”

  “I’ll pick you up then. I assume that you don’t want to finish our session at the moment, since you’re uncomfortable.”

  I want to finish it, all right. But not in any way that’s decent or professional. “At this point, there simply isn’t enough time—I have another appointment at 9:15. Do you mind rescheduling?”

  “I don’t care, as long as it’s you who does the massage.” And with a last kiss, Troy disappeared into the showers.

  LATER, AS PEGGY CLEANED UP after Pilar Morales’s seaweed wrap, she felt like a time bomb. A bomb in a too-tight bra, with no panties on. She’d buried the ripped ones in the trash long before Pilar had arrived.

  She still couldn’t quite believe that she’d allowed Troy Barrington to seduce her on the job! She could sterilize and disinfect the place to her heart’s content, but her actions didn’t change the facts.

  It’s been a year since Eddie, she told herself. I have a right to a normal libido, especially when a man who looks like Troy comes on to me. Any other woman would have done the same thing….

  But it didn’t square her conscience completely. She’d failed miserably at impulse control, yet again.

  Peg finished work by throwing the sheets and towels into the wash. She tossed in some soap and started the machine, which made a groaning, churning noise—exactly the way she felt inside. If only she had a rinse cycle to filter out her emotions and fears.