I could do this. It was my job. I’d knock on the door, go inside, and see just another client laying on the table. I’d seen muscles before, and a pretty face didn’t mean shit.
Right.
Time to get started.
I took another breath and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
Damn. Just his voice was enough to get my stomach twisting up in knots. Hopefully, he was the kind of client who liked silence.
I opened the door and entered the room, relieved to find Alec lying as instructed, face down on a u-shaped face cradle and with a towel over his butt. Broad shoulders, good skin. Okay, I could handle this.
It was the little divots at his lower back that caught my eye. I didn’t know why. Plenty of people had them. They were informally called “dimples of Venus” in the medical community. Mai had told me that, laughing the entire time. I’d rolled my eyes because they were as impersonal as someone’s knees. Except there was just something alluring about Alec’s dimples. I had the strangest urge to dip my thumbs in them.
Dammit.
Now that I’d started thinking that way, it was impossible to stop.
His upper back was toned, while his waist was trim. Both his arms and legs were perfect, with just the right amount of muscle definition. He looked great in his suit, but the clothes had hidden all that beautiful, sculpted musculature. Even his glutes looked appealing despite the towel covering them.
Double damn.
Then there was the tattoo on his upper back. A large, elaborately designed cross stretching to each of his shoulder blades and down his spine. Inside the cross were the letters S.A.M. in gothic script. I wondered who Sam was, but I knew better than to ask. The cross suggested it wasn’t a topic to be brought up lightly, and if anyone knew about not wanting to talk about the past, it was me.
I needed to get to work.
I turned on the sound system, letting the pleasant nature sounds calm me. Well, as calm as I was going to get. I then lit some candles and washed my hands again before bringing a tray of massage oil to the table.
“Comfortable?” I asked and double checked his paperwork, making sure everything was in order. Even his damn signature was sexy.
“Aye,” he mumbled, already sounding more relaxed than he had been.
“Wonderful.” Even though he’d answered ‘no’ on the questionnaire, I double checked and asked him if he had any injuries or other conditions I should know about, and he said he didn’t. Excellent. I could do this. “I’ll start by lubricating your skin with some warm massage oil, then I’ll perform some standard massage strokes to warm up your muscle tissue and relieve some knots and tension.”
“All right, lass.”
With that, I got to work, starting by sliding my thumbs over his dimples of Venus. I could have swirled my thumbs over them for hours, but I resisted and continued on, moving across muscles that felt like they’d been carved out of stone. Part of it was tension, but another part was simply how well he cared for his body. He was truly a magnificent example of the male form.
Dammit. I sounded like one of those empty-headed women who hung out at bars and batted their eyes at every hot guy who came along.
He let out a long, rolling moan when I applied pressure on his back. I had the irrational thought that even his moan had an accent. It almost made me laugh, except that laughing didn’t feel like the right reaction to that beautiful noise. Other parts of me clenched.
“You’ve got some serious tension in your shoulders,” I said to fill the silence.
It was a standard sort of comment among massage therapists, something to get our clients talking if they weren’t very open about what their specific issues were. Some of them worked high-stress jobs where they’d be returning to that same situation over and over again. Sometimes, they had a specific incident that had stressed them out. A lot of them had things in their relationships that caused them tension. Knowing that helped me to know how best to help them.
“It’s been a tense night,” Alec sighed.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I was surprised at how sincere those words were.
He said something that was muffled enough that I didn’t catch anything more than he’d had a bad date. His accent had thickened, and I found myself leaning down, needing to concentrate more to understand him.Wantingto understand him.
“How long have you been in Seattle?” I asked, kneading his back as I spoke.
“Nearly ten years now,” he said. “Was it the accent that gave me away?”
“Just a bit,” I said, smiling.
