But my body has been running on fumes and caffeine and stubbornness for years.
The last person who touched me with any kind of intention was Kyle, and every timehe did, it felt like an obligation.
This is different.
Oz’s warmth is everywhere now.
Every place he touches lights up with a sensitivity I forgot I was capable of.
He moves down my spine.
The spasm that dropped me to my knees is a memory now, replaced by a loose, liquid warmth that keeps spreading past the zones that could reasonably be calledtherapeutic.His form traces the curve of my ribs, and I feel myself arch into it before I can decide whether I meant to.
“Your breathing changed,” Oz says.
“I’m aware.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
He’s already going still against my back, that warm weight holding perfectly motionless while he waits for me to answer. I can feel the patience in it like a physical thing, decades of practice at being ready for someone to sayno.
I say, “No, don’t stop.”
The stillness breaks like a held breath releasing.
He moves.
The warmth spreads down the sides of my ribs in slow waves, tracing paths that have nothing to do with any anatomy a licensed massage therapist would recognize. He’s following something else now. The flush of my skin, maybe. The shift in my pulse. The way my hips tilted a quarter inch toward the table when I saiddon’t stop.
His form thins where it touches me, spreading wider, individual currents within him moving at different speeds—some slow and deep against the muscle, others barely there, skating the surface of my skin through my shirt with a lightness that makes me shiver.
Pressure and whisper.
I grip the edge of the worktable and my knuckles go white.
“You’re holding your breath,” he says.
I let it out in a rush. “Habit.”
“You do that when something feels good. You brace against it.” His voice is resonant enough that I feel it in my teeth. “Like you’re waiting for it to cost you something.”
I want to argue.
I want to deploy the dry, deflecting voice that gets me through farmer’s markets and supplier negotiations.
That voice is offline.
Whatever Oz is doing along the curve of my waist has short-circuited the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation through humor. What’s left is just raw sensation.
He reaches the small of my back and pauses.
I understand he’s found something new.
His warmth pools in the dip of my lower spine and stays, deepening.
My hips rock forward before I can catch them.
The sound I make is quiet and completely unambiguous.
