I work my way across his back, and that’s when I finally look at them properly.
His tattoos.
At first, I think they’re ribbons. Decorative lines twining down both shoulders and the middle of his back. As I look closer, spreading oil across his skin, I realize they’re not ribbons at all.
They’re scratch marks.
Narrow, crisscrossing lines in neat rows, permanently inked into his flesh. The kind of marks a woman’s nails would leave during sex, dragged down his back in the heat of passion.
My breath catches.
I spread my hand over the tattoos without thinking, my fingers trembling against his skin. The size is right. The spacing between the lines. If I curled my fingers and raked them across his flesh, they would match perfectly.
He can’t have.
Hewouldn’thave.
That would be crazy.
But Cristiano is crazy.
The last time I touched his back like this, I was eighteen years old and crying out his name. He was deep inside me and begging me to scratch him harder, to mark him, to make him feel—
“Mina?”
I jerk my hand back like I’ve been burned.
“You’re very tight through the lower back,” I manage to say.
A lie. He’s not tight at all. His body is loose and relaxed beneath my hands, completely at ease in a way that feels almost insulting given how hard my heart is pounding.
I continue the massage on autopilot, my thoughts spiraling. How do women react when they see those tattoos? Do they ask him about them? Do they trace the lines with curious fingers while he lies asleep in their beds, wondering whose nails left the marks?
The thought of other women touching him, pinned beneath him, crying out his name the way I once did, makes an unpleasant sensation twist in my stomach.
“Turn over, please,” I manage hoarsely.
He shifts onto his back, and I busy myself with more oil, avoiding his gaze. The towel is still draped across his hips, but I can see the shape of him beneath it, and he’s…
I swallow.
He’s hard. Not fully erect, not standing to attention in a way that would be overtly inappropriate, but he’s thickened. Swollen. As though simply being in my presence while I massage his muscles is pleasurable for him.
I’ve only ever had sex with one man, and it’s the man I’m presently touching. Until this moment I wouldn’t have claimed to be someone who has “needs to be fulfilled.” But as my gaze keeps sliding back to the generous outline of Cristiano’s cock beneath the towel, I suddenly have a need, and it’s aching to be filled.
I focus on his chest. His arms. His shoulders. The thick muscles of his thighs. Clinical. Professional. Just a body. Just a job.
Finally, mercifully, I’m done.
“That concludes your massage.” I wipe my hands on a fresh towel, still not meeting his eyes. “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
Silence.
I risk a glance up. Cristiano has opened his eyes, and he’s watching me with that same focused intensity. Slowly and deliberately, he sits up.
The table is at my hip level, and even seated, he looms over me. Broad shoulders blocking out the soft lighting, those amber eyes fixed on my face.
“There is something, Mina.”
