Page 7 of Her Player

"Two minutes," I said. Heard myself say it. Didn't quite believe I'd said it.

His grin did not get bigger. That was somehow the most galling thing about all of it. He didn't grin like he'd won. He just nodded once, the way he did everything, deliberate and unhurried, and walked the three steps it took him to get behind me.

"Where's it tight?"

"Right shoulder. Base of the neck."

"Hair," he said.

I pulled the pencil out of my bun and let it fall.

I stood without meaning to. His hands on my shoulders had straightened me up out of the chair like a marionette, and I was on my feet and facing the wall before my brain registered that I’d moved.

His hands settled on either side of my neck with the kind of warmth that told me he'd been planning the gentlest possible version of touching me from the moment he'd offered. His thumbs found the knot at the base of my skull on the first try, like he'd been studying it.

"Good Lord," I muttered before I could catch myself.

"Don't talk. Breathe."

"You don't get to tell me⁠—"

"Breathe, Miss C."

I breathed.

His thumbs slid down either side of my spine, slow and certain, finding every place I'd been holding myself together for three days. My right shoulder. The seam where my neck met my shoulders. The spot between my shoulder blades that had been the reason I'd taken half a melatonin every night for a week.

I had to reach out and press my hand to the wall in front of me. The clipboard I'd been holding fell to my feet and I didn't pick it up.

"How long has this been like this?" he asked.

"Years," I admitted.

"That's what I figured."

"Don't be smug."

"Not smug. Just observant."

His thumbs pressed into the small of my back. I'd lost track of how he'd gotten there.

The groan I let out was positively salacious, and I had to brace my other hand against the wall just so I didn't collapse at the knees.

"Jesus, Miss C," Rhett muttered, his hands working at the dip in my spine. "Do you ever take a break from your shoes?"

"Depends." A grunt slipped out as a muscle jumped beneath his thumb, which only made him encircle the knot with the tips of his fingers. "You ever take a break from your skates?"

"Yeah. When I'm off the ice."

I pressed my forehead against the wall. "Yeah, well. When I'm home."

His breath tickled my ear and it made me jump. He'd shifted closer.

"You mean you're not clip-cloppin' around in those red bottoms while making breakfast in the kitchen?"

That pulled me out of my trance. I snickered and quickly whipped around on him.

Massage done. Moment over. He needed to go.