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Although she didn’t hear him approach, she felt him move closer.

Her blood surged in her ears when he stopped at her back.

“So beautiful,” he murmured, leaning close enough for his breath to tickle the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

How could the man possibly see in this dark? And yet the worship in his tone said he could.

She steeled her spine to stop herself from pressing back into him, from demanding to feel his lips and teeth mark her throat.

Oliver wasn’t a danger to her. She’d never have stayed if he were. But being here like this—in the dark with just him, no one around them for miles—gave the moment a dangerous quality that she found both unnerving and scintillating.

Fisting her hands at her sides, she swayed with the effort to hold still.

He didn’t move either, just stood behind her, and her anticipation cranked higher with each heartbeat.

Do something.

Touch me.

But Oliver was playing by his own rules tonight.

Making demands of him would get her nowhere.

He settled his large hands on her shoulders, burning her even through the cotton. As if sensing how the stress of the past few months had tightened her muscles, he sank in, kneading expertly, his movements shifting her shirt until it slipped off one shoulder. Her head fell forward on a breath of release. The bed was so close… It would take next to nothing to fall face-down and demand a full body massage.

“More,” she murmured when he stopped.

She’d expected him to deny her, but instead he resumed, working through the tension in her muscles. When he found an especially tight spot, she gasped.

Loosening the pressure, he focused on that particular tension until it released. “You’re all knots.”

“It’s been a rough few months.”

“You don’t say.”

Was that a trace of humor in his tone?

When she shifted to turn, his fingers tightened, and he held her facing away from him.

“You have to stay put.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” she protested, but he nipped at the dip in her shoulder, soothing the bite with his tongue, and the words came out breathier than intended.

Oliver’s lips curved against her skin. “You were saying?”

His coarse beard scraped her skin. It was prickly, like him, and as he found the hollow where neck met shoulder, it was doing all kinds of things to her.

When she tilted her head to give him better access, he approved the move with a soft growl. “You smell like a French dessert. I want to keep taking bites until I’m satiated, but no amount of tasting you will ever be enough.”

Unable to resist, she leaned back until her back hit the solid muscles of his chest. He was hot—burning her through the cotton. And he was very, very shirtless.

Here in the dark room, with just the two of them, she felt inexplicably safe in his arms. In this dreamworld the two of them had spun together, nothing seemed real. No responsibility weighing down her shoulders. Just his hands, massaging the tension away.

“You like this,” he added. “Me touching you.”

Addison was never one to lie. “Yes.”

“You want more of me.”