For some reason the moment had become everything.
Amelia disappeared behind the divider and he turned toward it, undoing the top button on his shirt. He could hear her rustling around behind the screen, hear her clothes being removed.
And he could imagine it.
Every whisper of fabric over skin had his imagination on overdrive, until his body ached. Until he was so hard he couldn’t talk himself down.
He put on his robe quickly and sat on the massage table, his hands in his lap.
A moment later, Amelia emerged, her cheeks the color of ripe strawberries. Which were fresh on his mind for several reasons.
She sat on the massage table across from him, forcing a smile. “So now we wait?”
“Yes,” he said, unable to stop himself from taking a visual tour of her body. The robes were thin, the room warmed by a fireplace in the corner.
The V of pale skin than ran from her elegant neck down to the curve of her breasts was enticing. Begging for touch. Begging, at least, for him to sit there and appreciate her.
She took a deep breath that jarred his heart and sent a kick of heat through his veins. The thin fabric of her robe molding tightly over her breasts, revealing the outline of her nipples.
Mon dieu.
He needed to get a grip. Preferably in private and on himself.
He was a thirty-five-year-old man, not some horny teenager. It was his own fault for putting off sex as long as he had.
She took a breath, her lips parting as if she was about to say something when the door opened. Two massage therapists came in, smiling and greeting them both, before turning on some sort of wooden flute music.
That he could do without. He wasn’t a meditation sort of guy.
“Go ahead and lay down on your stomach,” his masseuse said. “We can lower the robe down past your shoulders and work on your back.”
He looked over at Amelia, who scrambled to lay facedown on the table before turning her head away from him and shimmying her shoulders, working the top of her robe down, baring her back, her breasts covered by her position.
He looked away from her and did the same.
And for the next several minutes tried not to die of extreme overarousal.
It wasn’t the touch of the woman working on his muscles. He barely felt that. It was the sounds Amelia was making. Amelia didn’t do anything quietly, so he didn’t know why he should be so surprised that, when being massaged, Amelia sounded as though she was eating very good chocolate, or having very good sex.
“You’re very tense, Mr. Chevalier,” his masseuse said, right about the time Amelia moaned, long and low into the table.
Yes, he was. And he had a feeling he was going to leave this appointment with more knots in his back than when he’d come in.
“Mmm … yessssss.”
Merde.
She was actually going to kill him. There was no point even denying it now, as he lay facedown on the massage table trying to fight the hard-on from hell. He wanted her. He wanted her naked and under him, and over him.
His assistant. A woman with a ring on her finger.
He was, in that moment, everything he hated and still wanting her was stronger than the shame.
The half-hour session seemed as though it lasted four times as long. When they put hot rocks along the line of his spine, and hers, he was ready to beg to be thrown in a snowbank. She liked the hot rocks very much, and she was not shy about voicing her approval.
Finally, it was over. Amelia’s moan of completion and disappointment sent one final lick of flame over his skin.
“That ends the session. Now we’ll leave you two to get dressed. If you need anything else during your stay, we’re here to see to your needs.”
No they were here to ignite impossible needs, he thought bitterly as he sat up, his robe pooling around his waist.
Amelia sat up when the door closed, her dark brown hair tumbled over one shoulder, her cheeks flushed, her robe clutched tightly in her fists, closed snugly over her breasts.
She looked like a woman who’d just been tumbled. Or, rather she looked like a woman who needed to be. Or maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was just him. Maybe he was the one who needed it, and he was reading the signs wrong.
But he didn’t care just now.
“Amelia,” he said, his voice low, rough, almost unrecognizable even to his own ears. “I am your boss. And this is a vulnerable situation for you.” He was tripping over his English now. He wasn’t sure if what he was saying made sense. All of his thoughts had reverted to French. And he was trying to translate the words coming out of his mouth as quickly as possible. “But, and forgive me, you are oiled up and you’re naked. And I want…. If you want me to stay over here, I want you to say so. Now.”
Amelia could only stare at Luc, her heart in her throat, her entire body shaking.
The massage had her feeling loose, and very languid, which was a word she didn’t think she’d ever embodied before.
And he was right. They were naked. And oiled up. And yeah, she’d said that would never happen. But right now it was happening. And he was looking at her as though she was a woman. A woman he desired. Not a woman he cared for. Not a woman he hoped might fix him.
His eyes burned with heat and passion, the kind that had never, ever been directed at her before, and until that moment, she hadn’t realized it had been missing.
But it was. And suddenly she felt parched for it. Needy. Desperate.
“I don’t want you to stay over there,” she said, her words coming out in a rush.
“Well, thank God for that.”
IT WAS INSANE. And it was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She hadn’t made any decisions about Clint yet, and technically, regardless of the circumstances, they were still engaged. Which meant that she should tell Luc to get back on his side of the room.
And she should flee to the safety of the divider. Flee and put her clothes back on and lace her boots up tight so that she was too much trouble to undress.
That thought made her heart hiccup in her chest. Undressing? Was that where this was going? Was that what the look on his face meant? That undressing was imminent? That kissing was imminent?
He stood up and moved to the table, putting his palms flat on the table, on either side of her thighs, his dark eyes intent on hers.
“Just
