Author: Bella Andre

She almost asked him where he needed to rush off to, but it was the kind of thing a girlfriend needed to know. Not a sex buddy like her.

Fortunately, he told her anyway. “Tommy was a good friend of my father’s. My dad taught me how to build an engine, and then Tommy showed me how to drive one real fast.” He was pressing soft kisses along the underside of her jaw as he spoke. “His doctor wouldn’t sign off on him to get into the car this time around and he needs someone to sub for him in a race on Monday morning. I’ve got to get to Southern California by this afternoon to do some practice runs with the crew.”

Of course he raced cars, she thought. A man like Zach wouldn’t be content with just being a business mogul. It wouldn’t be enough that he could slay at least half the human population just by glancing in their direction. He would need the rush of testing the limits of the fast cars he built, too. And she had a pretty good sense that he wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, that those kinds of fears wouldn’t hold him back the way they might with other people.

But just thinking about Zach getting into a race car and driving real fast had her heart pounding. What if he got hurt? What if these past few days with him were the only ones she ever got to have?

She was surprised to realize the scars on her arms were tingling, like a mainline from her emotions to her body.

Working to sound like it was no big deal, she asked, “How long have you been racing?”

Just because she was sleeping with him didn’t mean his grin had any less impact. If anything, it hit her even harder now. Because she knew how fast that grin could bend into a sensual look that melted down her should-stay-icy core.

“Pretty much since the day I got my driver’s license.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said, but then couldn’t stop herself from adding, “but isn’t it dangerous?”

His eyes flashed with something she couldn’t quite read before he shrugged. “We’re going close to 200 miles per hour. Of course it’s dangerous.”

Her fingers itched to smack him for his devil-may-care response. “I’m sure your family would be really upset if anything happened to you.”

His eyes narrowed on her as if he knew she was really saying she would be really upset if anything happened to him. But instead of calling her on acting more like a possessive girlfriend than she had any right to be given their arrangement, he said, “You should come. I’ll strap you in real tight and take you for a ride.”

Just that fast, the wicked glint in his eyes got her heart to racing for reasons that had nothing to do with his getting hurt in a speeding car.

Both a shiver of need and a thrill at the thought of letting loose in a speeding car were there as she teased, “You just like the idea of strapping me into something.”

He abruptly stood up with her in his arms and carried her over to the massage table. “Unfortunately, there are no bindings on this, but I’m sure we can improvise.” She tried to clutch the robe to her chest but he quickly had it off her shoulders. “Ready for your massage?”

Her breath was already coming too fast and her mouth felt dry as she said, “Don’t you need to go race a fast car?”

“I promised you a massage first, and I always make good on my promises.”

She tried not to read too much into his talk of promises. It was just sexy talk. He was being playful, the way he usually was. People threw around a lot of words they didn’t mean when they were having really awesome sex with one another.

“In that case, I’m not going to turn down the offer,” she said in a deliberately light voice. “How do you want me?”

His eyes darkened with desire at her provocative question. “Let’s start with you on your stomach.”

Trying not to feel self-conscious about being completely naked on the padded massage table, she got into position. He left the room for a moment, and when he came back to stand in front of her, she looked down at his bare feet through the hole in the padded head rest. She wasn’t surprised to note that his bare feet were as perfect as the rest of him.

“Usually the masseuse puts a sheet over me.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” he growled as she suddenly smelled lavender. “You’d better never let any else see you like this.”

He was the most possessive man she’d ever met. But any protests she might have made about no one owning her but herself were lost in a moan of sheer bliss as his hands began to massage her shoulders.

“I thought sex with you was the best thing I’d ever felt, but this might actually be better.”

She was so lost in the throes of the sweet pleasure of Zach’s hands breaking down her stiff muscles that it wasn’t until he said, “The best thing you’ve ever felt, huh?” that she realized what she’d just admitted.

“Massages are worse than drugs for me,” she improvised, the way he was touching her making her words surprisingly true. “I get loopy and say things I don’t mean.”

His laughter washed over her just as he moved down over her shoulder blades to the middle of her back. His hands were so large that they easily spanned her rib cage. “I wonder what else I can get you to say?”

No matter how good he made her feel, she was keeping her mouth shut from here on out. God only knew what he was going to do with that information she’d just accidentally handed him on a silver platter. The last thing a guy like Zach needed to know was that he was the sexual champion on top of everything else.

“Do your worst,” she challenged him, but her words were muffled by another low moan of pleasure.

“Don’t you mean my best?” he asked in a silky voice that should have had her tensing to prepare her defenses.

But how could she when he chose that moment to press his thumbs into the small of her back where she’d been aching from lifting and carrying everything in the ballroom to set up last night’s fundraiser?

“Oh. God. Yes.”

But her utter and complete capitulation obviously wasn’t good enough for him, because a moment later he had slid his hands down to her hips and was massaging her glutes. She gasped at the shocking pleasure of her sore muscles beneath his fingertips, along with the sensuality of knowing whose hands were on her...and that he could choose at any moment to do so much more than just massage her muscles with them.

“Can’t even form words now, can you?”

He sounded incredibly pleased with himself, and yet, she could hear the way his confident words broke at the ends. As if he was holding onto his control by a very thin thread.

From the first moment she’d met him, she’d wanted to snap that control, wanted to best him by knocking him off his pedestal. And even though she liked him a whole heck of a lot more now than she ever thought she would—and despite the way he was turning her muscles and mind to mush with hands-down the best massage she’d ever had—she still couldn’t resist that urge.

Frankly, she didn’t want to.

The truth was that if she ever let down her defenses around Zach, Lord knew how he’d take advantage of that.

“This is when I usually turn over,” she informed him in what she hoped was a fairly steady voice.

This time he was the one left speechless as she rolled over onto her back and deliberately lifted her arms above her head. Zach’s eyes, she was pleased to see, blazed with fire.

Before he could pick a place to rub, she boldly said, “My arms are sore.”

She’d hidden her scars from everyone else, but every time Zach touched them, caressed the marks of old pain, she felt soothed.

Healed.

The only sounds in the room came from both of them breathing, faster and louder with every second of the sensual massage, and she wasn’t sure anymore which of them was making more noise as he worked out the tension in her biceps and triceps. When he moved his hands down toward her breasts, she was sure he’d decided to go for the gold, but instead he found a muscle just below her collarbone that had her practically sobbing with gratitude.

“You’re amazing.”

She opened her eyes and saw him staring down at her with such intensity as he replied, “So are you.”

The reverence in his words, combined with the fact that he still didn’t touch her breasts as he moved his hands lower down her rib cage, had her eyes closing again, her lower lip sliding between her teeth as she tried not to beg him for even more pleasure.

“That’s my job,” she heard him say, and then his teeth were replacing hers on her lower lip and he tugged it in between his lips. “God, you taste good,” he said and then he was kissing her some more, an upside-down kiss that stole the rest of her brain cells away in perfect choreography with his hands as they moved from the bottom of her rib cage to feather over her stomach, then lower still.

She opened up for him, moaned into his mouth as he slid one hand past her damp curls and into her, while the other moved in perfect circles over the point of arousal between her legs. Just that quickly, she went off beneath him. Somehow, he managed to be there not just with his hands, his fingers, but with his mouth, too.

Too impatient to let her climax run its course, she pulled him up over her so that both of them were lying on the narrow massage table. She ripped at the zipper of his jeans and he was ready with a condom the second she had him free.

Wrapping herself around him was so natural, so perfect, that it was almost as if he’d always been there with her, in her arms, holding her.

Loving her.

Chapter Twenty-three

A short while later she dropped Zach off at his place so that he could head for Southern California. Heather went to pick up the dogs at Tina’s house and after a reunion where they both acted like she’d been gone for one year instead of one night, she took them to the park and the dog bakery and the coffee shop. By then, they were dragging enough for her to accept that she couldn’t avoid going home anymore.

She loved her house. After being around people all day long at her office, it had always been a wonderfully quiet, peaceful respite.

So then, why did it suddenly feel too quiet?

And how could she possibly feel lonely when she had two absolutely wonderful furry companions?

She didn’t already miss Zach, darn it. It wasn’t at all okay that he could have taken a spot in her life that quickly, or that thoroughly.

Her phone rang and she had her hands too full with bags of dog food to look at the caller screen before answering.

“Hi, Heather, it’s Lori. Zach’s sister. We met at the baseball game.”

Heather had given Lori her phone number to pass on to a friend who was thinking about getting a new puppy, but she hadn’t expected Zach’s sister to call herself.

“Of course I remember who you are,” she told Lori. “How are you?”

“Are you free tonight? We’re doing an impromptu girls’ night here and I thought you’d be a great addition.”

Any other time Heather would have made her excuses, but her empty house still loomed way too big. Besides, Lori and Sophie had been really nice. Why shouldn’t she spend some time with them? Just because she and Zach would eventually run their course and go their separate ways didn’t mean that she couldn’t make a couple of friends along the way.

After a quick shower, she grabbed a bottle of wine and a container of brownies she hadn’t been able to resist at the recent farmer’s market. Female laughter rang out as Lori opened her door.

“Heather’s here,” she called out to everyone and a moment later, Heather found herself being openly studied by several sets of eyes. “Heather, this is Chloe, Nicola, and you already know Sophie. Chloe is married to my brother Chase. Nicola is dating my brother Marcus.”

Oh no. Why hadn’t she realized she’d be walking into Sullivan Significant Other land? Had Zach scrambled her brain that much with his supersexy massage that she couldn’t think straight anymore?