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  “Since I want you to actually give this an honest shot we’ll keep it private, so it’s just you and me. Give me ten minutes to go change into gym clothes.”

  I scowled a little and tugged at the fabric of my T-shirt that was already starting to stick to my chest. “I’m going to melt if you take any longer than that.”

  “Good. Maybe if I make you uncomfortable enough, you’ll remember to take it easy on yourself. I’ll be right back.”

  He went back up the set of stairs that had led us into the room and since there was only a narrow bench along one wall to sit on I flopped down on the mat on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. Getting up from this position with my bum leg was going to be a bitch. I scowled at the thought and only lasted another minute before I had to peel my shirt off.

  It was hotter than hell in the room and every second that passed, it felt like it was getting hotter. If I wasn’t worried that it would send Lando running and totally cross the boundaries between personal and professional, I would’ve stripped my lightweight sweats off as well and done the damn yoga in my underwear. It would be way more interesting that way.

  I was chuckling to myself at the thought when I heard him making his way back across the room. I lifted my head up from the floor to watch his approach and almost swallowed my tongue. He wasn’t in his underwear¸ but he might as well have been. All he was wearing was a pair of loose, black basketball shorts and lots of naked skin. Pretty, pale, freckled skin. I liked it. I liked him and I wanted to touch him. The long and lean lines of muscles that flexed as he made his way over to me and took a seat on the mat next to mine were mesmerizing. I was in good shape, cut and defined better than most of the guys I worked with on the force, but this guy was perfect. He looked like the sculptures the ancients used to carve out of marble when they were depicting what the perfect male form should be. It was distracting to say the least, and I missed that he was talking to me because I was gawking at him like a love-struck teenager.

  I cleared my throat and pushed myself up into a seated position. “I didn’t hear a word you just said. If you want me to pay attention to you, then I’m telling you right now you need to put a shirt on.” I was dead serious.

  It was his turn to let his eyes rove over my torso and I didn’t miss the way the blue burned through the gray the longer he looked at me. That look made me sweat twice as much as the heat swirling around the room.

  He muttered something under his breath and climbed to his feet. “Okay so just follow what I do and try and concentrate on breathing. Don’t work against your body, work with it. I don’t think I can give you the entire spiel again either.”

  I went to push myself up from the ground and almost collapsed back when my shoulder hollered in protest. Lando immediately reached out a hand to help me up and it was there again when our palms touched, that spark, that flash of intensity that made every nerve ending I had stand to attention and beg to be pressed up against his slick skin.

  I hissed out a breath between my teeth and watched as he shook his head a little, like he needed to clear it.

  “Okay, so first bend over and put your hands flat on the floor like this.” I watched him bend over with his legs perfectly straight as he put his hands flat in front of his feet. I tried to mimic the pose but barely got halfway there before I had to bend my knees.

  He turned his head to the side and looked at me while he was upside down. “Your flexibility could use some work.”

  I grunted at him and tried to straighten up. “Thanks for noticing.”

  He chuckled and moved into some pose that looked like he was firing an invisible bow and arrow at the capital. I followed suit and was surprised that the pull in my shoulder ached but didn’t bellow in pain. I was also surprised when Lando asked me quietly, “How many sisters do you have?”

  It was the first thing he had ever asked that didn’t have to do with my injury or regular routine. “Uh, two. Ari is a freshman in college and Greer just graduated. She wants to be a teacher.”

  He shifted poses again, this time lifting his hands up above his head like he was praying and pulling them down slowly while he balanced on one leg. I decided that if I was going to balance on one leg it wouldn’t be the one I shattered and was pleased as hell that I didn’t topple over.

  “I have a little sister who’s a senior in high school and a total nightmare for my parents. My dad can’t keep the boys away. My little brother is a year younger than me and lives overseas so he can play professional soccer.”

  “Are you close with your family?” I was breathing harder than I expected to and I could hardly see through the rivers of sweat running down my face. It was a different kind of workout then I was used to, but my muscles were definitely straining and pulling. He dropped into what looked like a stationary push-up and I went to follow but paused. “I don’t know if my shoulder is up to this.”

  “You have to bend your elbows and balance your weight. It’s all about finding your center and letting your whole body bear the weight, not just the large muscle groups.” I stretched my legs out behind me and went to push up but stopped before I got off the floor when his hands were on the center of my back and curving over my biceps to get me in the correct position. It felt like flames were dancing along every part of my bare skin where he touched me. “I’m super tight with my family. They’ve always been very supportive of me. How about you?”

  When I levered up and balanced on my toes I waited with bated breath for my leg to give out or for my shoulder to flat-out collapse under the strain, but with my elbows bent and his hands holding me where I was supposed to be I kept myself perfectly horizontal to the floor with minimal effort. I blew out a long breath and told him, “My family is just the girls and my mom. My dad was killed on duty when I was ten. My mom never remarried or got serious with anyone until us kids were older, so all we had was each other.” I wheezed a little as my arms finally started to shake so I let him push me back to the ground and followed the guide of his hands as he had me bow my torso back so that I was arched up looking at him upside down as he stood over me.

  “You father was a police officer as well?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And even though you lost him you wanted to follow in his steps?” He sounded puzzled by my career choice and he wasn’t the only one. My mother cried for a week straight when I was accepted into the academy. Even though all I had ever wanted to do was follow in my dad’s footsteps.

  “Being a cop was the only option for me. I never considered anything else. That’s part of the reason why I’m so anxious to get back to it. I don’t have a backup plan, Lando. This is it for me.” It came sounding a little more raw and desperate than I intended it to, but it was the truth. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself if I couldn’t go back on patrol and that was terrifying.

  “Hmm …” He switched things around so that I was sitting upright and had a leg bent in front of me and my entire torso wrapped around it like a pretzel. I narrowed my eyes at him because he made it look effortless and I was breathing heavily and sweating buckets and not just from the temperature in the room. “Why was that it for you? You lost your father; you had to see how it hurt your mother and sisters and I bet they worry about you all the time. Why would you pick that as your only option?”

  It was a good question. One I wasn’t sure I had an answer to. “I wanted to make my dad proud. I wanted to help people. I wanted a job where no one would question my authority or my …” I yelped as I bent too far and my thigh protested. I rolled over and ended up back on my back as I looked up at him. He was shiny with sweat from the heat in the room and his eyes were intently focused on me.

  “Your masculinity or your sexuality? You wanted a job that was associated with being a man even if you just happened to be attracted to other men?”

  I crossed my hands and rested them on my abs as my breath whooshed in and out. “Maybe that was part of it as I got older but as far back as I can remember I wanted to we
ar a uniform and to carry a badge. I wanted to make a difference.” I closed my eyes and drifted back in time. “I wanted to make sure no one else had to stand by their father’s grave holding their mother’s hand while she sobbed and sobbed.”

  “She very easily could be standing next to your grave next, Dominic.” The words were so quiet it was almost like he breathed them instead of spoke them and there wasn’t anything I could say to argue that he was wrong because he wasn’t.

  “I know, but I’m a cop. It’s part of who I am and my mom has always accepted me for every single part of me. It sounds like we’re both lucky that way.”

  He put his hands on his hips and seemed to be turning my words over in his head. After a couple of minutes where I just laid there and sweated he finally spoke. “Why don’t you take five and then meet me back upstairs in the spa area. We’ll get the massage out of the way and see if we can work that shoulder out so that on Wednesday we can get back on track.”

  I struggled back into a seated position and lifted an eyebrow at him. “You never answered me. Are you the one handling the massage?”

  His eyes flared hot at the center and the corners of his mouth twitched like he wanted to grin but was fighting the urge. “I shouldn’t, we have techs, but I’m going to.” The look on his face turned entirely predatory. “I have a feeling my self-control is going to be hurting as badly as your shoulder is by the time we’re done.”

  I groaned as I watched him walk away. Basketball shorts did wonders for him both coming and going. “No pain no gain, Mr. Fancy-Pants.”

  Chapter 6

  Lando

  I was setting myself up for failure.

  I knew it as soon as I walked into the tiny, sequestered room that we used for massage therapy. I had a tech on staff who I could very easily call to handle this for me. That would be the smart thing to do, the professional thing, but I wasn’t going to make the call.

  Nope, I was going to walk in that room with a naked Dominic Voss laid out on the table in front of me and torture myself by putting my hands all over the miles and miles of thick and ropey muscles that covered his big body, knowing that it couldn’t lead to anything. Well, knowing that it shouldn’t lead to anything, but my self-control felt paper thin and stretched as tautly as it had ever been. I couldn’t recall a point in my life where attraction had clawed at me, gnawed on my insides like a hungry monster demanding to be fed. It was hard to concentrate on anything else with this ravenous need pulsing inside of me. I was tempting more than fate by going into that room and putting my hands on Dom, but I had reached the point that I no longer cared.

  He was lying facedown on the table and he didn’t look up when I entered the sage-scented room. The new age music that was typically piped in for relaxation was turned off, so the only sounds that filled the tiny space were the alternate sounds of both of our heavy breathing. His sounded like he was getting ready to fall asleep. Mine sounded like I had just run a marathon. His hair was damp from his shower and I took a moment to silently chastise myself for being so caught up in my own thoughts that I hadn’t bothered to spruce myself up after the sweaty yoga session. All I did was throw on a white T-shirt and muck around in the mire of my wayward thoughts. I probably smelled like the floor of the gym, but there wasn’t any time to fix it or worry about it now.

  I made sure the door clicked shut behind me so that he knew I was in the room, but he still didn’t move. I wondered if he actually had fallen asleep. I cleared my throat a little bit and told him, “I’m going to focus mostly on your shoulder to see if we can get that muscle to loosen back up. It probably won’t feel all that great at the beginning and you need to make sure you hydrate when we’re done.”

  My voice was huskier than it typically was and I had to shake my head at myself. I needed to get it together so I could do my job and get him out of here without making a fool of myself. I picked up the bottle of oil infused with different essential oils and approached the table. I almost jumped when he finally turned his head, which was directly in line with my crotch and looked up at me with knowing shining out of his olive-green eyes. “Do your worst.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath at the blatant challenge and told my dick to behave considering its close proximity to his smirking mouth. I rubbed my hands together to warm the oil up and when I put them on his skin we both jolted at the initial contact. I’d had my hands on bodies worth millions, on ones that were sculpted and honed to perfection, ones that belonged to men who made it no secret that I could get away with much more than a massage in this private little space. None of them made me react the way Dominic did.

  As soon as I touched him I knew I was never going to want to stop. I wanted to memorize every muscle, trace every dip, explore every hollow and lick my way across every inch of his golden skin. It was consuming and I felt like I was drowning under endless layers of want and need. My dick was no longer listening and had taken on a life of its own. Rock hard and throbbing, the straining erection that was now pushing against the too-thin fabric of my shorts was very aware of how close it was to Dom’s mouth as he breathed in and out in a steady rhythm.

  I dug my fingers into the coiled muscle of his shoulder and winced along with him when I found the tangled knot of tendons and ligaments that he had overworked during the weekend. He hissed out a sound of pain and I had to bite back a groan as the heat of it wafted over the tip of my cock. This was such a terrible and fantastic idea.

  “I told you it was going to hurt a little bit.” I used my thumbs and really dug in using a circular motion, and the skin and muscle gave under the pressure. I knew he wouldn’t openly complain no matter how uncomfortable he was so I had to make sure that I tempered my touch and didn’t hurt him more than he already was.

  He snorted and peeled an eye open, but this time kept his gaze focused on the part of my body that was practically begging him for attention.

  “Looks like I’m not the only one hurting a little bit.” There were equal amounts of humor and sex laced throughout his tone and it took a Herculean effort on my part to keep moving my hands and to keep focused on the task at hand.

  It wasn’t just the knot in his shoulder that was tense and hard. He was solid through and through, pretty much just tight skin stretched over miles of muscle that had very little give. He was in better shape than a lot of the athletes that I worked on. It was another indicator of how serious he was about his job and taking on the role of hero. A man didn’t get a body like Dom’s without serious effort and dedication. Everything he did was tied into him being a police officer and even with the evidence of that, tactile and real, under my fingertips, I still wanted him.

  I wanted to get to know him. I wanted to see if his brash and flirty nature extended all the way to the bedroom, and I wanted to know if he did everything else as well as he kissed. I wanted to spend time with him outside of this gym and I wanted to let myself want him.

  We both tensed and seemed to stop breathing as I moved the rest of the way down his back and lifted the sheet that covered his lower half. I purposely skipped putting my hands anywhere near the almost perfect ass that was staring me in the face and went to work on his injured leg. I was surprised to find it crisscrossed in various surgical scars and ridged with scar tissue. I hadn’t seen this much of him uncovered before considering that he usually wore track pants or sweats when we met for his sessions. I felt him tense as I absently traced my fingers over the brutal marks that were stark and pale against his dark skin.

  “You have a very dangerous job, Dominic.” The words rushed out before I could stop them and I knew they sounded accusatory, but I couldn’t help it.

  His thigh muscle twitched and I heard him sigh. “I do. But how many clients do you see that are hurt worse than I am that aren’t in law enforcement, Lando?”

  He had a valid point. Some of my hardest cases came off the field or were the results of traffic accidents that had nothing to do with the kind of danger he faced every day. I didn’t answer as I
used my palms to work the long muscles in his legs. The gesture made his ass cheeks clench under the sheet covering his hips and I heard him groan. I wasn’t sure if it was in pleasure or pain, but my guess would be the first. I wanted to groan, too. He really was a sight to behold, laid out before me like he was.

  By the time I got to his other leg and was about to tell him to turn over so that I could torture myself by working on the front of him, Dom had had enough. He flipped over on the table and sat up.

  He reached out and grabbed one of my oil-slicked hands in his. His dark eyebrows were low over his eyes and there was no missing the veritable tent at the front of the sheet where it barely covered him or the heat in his gaze as he told me, “Okay there is only one place on the front of me I want your hands, so you need to let me know right now if you’re on board with that or not. If not I’m going to very carefully get up off this table and go home.”

  I exhaled so hard my nostrils flared out. I felt a little dizzy and my thoughts between what I should say to him and what I was going to say to him were banging so loudly into one another it made my head hurt … but not as bad as my throbbing dick hurt.

  “I’m on board. I shouldn’t be, but I am.” I blinked at him for a second and then shook my head ruefully. “If I put my hands on your dick you’re going to have to work with a different PT, Dom.”

  His eyebrows shot up and a wicked grin pulled at his mouth. I wanted to kiss it off him. “Then find me another PT to work with and put your hands on my dick and come closer so I can put my mouth on yours.” I wasn’t really sure if he meant put his mouth on my dick or my mouth, but really I was okay with it being on either so I took a step forward.