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 br**sts, 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 br**sts 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.”