Page 109 of How to Lose at Love

Good-looking.

Sort of witty.

Honest.

Bright future ahead of him.

How many guys your age can claim they have any job prospects lined up after graduation?

Basically none of them.

I would be a fool not to have a teensy-weensy crush on him.

Just a bit…

Stop, Ryann. Stop it.

He’s here now to relax and chill, not listen to you whine about what a shitty friend you are.

Friend?

Yeah, I suppose that’s what we are.

“Ryann?” His low, deep voice cuts through the baking show on the television, gravelly and sexy.

“Hmm?”

“If you want to make it up to me, you might consider giving me a back rub.”

“Make it up to you? Make what up to you?”

“You know, thinking I’m a douche and assuming you needed to reform me.”

Um, yeah, I did do that. “And all I have to do to get back in your good graces is give you a back rub?”

“Shoulder massage would be killer. I’d love you forever.”

I’d love you forever…

I shiver, averting my eyes so he doesn’t see the effect his voice has on my girly parts, adjusting myself on the couch so I’m in an optimal ‘shoulder rub’ position.

“Yeah?” His brows go up skeptically. “You’re actually going to give me a massage?”

“Sure, why not?”

Dallas wastes no time shrugging out of my fluffy, girly robe to bare his upper torso. “No decent massage can be had over a layer of clothes.”

He lets the furry fabric pool at his waist.

I stare at his back, eyes roaming over the firm muscles, tight trapezius and deltoids, all terms I learned the summer I took a biology class in high school to fulfill my science credits.

My eyes roam farther south.

“Are you wearing underwear?” I eyeball his lower back quizzically, specifically his nether region. The tapered waist, the iliac crest.

“No, they’re still drying. Hope you don’t mind that I hung them in the bathroom over the shower curtain rod.”

I nod slowly, gaze glued to the smooth plane of his back muscles.

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