Page 12 of The Hacker
She asked him a few basic questions about his general health, raising her eyebrows when he told her he swam every day for an hour or more. “So we don’t need to work on lung capacity or stamina either, it sounds like.” She made a note.
The treadmill slowed and stopped. Dawn tucked the tablet under her arm and gave him a full-on grin. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
The next fifty-five minutes were a challenge. She pushed him to see where his strengths, weaknesses, and limitations were. By the end he was breathing hard and his glasses had fogged up enough to require wiping off.
Then the real torture began. She had him lie down on a mat before she knelt beside him. “As your reward for working so hard, I’m going to stretch you. Bend your left knee and put your foot flat on the floor. Good. Turn your head to the left.”
She circled his left wrist with her fingers in a firm, warm grasp and pulled his arm out straight on the floor so it lay a mere inch from her folded legs. Releasing his wrist, she shifted one hand to his left shoulder and put the other on the outside of his bent knee. She pressed his shoulder down and his knee to the right, ever so slowly but inexorably.
He barely noticed the pleasant pull in his back muscles because he was enveloped in Dawn. A faint scent of something lemony emanated from her body. With his head turned sideways, he had a close-up view of the black fabric of her leggings stretched over her deliciously rounded hip and strong thigh. The warmth of her palms seemed to soak through his T-shirt and running pants, creating pools of sensation on his skin that migrated straight to his groin. He closed his eyes and began mentally coding the most boring program he could think of.
“Tell me when it becomes uncomfortable.” Her voice was so close, almost by his ear, which made him think of lying in bed beside her. Both of them naked.
“Stop there.” His command was more abrupt than he intended.
“Sorry. Did I hurt you?” She sounded contrite.
“Not at all, but as you said, I need to work on flexibility.” He rolled his head back to center. A mistake. Her face with its elegant angles hovered over his, a look of concern darkening her brown eyes. If he pushed up on his elbows, he could just reach that lush mouth of hers to see if it was as soft as it appeared.
He would not allow himself more than a passing glance at her breasts, their tempting curves suspended above his chest. However, when her ponytail fell over her shoulder so that its silk nearly brushed his cheek, he considered winding it around his fingers to bring her down to him. The thought of those lush breasts pressing into his chest made him stifle a groan.
“Let’s try the other direction. Stop me the moment you feel any discomfort.” She stood and skirted the mat to his other side.
He almost laughed since he was already feeling plenty of discomfort. He started on the computer code again the moment she touched his wrist.
You are a professional and this is just another client,Dawn repeated to herself for the fifteenth time. She forced herself to ignore how Leland’s pulse beat against her palm as she positioned his arm. She kept her eyes fixed resolutely on the mat somewhere to the side of his shoulder as she eased his knee across his body, testing for the kind of resistance that indicated pain. It had been a mistake to look down into his eyes the first time she’d touched him, because she’d seen a flare of something that had sent heat rippling through her own body.
God knows she’d trained good-looking men before. Some of them had even hit on her. She’d never felt any desire to take them up on their offers.
So why the hell was she hoping that Leland would say something inappropriate?
“Stop there,” he said.
“You have excellent flexibility on this side,” she said, lifting his knee back into neutral position. She took a deep breath and reminded herself again that this was just a body that needed stretching.
Then she pushed his bent knee gently toward his chest. There was no way to avoid looking into his eyes now. She needed to gauge his reaction to the stretch so she didn’t overdo it. Not to mention that she would appear distracted if she gazed off into the distance when her position put her face-to-face with him. Maybe he would close his eyes the way some of her clients did.
No such luck. As she carefully shifted some of her weight onto his shin to deepen the stretch, the blue of Leland’s eyes blazed up at her, sending little flickers of sensation dancing over her skin. She had the strangest desire to taste the sheen of sweat that glazed his forehead. Or to brush back the strand of his brown hair that clung to it.
And his mouth. Oh dear God, she wanted to trace the sculpted lines of it with her lips and her tongue and maybe even her teeth.
“I think that’s far enough,” Leland said, his voice strained.
Dawn eased off quickly. She’d been so caught up in her fantasy that she’d forgotten to check for signs of tension. “Okay, I’m going to straighten your leg upward now.”
Leland nodded. Dawn wrapped one hand around his ankle and placed the other flat on the back of his thigh. As she pushed his leg toward his head, she tried to ignore the press of his tendons and bones against her fingers. This time she kept her mind on the task, helped by the fact that Leland had transferred his gaze to the ceiling, although his attention seemed inward.
He evensmelledgood. There was a faint aroma of laundry detergent emanating from his gray T-shirt that blended with his own scent of clean, healthy male, made stronger by his exertions. She wanted to bury her nose in the crook of his neck and inhale him.
She couldn’t decide whether to cut the stretching short so she could regain her sanity or whether she preferred to prolong the exquisite torture of touching him and being allowed to manipulate his big, toned body in any direction she felt like.
She would have the same decision to make tomorrow ... and the next day.
But she had a job to do and she intended to do it right. After the final stretch, she settled him back into a neutral position on his back, her pulse speeding up as she let her gaze skim down the impressive length of his body. “Okay, good work,” she said, standing up to put a little more distance between herself and his magnetic pull. “I’ll walk you to the locker room.”
His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath with his eyes closed. “I can’t decide if I’m grateful or in pain. I’m afraid to find out by standing up.”
“Coward.” She reached downward, palm open. Touching him again was a bad idea if she wanted to maintain her professional composure. But she couldn’t stop herself. “I’ll give you a hand up.”
