Page 20 of Jace

“I am glad,” he told her, turning his burning gaze back to her ankle.

He began to massage her again and she leaned back to relax into his touch.

Though his hands were huge and strong, they were also very skilled. He seemed to intuit exactly how much pressure she could bear. He circled and pulled until her ankle felt wrung out and completely relaxed. Then he moved down to begin working on the arch of her foot.

Susannah had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out. At first his touch brought pain, but it quickly turned to exquisite relief.

She moaned again, in spite of herself.

“Good?” he purred.

“So good,” she told him.

There was something happening between them. It wasn’t just the dating dry spell she had joked with the other women about on the way here. It felt like they were being pulled together magnetically, like she had known him all her life.

He moved to her toes and the pleasure turned on her in an instant.

She yelped, giggling and trying to pull her foot away.

But he clamped down on her thigh with one hand as he continued to massage her toes with the other.

“Stop, stop, stop,” she panted desperately.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, letting go immediately.

“No, it tickles,” she told him, pulling her feet up under her, as if to keep them safe.

He studied her expression carefully.

“Are you ticklish?” she asked him.

He shook his head slowly.

“Too bad,” she said ruefully. “You would have had to watch your back for retaliation.”

His eyebrows shot up, then a look of recognition relaxed his face.

“You are joking,” he said in a pleased way.

“Sure,” she told him.

“Would you like me to massage your other foot?” he asked.

She nodded and thrust her foot into his lap.

“No more tickling,” she told him sternly.

He frowned, but took her foot in his hands and began massaging the balm into her other ankle.

They were from different cultures, and definitely had different ways of relating to each other. But she had to hand it to him for massaging her. He had instinctively known how to win her heart.

She hummed appreciatively as his deft hands moved over her skin.

“It feels good again,” he noted, his voice deep and a little raspy.

“Yes,” she told him, forcing herself to watch the dancing flames and stop noticing how unbelievably hot he was. “So, I feel like we should be telling campfire stories.”

“Ah, great battle tales,” he said with a smile. “I know plenty.”

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