Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Depends. What’ve you got? Wouldn’t mind a little Zeppelin or Stones.”
“You’ll have to suit yourself to ambient sounds, mostly. Rain, waterfalls, fire crackling, Tibetan singing bowls.”
“What about what was playing on the radio in the foyer?”
“Yasmine?”
“Is that who she is?”
“Mm. She’s a pretty popular Lebanese singer.” Amani fished his phone from his pocket and flicked through his iTunes playlist until he found one of her albums, then put one of his favorite songs, Hal, on low volume and set the phone on the table. Her throaty, softly alluring and yet quietly defiant voice floated over the room as she drifted in and out of one Arabic dialect after another, mingling with winding, sensuous notes. “Is that all right?”
“Yeah.” Newcomb sounded hesitant, and after a moment his head rose over the top of the screen. “Do I…ah…just come walking out like this?”
Amani arched a brow. “Are you wearing a towel?”
“Yes.”
“Then…” He swept a mocking bow, gesturing toward the table. “Your throne awaits.”
“So Ash booked me with the sarky masseuse. Good to know.” Yet Newcomb hovered a moment longer, before stepping out from behind the screen, all his grace seemingly shed with his clothing to leave him elbows and angles everywhere.
Elbows, angles, and a surprisingly powerful body that had been hidden beneath the smoothing, sleek lines of the waistcoat and slacks. His shoulders were broad and cut in those exaggerated angles that made the muscles of his chest and arms seem to leap out from the sculpture of those shoulders, tapering down to a very firm and precise line at his waist, which followed a straight, chiseled flow his hips—and vanished into the towel wrapped around him, only for that tight interplay of muscle to continue in tightly crafted thighs and calves. Where most men with his kind of build would be almost puffy, he was compact and sharp, enough to look almost like a painting—as if some artist had drawn him in in the geometry of paint slashes in pale ivory touched with flushes of peach and pink to soften his most cutting points, everything from the peaked contours of his abdomen to the gliding curves of his iliac crest a little too perfect.
Or he might be perfect, if not for the old remnants of faded scars over his chest and arms, things that looked as though they came from crashing fists, cutting blades, crushing impacts—things that turned him from a glossy, untouched sculpture into something rougher, more masculine, an animal hiding under the smiling charm.
Amani sighed. No wonder he had that easy charm, that confidence that could be knocked off-kilter so easily just by exposing him to something unfamiliar.
Gorgeous men just didn’t know what to do when the world didn’t orient itself to them without them even having to ask.
“Face down on the table,” Amani repeated, and turned away to test the temperature of the oil.
When he turned back, Victor Newcomb had settled himself a bit stiffly on the table, resting on his stomach with his cheek propped against folded forearms and the towel riding a little too low on the dip of his hips. His back was just as starkly articulated as his chest, with the same faded hints of scars so ancient they’d blended into the color of his skin without a hint of pink. His hair had fallen out of its slicked back gloss, tumbling across his brow and into blue eyes turned luminous in the shadows.
Blue eyes that were currently locked on Amani, watching him as he poured a small, coin-sized pool of oil into his palm and began rubbing it between his hands.
“You seem irritated,” Newcomb murmured.
Amani flashed a perfunctory smile. “Just preoccupied.”
“Are you sure? I know Ash rather booked this at the last moment, and—”
“It’s fine. My appointment calendar was open for the day, and when we don’t do business we don’t make money.” Amani picked up the oil warmer and tipped it so the lightest dribble of oil pooled between Newcomb’s shoulder blades; the man tensed subtly, a soft hiss in the back of his throat. “Now hold still. This works better if you’re still, relaxed, and quiet.”
Newcomb chuckled, broad shoulders vibrating, the oil slithering and flowing down toward the channel of his spine. “That’s one of the more roundabout ways of telling a fellow to shut up.”
“I can be more direct, if you’d like.”
“I can take a hint.” An odd, almost melancholy smile played about Newcomb’s lips, and he closed his eyes. “I’ll behave. Do your worst.”
Amani rolled his eyes, and curled his fingers against those broad shoulders, and began working his thumbs into his trapezius muscles in slow sweeps. It was usually the best place to start, when most people carried their stress there like it was backpacking with them through everyday life. Start to release the tension here, and it would flow down through the body to relax and warm and encourage other muscles to loosen before they had even been touched. Newcomb was stiff under his touch—holding himself tense, but there were also knots of rigid, deep-ingrained tension under his palms, that felt like they had been building for far longer than they should considering Newcomb’s apparent age.