Divas by Rebecca Chance Read Free Book Online

for God’s sake, he knew how hard this shit was. So she lay there, groaning, and he knelt there, laughing at her, and finally said:
    ‘I guess all this puffing and panting means you want your massage now?’
    And she nodded, pretending she didn’t even have the energy to talk any more. She heard him stand up and go over to his kit-bag for the massage cream, and all the breath really did go out
of her in one long delicious exhale of release, because there was nothing more for her to do now, Lawrence was going to put his clever hands on her and work out every single knot and leave her all
loose and stretched and happy.
    He started with the stretches, folding one of her legs over the other and pressing down, down, leaning right into her, till her bottom was off the floor and she was folded up into a tight parcel
like a contortionist, her glutes stretching till she bit her lip with it, strands of his hair coming loose from the ponytail and falling over his face.
    ‘Hurts?’ he said, those slanting grey eyes watching her, serious, making sure he didn’t go too far.
    ‘Hurts so good, ’ she gasped.
    ‘Another inch?’
    ‘Just one.’
    ‘OK.’
    He put slightly more weight on her, leaning into it, his eyes even more intent now, his hands feeling out exactly how far he could push to give her maximum stretch without ripping or tearing.
Lawrence would never go too far, never over-work her. You could see that from his own body, which wasn’t pumped-up like that of most muscle-crazed trainers going for the burn, but long and
lean and endlessly flexible from three hours of yoga a day, from five to eight every morning. Lawrence treated his body as though it was his most precious possession, and when he told you that was
his philosophy you found yourself wondering why everyone else didn’t do that too.
    And after the stretches, he turned her over, and she reached up and pulled off her sports bra, and he sat on her buttocks and worked on her shoulders and back and upper arms, smoothing in a
cream that smelt of mint and geraniums, his clever fingers seeking out and undoing every tangle of muscle and cramp, digging all the way around her shoulderblades, finding areas of tension she
hadn’t even realised existed, and rolling them away with his fingertips and his knuckles and even, sometimes, his elbows. Pain burned through her and was gone as if it had never existed. Her
eyes were closed, her breath was slow and, honestly, she was drooling a little, though she’d have died before she let him know.
    By the time he moved lower and worked on her buttocks and all the way down her strong, tight hamstrings, she was in a trance, even though it always hurt so bad when he massaged her calves. They
were so pulled up from all the dancing in heels that he had to hurt her to get into them and do any good. And by the time he turned her over again and straddled her and started smoothing the cream
into her upper body – long, slow strokes to get to the hard pectoral muscles under her soft little breasts – she felt, as she always did at this stage, as if she were in another
dimension, where time had slowed down with Lawrence’s firm palms moving in small circles around her chest, easing out the muscles under her arms, which worked so hard to pull her up the pole
and hold her there that they had always been tight till Lawrence started work on them.
    She was in water. She was floating on the sea, buoyed up by gentle waves, totally safe. The water was blood-warm, and it would taste like her own salt skin, or Lawrence’s, the moisture she
could see collecting between his pecs as he bent over her, so close that all she could smell was him, his warm strong scent, the faint trace of shampoo on his hair from his morning shower. He
rubbed cream into her stomach, and now she smelled geraniums again, soft and faintly peppery, and he was running his fingers round the waistband of her shorts, and she lifted her hips to help him
slip them