Mac slid her hands under the fall of his hair, liking the silky weight of it on her skin. There were women who would maim for this much body and shine. In fact, she had to resist the urge to run her fingers through it.
His body tensed as her hands settled instead on the ridges of his shoulders, but she pretended not to notice. She was busy dealing with the sensations running up her arms on contact. Touching him was like touching a cord with a powerful current running through it. She wasn’t shocked, but it was impossible to pull away. She hadn’t considered how touching him would affect her. But it was too late to pull back now.
She began to apply pressure to muscles that felt like cement. It was going to take some time to warm them up through the fabric of his shirt.
“What are you doing?” His voice was pitched low, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to speak.
“Guess.” She held her hands in place a moment, deepening the pressure as she inhaled slowly. She felt him breathe deeper in response. Good. At least he was paying attention. He moved his legs to sit more fully upright in the chair as her hands moved to the slope between his neck and shoulders and she began a slow circular motion with her palms. But her thumbs kept getting caught in the collar of his shirt, interrupting what was supposed to be smooth soothing motion. Giving up for the moment, she moved lower, applying pressure to the muscles of his upper back along either side of his spine, and then a little more. But she wasn’t certain it was working. The heat coming through his shirt was minimal. At least he hadn’t slid away.
“Wait.” Again he used that impatient, male, imperative tone.
Her hands paused in their movement as she held her breath. She’d relaxed into the moment too soon.
He leaned forward, rising back off the chair. Turning toward her, he gripped the back of his shirt by the collar and pulled it over his head.
Mac didn’t have to wonder where to look first. She simply took in every inch of him at once.
He was big, with perfectly toned muscle swells and cuts and valleys covered by warm human skin. But she quickly skimmed that magnificent chest, seen once before. This time, she curiously eyed the tattoo that rode the swell of his right biceps from shoulder to elbow. It was an Aboriginal design of a kangaroo made up of small geometric designs and stripes in strong earth colors of red, yellow, white, and black.
As he turned at the waist to toss his shirt on the bed, Mac got another surprise.
Two other tattoos decorated him. A pair of boomerangs followed the natural contours of his back, curving from either side of his spine up over his deltoids and onto the turn of his shoulders. They were designed to look like wood but were individually decorated using the same color palette as the kangaroo. However, these designs were made up of dozens of small dots forming circles and wavy lines. Along each centerline, the dots created an animal. One was a snake, the other a turtle. His tats were so finely detailed they could have had a place in a museum. Except that the owner carried them on his skin.
She pointed to the kangaroo. “It’s beautiful.”
“Ta.” He lifted his arm to glance at his tat. “The details make it special.”
She nodded. He was beautiful. But she wasn’t going to say that.
“Massages work better on bare skin.” He gave her a dark look, daring her to disagree.
“Okay.”
He sat back down. This time he spread his legs in a more relaxed manner.
It took her a second to work up the courage to touch all that exposed skin. What had started out as a simple offer of relaxation had become a full-contact skin-on-skin exercise. She slipped her hands back under his hair. As she did, he reached back and gathered his hair in both hands, pulled it up off his neck, and smoothed it out a few times before slipping it though an elastic band. He twisted the end a couple of times and pushed it through a second time. The man bun in ten seconds.
“Better?”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see it because he hadn’t looked back.
The exposed column of his neck looked suddenly vulnerable. She had the sudden silly impulse to lean forward and place a kiss at the base. Instead she slipped her hands back into place and made slow pressure circles with her thumbs. This time the dense smooth skin of his shoulders warmed quickly to her touch.
After a few seconds more, he took a deep breath and gave up what she sensed was the struggle not to enjoy what she was doing.
“You do this a lot?”
“Yes.”
“Lucky guy.”
She smiled above his head. “I actually do male and female. After we’ve become close friends.”
He started in surprise under her hands. “Really?”
“Yep.” She knew what he was thinking, dirty-minded souls that men are. Time for the punch line. “I’m one of the best dog masseuses in all of Tampa/St. Pete.”
He laughed then, the humor startled out of him.
“Sit still. I’m not done.”
He did as he was told, for three seconds, before reaching back to lightly touch the back of one of her hands with his fingers. “You’ve got great hands.”
“I can’t afford to get many complaints. Dogs bite.” She felt his shoulder shake in silent humor this time. Good. Now it was time to find out what the real problem was.
She placed a thumb on either side of his neck, using an up-and-down motion with carefully measured pressure until she felt the muscles beneath his warmed skin begin to soften. “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“No.” When she didn’t respond, he heaved a sigh. “I don’t give speeches.”
She almost laughed, thinking he was joking. But the strain in his voice told her he was serious. He was afraid of public speaking! She couldn’t quite imagine him afraid of anything.
“Aren’t you the guy who took on two thugs with baseball bats single-handedly? You were like Batman without the armor.”
“You were impressed.” He twisted his head around to flash her a sexy grin that made her toes curl, despite the sweat that had popped out on her forehead as she worked.
“Yes, I was impressed. And angry because I was scared for you. You didn’t know me. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I did. And I’m trained for that. But giving a speech?” He shivered, a big manly quake that was all wrong, and somehow endearing. “That’s why I’m backing out.”
She returned to massaging his neck, enjoying the heat that rose into her palms from his skin. She knew that stage fright was a phobia for many people. “Okay. Let’s think about this. There are lots of ways to get over stage fright.”
“I’m not frightened.” He swiveled hard in the chair and glared at her, all manly offense. “I just can’t—don’t want to do it. It’s not my job. Kye should be here. He always plays front man. That’s our agreement.”
Her palms tingled from their contact but he was no longer in a position for her to continue so she crossed her arms under her breasts. “Kye is your business partner?”
“Yeah. Kye McGarren.”
“Is he good at speaking?”
“The best.” He smiled in a way that told her Kye was his friend and probably the person he most admired in the world. “He’s this cool Hawaiian. The Rock as a surfer dude. He can be something of a goof. But he can talk to anyone about anything. Men like him. Women love him.” He cut his gaze to her.
If he thought she was going to hand him a big old softball of You’re sexy, too, he was in for a disappointment. He didn’t need any encouragement. “Why isn’t he here?”
Oliver grunted and leaned forward, signaling Jackeroo to his side. “He decided to go and get engaged without telling me. Now he’s staying in Hawaii to be with her.”
“The nerve of some people.”
He glanced up to catch her expression, but Mac didn’t crack a smile.
“You’ve told me about Kye’s strengths with an audience, friendliness and humor. Why not play to your strengths? Which are?” She pretended to think hard. “Ah. American women love an Australian accent.”
“This is mostly a roomful of big hairy guys.”
She loved his accent. Beeg ’airy guys. “What else?”
He winked. “Good in the sack.”
“That might not impress all the big hairy guys.”
He snorted in laughter. “I can belch ‘Waltzing Matilda.’”
“Again, hm. But you know your audience.”
“That’s just it. I can handle a hazing. But looking a complete bloody fool in front of everyone?” He lifted a shoulder.
She couldn’t make fun of that. She had a lot of heavy lifting yet to do. “Men admire that Aussie in-your-face spirit. You’re all madmen, right? Playing some kind of football without helmets.”
He brightened a bit. “Footy. Australian rules.”
“That’s it. I watched a game once. It seems like a mash-up of soccer with an American football, and lots of brawny men in tight shorts banging into one another. I liked the shorts.” She offered him a sly smile. “You play?”
He just grinned.
“So. You put on your game face and go get ’em.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something. But he didn’t.
“Did they give you a subject?” He just stared at her.
Her attention shifted to Jackeroo, now sitting beside him. “Okay. That means you can talk about whatever you want. You and Jackeroo have worked all over the world for BARKS. What do you see as the number one mistake SAR handlers make?”
He sent her a grudging look. “The handlers get caught up in the search, and don’t properly or continually access their animals. Or they let ego and competitiveness with other handlers get in the way of safety precautions. BARKS lost two great dogs last year, one to heat prostration and another who fell off a cliff. Both times the handler’s fault.”
She made a circle motion for him to turn the chair back around. His skin was warmer now when she touched him. She smoothed her palms along his shoulders, indulging in the pleasure of touching. “How can that happen when they were trained professionals?”
“People get sloppy. Slack up on discipline. The dogs are only as good as their handlers. If the handler doesn’t assess the situation properly before starting out, he or she can come up short on equipment needs. Something as simple as lack of water can be a killer under the right circumstances.”
She pressed more deeply now, using her thumbs to find the kinks in his muscles and slowly working to loosen them. He didn’t sigh but she felt him easing into her massage, no longer resisting her hands. “Talk to me about the dogs. What mistakes do they make?”
“They don’t. SAR dogs are amazing. They know their stuff and are eager to please. But they aren’t aware of the dangers of a landslide or of floodwaters, the way a human is. It’s a handler’s topmost job to protect his or her canine partner. Even if it means pulling the team from a search, or refusing to take part because the conditions aren’t right.”
“That’s a pretty passionate speech. Tomorrow you’ll have a roomful of people interested in what you have to say. That’s your chance to tell them what you think and how you go about assessing a situation. Give them real-world examples.”
He shrugged, momentarily capturing her hands in the valley between his shoulders and neck. “God. That feels good.”
Mac didn’t answer, working her thumbs along the column of his neck until she was pretty sure he was about to purr. Or maybe she was about to purr, because touching him made her want to touch more. It would be so easy to slide her hands forward over his pecs— Uh-uh. So not going there. She was trying to earn his trust, not get in his pants.
“Where was your last search-and-rescue assignment?”
“I’d rather talk about something else.” Definitely a sore spot there.
“Okay. Tell me about Jackeroo.”
“Best dog in the world. My best friend, really.” The heavy muscles of his upper back began to loosen beneath her firm pressure.
“Best friends? But he can’t hold a conversation. Isn’t he more like a tool, being trained to do a job?”
“Tool? Fuck no. He’s smarter and got better instincts than most of the humans in the field.”
“Is that one reason you make such a good SAR K-9 team?”
“It’s the only reason. We can practically hear each other thinking on the job.” Oliver patted his thigh and Jackeroo set his chin there, bright eyes full of adoration.
Oliver ruffled his fur. “Jack’s always with me. More than my family. More than my friends. We rely on each other from first eyeball in the morning to last eye shut at night. I trust him with my life. He trusts me with his.”
“You’re a pack.”
“Exactly. Once, we were moving through rubble in a village devastated by an earthquake when Jack suddenly stopped and whimpered. Then he began jerking wildly at the leash, nearly pulled me off my feet. We scrambled off that pile, me cursing up a bluey. Two minutes later an aftershock nearly as large as the original quake struck. If we’d been atop that pile I’d most likely be dead.”
Mac worked a few minutes in silence while he continued to talk about his experiences. It felt like a great victory that he was talking to her about things that mattered to him. He was a natural storyteller. That didn’t mean she could think of a way to lessen his fear of public speaking. It wasn’t her business, of course, but it seemed a shame when his stories were totally interesting and lively.
Finally, he reached up with both hands and lay them over hers. “You’ve got to be tired.”
Strangely enough, she wasn’t. She could have gone on touching him for a lot longer. But he was signaling to her, Enough.
She backed up as he swung around to face her. He was actually smiling. “God. You’ve got to be sick of my yammering.”
“No, it was really interesting. You have everything you need to give a speech. Great stories. Exciting escapes.”
His grin reduced to sour-pickle status. “I can chat. That’s different.”
“You absolutely can do it. If you’re worried that you’ll forget something, write down the things you just told me and read the speech.”
His expression lost all friendliness. It ran quickly through defiance and anger to end at pain. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean? Of course you can.”
He jerked his head in a single negative as he looked away.
“Now you’re being childish. Anyone can read a speech.”
“Not me.”
When he looked up, it was to slam her with an expression that felt like a fist.
“I can’t read.”