All's Fair in Love and Chocolate (Marietta Chocolate Wars #1) - Amy Andrews Page 0,21

and he stopped pouring. Their eyes locked. “Couch is good.” His gaze seemed to be very much in favor of furniture that allowed people to get horizontal. “Go sit down; I’ll bring it out.”

*

Twenty minutes later, after Reuben had taken their plates away, he ushered Viv into a reclining position on the couch and grabbed her feet, setting them down in his lap. Her belly was full of spaghetti, the fire was casting a golden glow over the darkened room and Netflix was on the TV. They’d gone with a Die Hard movie rather than her current binge Outlander given it was a little too heavy on the sex for two people who’d taken a pledge.

They really didn’t need any extra stimulus.

“You have very cute toes,” he murmured.

Goose bumps marched in waves up Viv’s legs to the backs of her knees as Reuben ran the tip of his index finger over her toenails. It wasn’t a remotely sexual touch but every cell in her body burgeoned like tiny flower petals opening to the sun.

“What’s this color called?” he asked, rubbing his finger over the nail of her big toe.

“Shimmering Marigold.”

He nodded. “Very apt.”

Then he slid the pad of his thumb along the arch of her foot and it took all Viv’s willpower not to moan out loud as a pulse of electricity swept from her toes to the top of her head. A strange kind of sizzle was left in its wake, prickling at her nipples and tingling between her legs.

Holy guacamole.

She was pretty sure she was already wet and if this was how she was after one touch, she was going to be a puddle on the couch in a few minutes.

If he noticed her reaction, he didn’t say. In fact, he didn’t really look at her at all. Delivering a very thorough, impersonal massage, his fingers working their magic on her feet as he steadfastly watched the television. He laughed from time to time, keeping up a light commentary filling the void of her silence but the fact was, he could recite chapter and verse from the John McClane lexicon, and her body was in happy-ending territory.

The long, languid stroke of his thumbs might as well have been the brush of his mouth, the slide of his tongue. Hell, the man was nudging her closer to orgasm just from touching her feet.

His words from earlier came back to her. Oh no, that won’t make you weep. That’s what he’d said out on Main Street and she’d known then what he’d been alluding to but experiencing it was something else. The ache in her arches and her heels had ebbed quickly beneath his ministrations and the massage had morphed into something far different.

Something sensual. Something decadent. Like warm chocolate and expensive body oil and satiny lingerie.

It had become a seduction.

And it didn’t matter that John McClane was being all larger than life, bringing the testosterone as he blew shit up in the background, Reuben was the only man in the room.

“How are your calves?”

Viv dragged her eyes open, lifted her head up a little to find him watching her, his gaze lingering on her mouth and her throat. She sucked in a breath, which sounded loud and ragged despite the background noise of explosions, and Reuben’s gaze dropped to her breasts, to the uneven rise and fall of her chest and she thanked God for the camouflage of cashmere hiding her impossibly tight nipples.

Her calves were fine. Absolutely fine. Not that she thought for a moment this was about her calves. He was asking for permission to stray from the original plan. To touch her more. To move his hands higher.

A brief thought about their pledge flitted through her mind and out the other side. “They could do with some attention.”

Chapter Four

It was possible Viv whimpered when his fingers breached the hem of her loose sweats. For damn sure she lost all ability to hold her head upright as his thumb pushed from one end of her calf to the other in a long, languid stroke.

“How’s that?” he asked as he repeated the stroke, increasing the pressure a little, going deeper into the tissue. “Not too hard?”

Viv gave a quiet moan as the sensations caused by his touch rolled through her body like the low roll of thunder heralding a summer storm. Every part of her throbbed in the aftermath. Her heart beat hard and slow, her breathing was hot and heavy, her limbs felt leaden, weighed down by