Free The Last Kolovsky Playboy by Carol Marinelli

sure it was helping, but the muscle finally gave beneath her fingers. Then just after it relaxed it tensed again. She heard his curse, saw him grit his teeth, and she actually knew something about how he felt.
    ‘When I had Georgie…’
    ‘Don’t!’ He both laughed and warned her at the same time. ‘Don’t say you know how it feels…’
    ‘But I do.’ Still her hand worked on. ‘I was on my own, and the nurses kept telling me that I was doing fine, that it was all completely normal, but I was begging for something. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. I knew childbirth was supposed to hurt, but it was agony. The pain just kept coming…’
    ‘For how long?’
    ‘All night,’ Kate said. ‘And I thought I’d never get through it, but I did.’
    ‘I don’t want drugs,’ Aleksi said, and Kate smiled.
    ‘I said the same.’ She pressed her fingers harder into the tight knot of his thigh muscle, heard his hiss of breath,saw his hand go to remove hers. But the muscle finally relented, the tight spasm loosened, and she worked on.
    ‘Did you give in?’ Aleksi asked.
    ‘Absolutely.’ Kate smiled. ‘I screamed the place down for everything.’
    And Aleksi smiled, too. ‘I won’t give in.’
    He wouldn’t—that much she knew.
    ‘Is it agony?’
    ‘No.’ His answer surprised her. ‘It’s not so much the pain…more the thoughts.’
    ‘Thoughts?’ Still her hands worked on.
    ‘It would be easier to knock myself out,’ Aleksi explained. ‘But I just need to get through this.’
    He’d put on muscle in his leg. The last time she had seen it, it had been withered and wasted, studded with pins and bolts. Now it was tanned and lean, with fresh scars and dark hair. When his thigh muscle was pliant she worked down, as the physio had done, and unknotted the calf muscle that bore so much of the strain of his healing thigh.
    ‘You’ll get there.’ She was absolutely sure of it. ‘Just relax.’
    ‘Easier said than done,’ he said wryly.
    ‘Just try,’ she pleaded.
    So he did.
    He lay there and thought only of her hands.
    Listened to the tick, tick, tick of her little alarm clock.
    He had loathed this in hospital—the invasion of his body, being told to relax, not to fight—but right now he got what they had been trying to tell him, because when he did relax, when he did let go, it was as if his muscles were melting.
    He had never been better looked after.
    Aleksi lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
    He had never been more relaxed, more comfortable with another soul.
    Always he performed.
    At dinner, in business, in bed, in hospital—always it was Aleksi driving the conversation, the deal, the orgasm, the recovery. Whatever the goal, he was relentless in pursuing it, but tonight—this morning—he lay there and for a little while just let her…
    Let his mind, let his body, let himself just be—till the spasm hit again, his leg contracting, his mind tightening with the pain of recall, memories awakening. The screech of tyres and the smell of burning rubber, his car spinning out of control because his mind had been so full of other things. And as he lay there it was so vivid he had to clench his fists to prevent his arms flying up to shield his face.
    Her hands were at the back of his thigh now, working the tight hamstring, and he wanted to shout out because it was sheer hell to remember.
    ‘Don’t think of anything,’ she said gently.
    So he looked at her instead of looking inside his mind. Her eyes were down in concentration. His moved lower too, to her cleavage, and he focused on that for a soothing moment, willing the gown to part, to reveal just a little bit more, but desire alone couldn’t do that. Then he watched her hands work, saw his flesh move with each stroke to his thigh, felt his breathing slow down, and it was almost hypnotic the effect she had on him.
    He was covered now by just the small towel which had loosened. His thigh was soft, but her tender ministrations had