He took a step backward and debated the wisdom of letting Gabrielle rub her hands on him. The debate didn't last long. She tilted her head to the side and looked at Rim. "Take off your shirt, Joe," she said, and her voice flowed through him like that oil she was warming on a little burner. He guessed he didn't have to leave just yet. He was thirty-five and in control.

It was a massage. Not sex. After he'd been shot, he'd had the knots kneaded from his muscles on a regular basis as part of his therapy. Of course, his therapist had been in her fifties and looked nothing like Gabrielle Breedlove.

Yeah, he could stay. As long as he remembered that Gabrielle was his informant, that screwing around with her would screw up his job. And that just wasn't going to happen. No way in hell.

"Aren't you going to take off your clothes?"

"I'm leaving my pants on."

She shook her head. "I wish you wouldn't. The oil will ruin your pants."

"I'll take my chances."

"I won't peek." The tone of her voice and the frown on her lips told him she thought he was absurd. Then she raised her right hand as if swearing an oath. "I promise."

"Towel's too small."

"Oh." She left and returned a moment later with a big beach towel. She tossed it on the arm of the sofa beside him. "How's this?"

"Great."

Gabrielle paid fascinated attention to Joe's hands as he drew the bottom of his silk polo from his gabardine trousers. Like a maddeningly slow striptease, he pulled the ribbed material just enough to give her a flash of flat stomach and a vertical line of dark hair before he released the shirt and it fell to his waist. She released a breath she hadn't known she was holding and lifted her gaze to his face. She stared into his brown eyes watching her watch him. He raised a hand to grab a fistful of shirt between his shoulders. Then he pulled it over his head and tossed it on the sofa next to the bath towel he'd refused to wear. His hands moved to his belt buckle, and she quickly glanced away.

She turned her attention to the almond oil she'd poured into a shallow lotus bowl and left warming on a vaporizer. Her mouth felt impossibly dry and watery all at the same time. She turned her gaze so he wouldn't catch her staring, but not before she'd seen the fine curls covering the defined muscles of his chest, spreading down his sternum and flat stomach and disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers. His nipples were a darker brown than in her painting of him, the hair on his chest softer and not as thick.

She added three drops of benzoin and eucalyptus to the almond oil, then placed the bowl and defuser on a small table next to the fireplace. Joe spun the dining room chair to face the fire, straddled the seat, and sat backward. He folded his arms across the top rung and presented her with his smooth back. His tight skin stretched across hard muscle and the indent of his spine that ran between his shoulders to the small of his back. A nicotine patch was stuck to his waist and half hidden by the thick white towel hung low on his hips.

"Don't you think it's going to get too hot sitting so close to the ike?" he asked.

"If your skin isn't warm, your pores will be closed to the healing benefits of the benzoin and eucalyptus." She stood beside him and placed one palm across his forehead and the other at the nape of his neck. "Drop your head a little bit," she said and gently squeezed his knotted neck muscles. "Bring awareness to the tension in your head. Now take a deep cleansing breath and hold it until I tell you," she instructed as she rubbed the pad of her thumb up the top vertebras of his spine and into the fine hair at the base of his skull. She counted to five and slid her thumb back down. "Release your breath, and with it, the tension you feel in your head. Let it go."

"Ahh… Gabrielle?"

"Yes, Joe."

"I don't have tension in my head."

The relaxing essence of lavender and geranium filled her living room as she moved to stand behind him. Her hands slid to his temples, and she massaged away the tension he didn't think he had. "Joe, you're so tense you're brittle." She slowly combed her fingers up the sides of his head; his silky hair curled around her knuckles as she entwined them on top of his skull. She applied pressure with her palms and rubbed. "How does that feel?"

He groaned.

"That's what I thought." She spent a bit more time than usual on his skull and neck, but his hair felt so soft between her fingers that she couldn't help herself. A warm little tingle traveled up her arms and tightened her breasts, and she forced herself to move on, to relinquish the pleasure of touching his hair.

She poured a small measure of the massage oil from the lotus bowl into her palms. "Take a deep cleansing breath and hold it." She placed her hands on the back of each shoulder and rolled and squeezed his muscles. His trapezius and deltoids were tight and knotted, and she moved her hands to the outside edge of his shoulders and down his arms to his elbows. "Feel the tension in the base of your skull. Let it go as you exhale," she instructed even though she had a real good feeling he wasn't using his breathing to relax. She kneaded her way back up. "Visualize the bad stress flowing away from you and replace it with white prana, or clean universal energy."

"Gabrielle, you're scaring me."

"Shhh." She didn't believe anything scared him, especially her. She dipped her fingers into the oil, then slid her palms down, then up his back, preparing and warming his muscles for a deeper massage. She molded her hands to the contours of his flesh, feeling and learning the definition and shape of him. "Is this where it hurts?" she asked as her hands moved to his right shoulder.

"A bit lower."

She kneaded and squeezed and rubbed a drop of black pepper oil onto his aching muscles. The heat from the fire warmed his skin, while the light of the flames chased shadows across his flesh and gleamed in his dark hair. A pleasurable flutter settled in her stomach, and her mind and spirit fought to keep her touch impersonal. She might not be a licensed masseuse, but she knew the distinct difference between a healing massage and a sensual massage.

"Gabrielle?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry about what happened in the park last week."

"For tackling me?"

"No, I'm not sorry about that. I enjoyed it too much."

"Then what are you sorry about?"

"That you were frightened."

"And that's the only thing you're sorry about?"

"Well, yeah."

She gently sank her fingertips into his flesh. She had a feeling he didn't apologize for anything very often, and she accepted it as his best effort.

"I've got to admit, I've never been mistaken for a stalker before."

"You probably have, just no one has told you the truth before me." She smiled and continued to stroke across his shoulder and down his arms. "You have a very menacing aura sometimes. You should work on it."

"I'll be sure to do that."

She slid her hands back up and pressed her thumbs in the bony ridge at the base of his skull. "I'm sorry I hurt your leg."

One of her thumbs brushed his jaw as he glanced over his shoulder at her. His dark eyes looked up at her, firelight casting his face within a golden glow. "When?"

"That day in the park when I got you on the ground. Afterward, you limped to the car."

"That's an old injury. You didn't do that."

"Oh."

"You sound disappointed."

"No." Her fingers fanned outward, and her hands moved to the sides of his rib cage. "Not disappointed exactly. You were so horrible to me, I just liked to think I made you suffer a little bit that day too."

He smiled before he returned his gaze to the fire. "Oh, you did. Every time I walk into the station, I get a raft of shit about you and your hair spray. I'm likely to hear about you for years."

"Once this case is over, everyone will forget about me." Beneath his hard muscles, his ribs tapered to his flat abdomen. "You'll probably forget, too."

"Now, that's never going to happen," he spoke from deep within his chest. "I'll never forget you, Gabrielle Breedlove."

His words pleased her more than she wanted to admit. They settled beneath her breast, next to her heart, and wanned her like the glow of a tea candle. She smoothed her hands down Joe's sides to his waist, up to his armpits, then back down. "Now bring your awareness to your shoulders. Take a deep breath, and hold it." She felt him suck his stomach in, and his muscles turned hard. "You aren't holding a deep breath, are you?"

"No."

"You have to use your breathing if you want to relax completely."

"Impossible."

"Why?"

"Just take my word for it."

"Would a glass of wine help?"

"I don't drink wine." He paused before he spoke again. "There's only one thing that would help."

"What is it?"

"A cold shower."

"That doesn't sound relaxing."

He laughed again, but he didn't sound amused. "Well, there is one other thing I've been sitting here thinking about."

"What?" she asked although she knew.

His words were low and husky when he said, "Never mind. It involves both of us naked, and that can't happen."

Of course she knew it couldn't. They were complete opposites. He upset her universal balance. She wanted a man of enlightenment. He was as enlightened as a caveman. He thought she was crazy, and maybe she was. Less than a week ago, she'd thought he was a stalker; now he sat in her living room while she oiled his body as if he were a Chippendale dancer. Maybe she was crazy. Still she asked, "Why?"

"You're my informant."

Which wasn't a good reason as far as she was concerned. The informant's agreement she'd signed was a piece of paper. A piece of paper that couldn't dictate desire. Now, the fact that they were two totally different people, with totally different beliefs, should have been a very good reason for them to avoid the huge mistake of falling in bed together.