Entwined by Elisabeth Naughton Page B

over him. And oh, man, he liked it. Liked the way she filled him. It felt good. Calming. Complete. The way he imagined the Elysian Fields probably felt when one passed to the afterlife.
    Out of nowhere the pain in his shoulder jackknifed, sending sparks to his brain as if he’d been sliced all over again. He gasped, tensed, dug his fingernails into the wood of the king’s desk
    His eyes flew open. He stared at her as he gritted his teeth in pain. Her face was scrunched up as if she felt it too, but her eyes remained closed and she didn’t pull her hands away.
    “It’s deep,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to fix it?”
    The wound. She was in the fucking wound. “No,” he rasped between clenched teeth, fingers digging deeper into the wooden desk. “It’s…fine.”
    “ Ilithios .” Ever the professional, she left it at calling him an idiot and didn’t push again. Soon her fingers were moving once more, sliding away from his wound until the pain lessened and warmth returned to his chest.
    Holy Hades. He blew out a ragged breath. That was most definitely not a pinch. If she’d ever wanted to hurt him, she could have done it with barely a flick of her finger.
    “I need you to focus again, Zander,” she said firmly. “Relax. Close your eyes.”
    Relax. Yeah. That sounded possible.
    He took another deep breath. Tried to think about…nothing,like she’d suggested. And succeeded, for all of two seconds. Until her hands started moving south. Down his rib cage and abdomen, and stopped to hover right over his belly button.
    “Lie back,” she said. “And spread your legs slightly.”
    The command was enough to send the blood straight to his groin. His cock strained against his pants. And oh, yeah, this was wonderful. He was going to have a hard-on in a matter of seconds, and she was telling him to lie back and spread his legs.
    He gritted his teeth again, did as she said and prayed her eyes were still closed. She didn’t touch him, but he sensed her move closer. Felt the heat between his legs as she eased nearer and leaned over his groin, her hands millimeters above him now, moving slowly lower, now over the waistband of his pants, down the zipper, lower still. His skin tingled in the pressure points between his hips and torso. Warmth continued to move south. He held his breath and waited, even as he felt himself grow impossibly hard beneath the fabric of his pants.
    Her hands hovered over his lap. Warmth turned to heat to a white-hot burn in his groin he knew all too well. And oh, fuck, that was her breath against his belly button. She was leaning way over him. Her face so close. Images popped into his mind: Her succulent lips. Her mouth against his skin. Running lower. Her tongue…Her doing this exam and whatever else she wanted to him, naked, with him laid out before her like an offering.
    His breaths came deep and ragged as he fought the arousal. If she so much as bumped his cock accidentally he knew he’d go off, right here on this makeshift examination table. And would that not be mortifying or what? He told himself it wasn’t her. It was what she was doing to him. Any healer doing this exam would have the same effect on him. It was the energy rushing through him that was juicing his libido, not her .
    Yeah, right, dumbass.
    It felt like an eternity before she moved on, down his right leg, and he finally drew a full breath when he felt the warmth spread out of his groin and down his limb. She was now quick and efficient, examining one leg and then the other. And there was only a tiny twinge of electricity in his groin again when she moved back to start at the top of his left leg.
    All that warmth seemed to rush out of the big toe of his left foot, and he heard her push up from the floor, sigh and finally say, “You’re done.”
    She turned away from him, replaced the tools she’d used earlier in her bag. Almost afraid of what he’d see, he opened his eyes, stared up at the