She nodded in satisfaction as his breathing evened out. Even though she was still a little breathless and hypersensitive to the feel of his skin under her hands, she was relaxing into the routine of working out the knots in his back. She could feel him relaxing under her hands, and it brought a smile to her face to know that she was drawing the tension from his muscles and making him melt into the mattress. She worked down both sides of his spine, then focused on just the right side, alternating hands as she pressed against his skin. Then both hands worked their way up the left side.

She raised an eyebrow when he said he's have to watch his mouth around her. “You don't strike me as someone who's good at watching his mouth,” she replied lightly, grateful that her voice finally sounded almost normal. His next words, however, made her brow knit in confusion even as they sent a little thrill of excitement through her that she didn't entirely understand. He was talking about their verbal sparring, not about her bizarre wish that she was transforming his world the same way he was transforming hers. “I'm trying to increase your peace of mind, not wreck havoc on it,” she teased, still trying to keep the words light even though other emotions were creeping into her voice.

He grunted when she dug her thumb into another knot, and she might have stopped if he hadn't told her to keep going, to never stop... She swallowed hard. “If I never stopped you're going to end up very sore,” she murmured, finishing on the knot and then moving her hands up to knead his shoulders and then his neck. The candlelight flickered over his back, and she was a little mesmerized by the light bending over his skin as she massaged it.