But the thought had barely popped into his mind when he dismissed it again. Rose petals, slinky underwear, and artful posing on the bed just weren't Tamara.
He sent her a text that read, "Where are you?"
But after an agonizing minute or two, he had no reply, so he cautiously opened the front door and stepped into her foyer, listening for a clue as to where she was. Elec didn't really hear much of anything, just a clock ticking and the air-conditioning humming. A quick stroll around the downstairs revealed nothing but empty rooms, so he sucked in a breath and started up the stairs, hoping this was what she wanted him to do. If not, next time she needed to give him better instructions.
There was music playing in what he knew was her bedroom, so he knocked on the door frame, even though the door was open. "Tamara?" he called, glancing in.
She wasn't naked on the bed, which was a little disappointing. In fact, she wasn't even in the room as far as he could tell. But when he leaned his head in, he realized her bathroom door was open and he could hear the shower running.
That realization produced an instant erection. Knowing she was ten feet away, with no doors or locks between, naked and wet in a steamy shower, made him appreciate how long it had actually been since they had last had sex.
Fourteen days. It had been two very long weeks, with one torturously pleasurable make-out session in the meantime. That was clearly way too long, because his body ached with want from head to goddamn toe.
And she was in for a surprise if she thought he was just going to sit down on her pretty little pink bedroom chair and wait for her to finish up. Yanking his T-shirt off over his head, Elec strode toward the bathroom. He was feeling a little dirty, and he was going to join her.
Her bathroom was like the rest of her house, clean and free of clutter, and he was downright thrilled to see that her shower wasn't hidden by a curtain. It was just steamy glass doors, and while the view was a little distorted, it wasn't by much. He could see Tamara in all her glory, perky little backside facing him as she . . . Oh my God. She bent over to grab her razor.
Elec's vision blurred as every last drop of blood in his body rushed straight to his cock.
Women just had absolutely no idea what that particular position did to a man. It made him a speechless, drooling mass of stupidity, and Elec demonstrated that very thing by standing there in the doorway and drinking in the sight of Tamara, water sluicing down her back, suds collecting on her breasts and nipples as she turned and let the stream hit her shoulder blades. Her skin was pink from the heat, wisps of her hair were curling damply on her cheeks, and she was humming along to the music. Her dark curls between her thighs were dripping water and he wanted more than anything to lean below her legs and capture those droplets into his mouth.
He really should warn her he was there.
In a minute or two.
For the moment, he was perfectly content to just watch her hands roaming around her slick body, washing and scrubbing with a foaming shower gel and a big puffy sponge.
KNOWING she had to be pushing her luck on time, Tamara wiped the steam off the door hoping to catch a glimpse of the clock on the nightstand in her bedroom. Elec was probably sitting in her family room . . .
Tamara let out a shriek when she realized that no, he wasn't sitting on her sofa downstairs.
He was standing in her freaking bathroom door three feet away from her, his chest bare, and his jeans riding low on his hips as he stared at her.
"What are you doing?" she said, covering her breasts with her arm. "You scared me half to death!"
"Sorry," he said, but he didn't look the least bit sorry. Nor did he leave.
Trying to figure out what was the best way to stand so he could see the absolute least of her possible under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, Tamara squeezed the life out of her sponge and wondered how she could miraculously wrap a towel around her without opening the shower door.
There was no way to camouflage any of her nudity, damn it, and she said, "Just give me a second. I'll meet you downstairs in two minutes."
"I'm not leaving," he said. "And you have no reason to hide your body from me."
"I'm not entitled to some modesty?" She glared at him through the steamy glass.
"No. And if it will make you more comfortable, I can get naked, too." Without even waiting for an answer, Elec dropped his jeans to the floor.
Even as she swallowed a bucketful of spit and felt a surge of moisture between her thighs at the sight of him in his tight black boxer briefs, she was still annoyed. "It's easy for you to get naked. You didn't squeeze two babies out of your body and wind up with a stomach that has more lines than Charlotte has people."
Elec was right in front of the shower and Tamara was starting to get a little scared as to what that meant. She pressed back against the tiles, wincing when her butt made contact with the cold ceramic. "You're starting to make me mad," she told him, but she was more nervous than angry.
He didn't understand how hard it was to forget about those flaws, for her to appreciate the beauty of his hard, young body at the same time she was painfully aware of how many laps her own body had done around the track.
The shower door yanked open and Elec stood in front of her. "You're making me mad."
"What am I doing?" Sponge clutched in front of her jiggly stomach, she blinked as the water bounced off the side of her face.
Elec took the sponge out of her hand-just grabbed it-and tossed it on the floor of the shower.
"What the hell?" she demanded.
"Do you know how frustrating it is to me to hear you be so hard on yourself? To hear you criticize your body when there is absolutely nothing wrong with you? You have a gorgeous figure. You have a woman's body, with a woman's curves, and yes, you have a few stretch marks on your stomach, but do you honestly think that makes you one bit less attractive?"
Elec's voice was louder than she had ever heard him speak and he was ignoring the fact that he, too, was being pelted by shower spray, which bounced off his chest. She stared at him uncertainly as he lifted his knee and jabbed a finger at it. "I have a scar on my knee from surgery. It's purple and raw and a good four inches long. Does that make me any less attractive when I'm naked? Did you even notice it until I pointed it out?"
Tamara glanced at the scar he was tapping. It was a significant scar, and no, she'd never noticed it. "No, I didn't see it, but that's because it's on your knee. It's not an erogenous zone. You can't avoid my stretch marks."
"The hell it isn't. If you touch anything on me, it becomes an erogenous zone. Period.
That's how much I want you. You could touch my freaking eyebrow and I would get turned on. And I'll have you know that I happen to like your stretch marks. I look at those and I'm reminded of what a good woman you are, how you sacrifice every day for your children."
Tamara's heart was racing, and she wanted to believe him, she did, but she had been too self-conscious for too long. The marks on her could be ignored, she could agree with that, but there was no way he could actually like them.
"You're insane," she said, because she really didn't know what else to say and she wanted to get out of the shower and cover herself with the biggest towel known to man.
"Yes, I am," he said, leaning in and kissing her hard and with a thrusting, possessive tongue. "Insane from the fact that it has been fourteen long days since I've been inside you."
That was kind of hot. Okay, a lot hot. Tamara was trying to formulate a response, really, any words whatsoever, when Elec turned around and bent over to dig into his pants pocket.
Then back still to her, he shoved his underwear off and she caught a glorious, divine view of his tight butt. That was almost worth the embarrassing discomfort she was feeling at the moment. He really had a quite perfect man body, from the broad shoulders, to the defined biceps and abs, down to the rock-solid thighs and, of course, that fine, fine ass. When he turned back around to face her, he had an impressive erection, which he had already covered with a condom.
Clearly he was getting in this shower with her. "Don't you want to go to the bed?" she asked tentatively. The whole wet thing, standing up, cold tile . . . it all seemed a little dubious to her. She and Pete had abandoned the idea of sex in the shower early in their marriage because she'd never been able to get wet enough to make it work, and Pete would have taken it as an insult to his manhood if she had suggested a lubricant. So they had just ignored the subject and found other places to have sex.