His One and Only(33)

He gave her an irritated sigh. “Try harder. Look, I know I’m blind now, but imagine me the way I used to be. Back then just about every other woman in America would be paying for the chance to sleep with me. Literally. A few of my groupies even paid people off in order to get near me. I’d walk into my hotel room for an away game and it would be like, boom! Two, sometimes three or four naked girls on my bed. Surprise!”

She held herself as stiff as possible in order not to shake, her hands squeezed tight in her lap. “That must have been really nice for you.”

Beau sat there silent for seconds on end, and she began to wonder if he wasn’t about to call the whole thing off, having seen how poorly equipped she was to handle being somebody’s consort.

But then he said, “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re wearing now.”

She looked down at her clothes. “A plaid shirt and some jeans.”

She expected an insult about her non-sexy wardrobe choices or worst, another story about his groupies. But he went still again, as if trying to hold himself back. “Unbutton the shirt.”

Tentatively, she began to do as he said.

“Are you doing it?” he asked.

“Yeah, I am,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I tell you what,” Beau said. “Why don’t you give me my money’s worth and narrate what you’re doing while you’re doing it.”

“Narrate?”

“Like when I first came here and you wanted to talk me through everything you were doing like I was some kind of helpless invalid.”

Her eyes widened at his misinterpretation of her sincere actions. “I wasn’t trying to treat you like you were helpless, I was just trying to—”

He cut her off with a long, slow shake of his head. “Last I checked, I wasn’t paying you to argue with me. You’re so big on calling me Mr. Prescott these days, from now on when I make a request, all I want to hear from you is, ‘Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott.’”

Was he serious? She clamped her lips together to keep back an angry reply.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott.” she finally answered after a brief wrestling match with her pride. Then she began narrating in a monotone between clenched teeth. “Right now I’m unbuttoning my shirt. Three more buttons to go. One . . . two . . . three. . .”

“Take the shirt all the way off.”

She began to do as he said.

“I don’t hear you narrating.”

“I’m pulling one arm out and now the other.” Her cheeks flamed. “And now I’m sitting here in my bra.” She didn’t add, “feeling real self-conscious.”

“Details, details,” he said.

It took her a moment to understand what he was getting at. “You want me to tell you what the bra looks like?”

He half-smirked at her. “I want you to do your job. You wouldn’t lead me up the stairs without telling how many of them there were, would you?”

“It’s nothing special,” she said. “Just two triangles of cotton.”

“Take it off.”

“I’m taking it off,” she said. “Now I’m sitting here naked from the waist up.”

“Draw me a picture of what that looks like.”

Embarrassment swirled inside her stomach as she answered, “I’m all-right looking, I guess. I mean, I’m not big-chested like most of your girlfriends.”

“How do you know what my girlfriends look like?” he asked. “You been checking up on me, Josie Witherspoon?”

Yes. When she’d still been living in Atlanta, she had flipped through a few celebrity magazines in the supermarket to see if he was in them. But out loud she said, “You seem like the kind of guy who’d prefer a chest over substance.”

“Don’t go discriminating, now,” Beau said, his Alabama drawl in full effect. “You can’t judge a girl’s brains by her boobies.”

He suddenly covered her breasts with his large hands. And she gasped when she discovered that despite his trust fund background, his hands were rough and callused, probably from years of throwing footballs.

She also gasped because of what the fingers on his right hand were touching. A short thin puckered line. “What’s this?” he asked.

“A scar,” she answered.#p#分页标题#e#

“How did you get it?”

“It’s a long, stupid, mood-killing story.”

Not a lie, but not exactly a truth either. She waited with baited breath to see if he’d question her further.

“It feels like you got more than a handful, which is enough for me.” To her great relief, he moved on from the scar, caressing the undersides of her breasts while his rough thumbs worked her nipples.