Truly(80)

She looked at the ceiling and waited for that thought to get less awkward.

It didn’t.

Ah, well. She could be brave or she could be a coward. In twenty years, she’d probably kill for the body she had now.

Use it or lose it.

She rose. Her fingers pinched her shirtsleeve. With a deep breath, she withdrew her shoulder, pulling her arm through the hole.

Then the other arm, and she took the shirt off. Folded it. Laid it on the couch.

Jeans next. As she lowered the zipper, her pulse sped up. Something banged in the bathroom—Ben opening a cupboard or closing it.

She pictured his wet hair and wet skin, which helped considerably in the easing of her jeans from her legs. Balancing against the couch, she pulled them off. She folded them and stacked them on top of her shirt. Then she changed her mind, picked up the jeans, and put them down so she could stack the shirt on top.

Oh, she was a dope. A nervous dope with her stomach all unsettled, her heart going too fast, her eyes probably as big as a doe’s in the woods.

She heard the bathroom door open, and she walked toward him, her bare feet sticking slightly to the wood floor.

He came out, saw her, and stopped.

She didn’t know what to look at first, there was so much of him on display. The slate-colored towel low around his hips, tucked in place, and drops of water gleaming on his bare shoulders. The dark hair on his pecs arrowed down toward his waist, unsettlingly masculine.

“You have chest hair,” she said, waving her hand stupidly. Because she hadn’t imagined him with chest hair. Dan was Nordic, his body virtually hairless.

“Give me ten minutes, I can shave it off.”

She had to look at his face to decide if he was kidding. Yes, according to his lips. No, according to his eyes.

His eyes promised he’d give her anything she wanted.

“Tell me something,” he said.

She gave a little nod.

“You weren’t headed for the shower, right?”

“Right.”

“You were headed for me?”

Another nod.

“That’s good.”

He stepped closer.

“Really good,” he murmured.

She backed up, but he was coming now, and one hand reached to trace over her almost-bare shoulder, catching at the strap of her bra.

Ben toyed with it. He kept inching closer, and she’d been inching away until she bumped into the wall. Now she had nowhere to inch to. The moist heat of his skin surrounded her, a physical sensation like stepping outside on a too hot, too humid afternoon.

“I should take a shower.” She didn’t even know where the statement came from. It bubbled up in her nervousness and flew from her lips, one more manifestation of her deep-seated sense of physical inadequacy.

She was supposed to smell like flowers and spring rain, but she didn’t. She didn’t at all.

He lowered his head and licked her collarbone. His wet hair brushed her chin, and for some reason that was the thing that made her nipples stiffen. Not his tongue on her body, damp and unfamiliar, but the light, cold tease of his hair. He could brush her whole body with it, and she’d die happy.

Go ahead and ask him to. “Let’s go in the bedroom, and you can feather your hair over me.” I’m sure that will go over big.

Her hands curled ineffectually at her sides. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was embarrassing herself, and they’d barely even started.

“You don’t need a shower.” He slid one finger under her bra strap and pushed it to the side, and then he kissed her shoulder, right there. “I think you taste good the way you are.” His mouth moved higher, to her neck. Behind her ear. “I’d like to taste a lot more of you.”

She stiffened.

“Right here, for instance,” he said, with another kiss. His hands moved down her shoulders, over her arms, to her wrists. They found her waist. They cupped her breasts. “Here.”

One hand slid to her hip. Along the outside of her leg. It skated across the top to the inside and coaxed her thighs apart. Her mouth opened when his fingers pressed against her through her panties, an invasion she’d fully expected but somehow hadn’t anticipated. “Here.”

“You can’t,” she croaked.

“Can’t I?” The thought didn’t seem to faze him. His hand lingered for a moment, then passed upward to her stomach. Somehow more intimate than having his hand between her legs, because he would feel—

“So soft.”

That. Exactly that. Her soft, imperfect stomach. Should have had salad for dinner, her asshole inner critic whispered.

This was harder than she’d expected. She wished he would kiss her so she could get swept up in it and stop worrying. It was awesome that Ben could walk around in a towel and be totally comfortable with himself, but she wasn’t built that way. She felt rigid as cardboard, her utilitarian body highly functional but not worth fussing over.