Lily wished she could have fallen in love with Luke. He was so gentle and kind. Knowing that her attraction to Travis was futile from the first stirrings of arousal she’d felt for him, Lily had made a concerted effort to see Luke as sexy, boyfriend material. But it was impossible. She cringed remembering the kiss she’d given Luke in high school, late one night when they were talking under the huge apple tree in her grandmother’s front yard. He had been still as a stone, but then, not wanting to hurt her feelings, he had kissed her back.
Luke’s kiss was perfectly pleasant, but the awful truth was she hadn’t felt anything. No tingles. No shivering with need in his arms. It was yet another thing she couldn’t do right. She wasn’t even smart enough to fall for the brother who was nice to her. Instead, she had harbored an insane lust for someone who would never return her feelings in a million years. Not unless one day she woke up as a size-two supermodel.
Lily cursed herself up and down for being stupid enough to keep holding out hope that the nice Travis would come back. That the fun-loving boy she had been friends with as a child would one day reemerge from within the cold, distant man he had become.
Her heart raced in her chest, and Lily was more than a little shocked about what she was about to do.
She didn’t know why Travis had come to the fashion show instead of Luke. On any other night she would have been furious with Luke for doing the twin-switcharoo on her.
But this wasn’t any other night. Tonight was special. And even though it was crazy, even though she might as well take a knife and drive it into her heart to save herself time, Lily thanked God that Luke had sent his sexy-as-sin twin brother.
She had wasted thirty years waiting for him to notice her. She wasn’t about to waste another second. Not when she and The Dress had plans for him. Big plans that made her heart beat triple time and the vee between her legs pulse with need.
The Dress was going to make Travis want her.
It had to.
A sudden surge of doubt overwhelmed her as she reached out to part the thick red velvet curtain. She couldn’t ignore the mighty chance that Travis would take one look at her and laugh. Or worse, turn away as if she were invisible. It was more than a chance, she thought with dismay. A professional gambler would have to be crazy to bet on Lily, not when Travis could have his pick of any skinny, perfect woman in the room.
She closed her eyes and moistened her lips. No, she told herself, you’re not going to give in to these fears. It’s either now or never. Are you going to take the chance? Or are you going to continue to be a wimp for another thirty years?
That did it. Pushing past the curtains, Lily stepped out onto the dance floor, her eyes trained on what she wanted. Travis stood surrounded by women, each more gorgeous than the next, all vying desperately to get his attention.
But she knew he was waiting for her.
At least she hoped he was.
On the runway, instead of making her want to dive for cover, Travis’s presence had emboldened her. Lily had reached deep inside herself to bring forth the sensual woman she had kept so well hidden.
Finally, she was going to show Travis what he had been turning his back on for so long, what he had been missing.
Pleasure.
Lily knew that most people saw her as mousy and timid. She rarely offered her opinion, and people were always cutting in front of her in line at the movies. It had hurt at first, but once she got used to being overlooked it almost became a comfort. Lily could always disappear into the background, and she used her invisibility like a suit of armor to protect herself.
So the one thing that no one would have ever guessed in a million years, the secret that she had never shared with anyone else, was how much she liked to touch herself.
And how good it felt.
On cold nights Lily’s favorite thing was to lock herself in the bathroom with a hot tub of water and her waterproof vibrator. Lying in the warm rose-scented water she invented elaborate scenes in her head, all of which featured Travis in the starring role.
She often relived her first orgasm at fourteen, the night after her first high school football game. She had pretended to be watching the game, but her eyes never left Travis all night, hanging out with the tough crowd. Every time his fingers brushed across the shoulders of the cheerleader he was with, a shiver shot up Lily’s spine. Halfway through the game he had disappeared behind the bleachers, the cheerleader in tow. Quietly, Lily slipped away from the crowd. Standing in the shadows, she had watched Travis fondle and kiss the girl, finally bringing her to orgasm with his mouth. A warm rush had settled between Lily’s legs, and her fingers had found her br**sts, sensitive from the slightest brush of her fingers across them.
Since that night, whenever she masturbated, Lily dreamed that Travis’s tongue slid across her ni**les, drawing circles across her skin. She would slide her fingers between her slick folds, sometimes slipping one finger into her tight canal, all the while picturing Travis’s large fingers touching her, caressing her.
When she couldn’t take it anymore she would pick up her vibrator and turn it on low, barely pressing the tip of it against the top of her mons. Again and again she would bring herself to the edge, pulling the whirling machine away, gasping for air in the cooling water of the bathtub. Finally, she would switch the machine to high and press it hard against herself as waves and waves of spasms rocked her, Travis’s name on her lips.
By the time she had dried off and gotten back into one of her big tent dresses, no one could have ever guessed what she had done to herself in the bathtub. No one could have known how hot she got, how naughty her fantasies were.
Lily could never look beyond her lust for Travis to see herself in love with another man. But even though she wasn’t looking for love, she wasn’t opposed to having a lover. After exploring all of the different and better ways to bring herself to orgasm, she had been overwhelmed with the need to feel a c**k deep within her. Yes, she wanted it to belong to Travis—oh how desperately she wanted that—but ever the realist she recognized that she would have to take what she could get. Over the past decade she had shared a bed with several men, and while the experience of a thick penis pumping into her was nice, while the feel of a tongue lapping at her clit was pleasant, none of the men she had dated and slept with had ever taken her to the thrilling place she dreamed of.
No one would ever know how much she wanted Travis to be her lover, the one man she could never have because he had decided she wasn’t there anymore one day in fifth grade.
But in The Dress, everything had shifted. Lily felt as if she were in the bathtub, her cunt wet and plump and ready for Travis’s c**k to slide into it. Ready for him to show her what it truly meant to be a woman.
Lily moved toward him, holding his gaze, forcing herself to walk slowly, to push back the sensual anticipation that caused her ni**les to grow taut, that caused the heavy and full feeling between her legs.
What if he doesn’t want me?