her intently. She felt and saw a shimmery sensuous pulse of light pass between them. Awareness made her shiver. She didn’t need to know what he was thinking to know exactly what he was thinking.
His eyes raked over her, and his bold stare triggered a tingling in the pit of her stomach. Warmth flooded her core, and she bit her lip to stop a moan from escaping. First things first.
“I like your lighting scheme,” he murmured. “Soft and not at all subtle. Like you.”
She laughed. In a few minutes, he’d know exactly how unsubtle she was.
He glanced around and drank his soda. “Was the background porn thing too much? It was, wasn’t it?”
“Performance anxiety,” she told him with a dramatic shudder.
They stood there, sipping Diet Coke. She let the awkwardness build because it was funny watching him flounder. Her confidence was bolstered by how adorably out of his comfort zone he was.
When she sensed him at peak nervousness, she took a deep breath and let her plan turn to action. He might be older and have tons more experience, but she was certain he’d never be the same when she was finished with him.
Hiding a sly smile behind her drink tumbler, she lowered her eyes and lazily drank him in with her senses. He was disturbing in a good way. Her heart thumped and her pulse pounded as she checked him out with a long, frank assessment of his lower torso. The man was the epitome of masculinity. She couldn’t resist his staggeringly powerful maleness.
She raised her eyes. The smoldering flames she saw in his gaze made her gulp. He took the tumbler out of her hands and set it down with his. When he took a step closer, she thought he might be going to kiss her, and that wasn’t how she wanted things to go.
Snapping out of the stupor his virile appeal caused, she put her hands on his chest to stop his forward motion and gave a little shove. He toppled onto the sofa and grinned up at her.
“Are you taking charge, then?” he asked with so much cheekiness she laughed.
“Go to the end of the sofa,” she directed with a finger point. “I need room.”
“Room?” He said, “Hot damn,” smacked his hands together, and rubbed them gleefully.
“I’ve wanted to learn pole dancing since forever. Best core workout around! But when could I practice?” She made a face and shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like I have a pole in my bedroom.”
Gesturing widely, she waved her hand around the living room. “But what I do have is open space and lots of different furniture heights.”
In a Groucho Marx pantomime, complete with an imaginary cigar, she said, “You can take the girl out of the gym, but you can never take the gymnastics out of the girl.”
“You have my undivided attention.”
She shook her head as though he was an exasperating boy, then bent over with her ass conveniently in his face to tap the iPad on the coffee table. The music started softly. She turned and faced him to sing along.
Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” pop classic came out when she was fifteen. The catchy beat-driven song quickly became a gymnastics favorite. Back when competition to be original and edgy was fierce, many of her gymnast friends used it for their free dance tune.
Summer still remembered her choreography. The familiar tune overtook her. She belted out the lyrics while dancing around the living room in a routine filled with sexed-up gymnastics moves. Amateurish moves, but still.
Arnie’s initial shock turned to an enormous shit-eating grin as she vamped her way through the song. Happiness swept her away, and before she knew it, the elation bolstered her confidence, and the gym routine morphed into a naughty lap dance.
Did she place his hands on her skintight jeans and shimmy all over his lap? Yes. That happened.
The song ended with her straddling him without shame. His hands were on her ass with his head on the back of the sofa as he stared up at her.
“That’s it,” she confessed breathlessly when a different song played softly in the background. “That’s all I have.” His eyes flared. “Oh, wait,” she murmured. “There’s this.”
Swiftly closing the distance between them, she claimed his lips. For a few seconds, her brain still worked, and then her calm was shattered by the hunger of the kiss. She clung to his mouth with her hands on either side of his face. He firmed his grip on her ass.