The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2) - Rosie Danan Page 0,80

what to do, surely.

Naomi Grant’s got a pleasure-seeking missile beneath her skirt. Some reporter from GQ had actually written that about her, once upon a time.

She sat on the bed, spreading her legs wide so Ethan stood between them, and started unbuttoning his shirt.

“Are you sure about this?” Ethan tried to make her look him in the eye.

Naomi didn’t want to, for some reason. In fact, she suddenly decided that would be a terrible idea. So she pulled her top over her head, enjoying the few blissful seconds when she had an excuse not to make eye contact almost as much as the cool air pressing against her heated skin.

She was a professional, so she got almost all his buttons undone even as he twisted to drop to his knees in front of her. Bringing their faces level.

“Hey,” he said, and it was the softest word she’d ever heard. Not in volume but in intent.

“Hi,” she said back, because her brain wasn’t working that well.

She tried to kiss him, to cut this conversation off so he wouldn’t realize how off her game she was, but he pulled back, out of her reach again, concern drawing his brows together.

“Wait. What’s going on? Talk to me for a second.”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She reached for his wrists, trying to get his hands on her. Anywhere. If this was how it felt to be naked in a new way, there was no doubt in her mind about which one was more vulnerable.

“It’s not nothing,” Ethan said. “Naomi, hang on.”

Her heart hammered against her ribs, dangerous, thunderous. She started taking her bra off before she could fall into the abyss of it. A missile indeed.

“Wait.” Ethan’s voice came out strangled as he took in her breasts, but he still shook his head. “Please.”

The please almost killed her. How could she be this horny and this confused at the same time? It was ridiculous. Unacceptable. An unwelcome exception to her lauded experience.

“I just . . . need some water, I think. I’m thirsty.” She did a little cough that was wafer thin and just as transparent.

“I’ll get it for you.” Ethan’s unbuttoned shirt flew open as he stood. The moonlight coming in through his curtains cast his chest in shadows. He was beautiful. Defined but not overly muscled. His nipples flat and brown and begging for her teeth.

After all the people she’d fucked, this was the scenario where she couldn’t land the plane?

She’d never considered herself wicked. In fact, Naomi thought of herself as a pretty good person at the end of the day. But tonight, this disconnect between her mind and her body felt like punishment, and frankly, she was pissed.

When Ethan came back, he had two waters, one with ice and one without, that he held out for her to pick from. She took the ice water and wrapped both hands around the smooth, cold glass. The ice cubes knocking against her teeth as she took a sip helped ground her, oddly enough.

How could she tell this man—who she was more attracted to than anyone she had ever met—that maybe she wanted something less than carnal tonight?

Naomi took a deep breath while Ethan stood there, accepting her empty glass once she’d drained it.

Okay, she needed to back up. What were the facts here?

She wanted to have sex with Ethan. To feel his body in and around hers. She wanted possession of his heat and his scent and the growl that came from low in his throat. But she’d never been nervous like this before.

Not the first time she’d fucked her high school boyfriend. Not her first day on set. Never.

Sex was easy. People made it complicated with their expectations and their insecurities. Naomi had never given sex that power. She’d mastered the movements like any other dance, and as for the accompanying chemical reactions?

Well, she’d never put that much stock in those feelings.

Even the best sex with Jocelyn and Josh had never been that complex. It was just fun and nice. An expression of how much she cared about them. Hell, sometimes it was just a way to blow off steam.

Naomi had devoted most of her waking hours and many of her sleeping hours to dirty dreams of Ethan. She had employed every ounce of filthy, sexual energy she had to the idea of working him over like he was some juicy Regency wallflower and she was a highwayman with the middle name corruption.

So now that he was laid out before her, she wasn’t