he’s now undoing his pants until he’s just in his boxer briefs.
“Enjoying the show?” he asks me, his voice playful.
“Can’t seem to help myself,” I manage to say. The words barely make it out of my throat, and my breath hitches as he strides over to me.
“It seems like ye might need some help with this,” he says, leaning over just enough to grab the hem of my dress and slowly start pulling it up off my body. I dutifully raise my arms and then remember I didn’t have to wear a bra with this dress. My breasts bounce free, and with the dress over my face, obscuring my vision as he continues to pull it up, I feel more exposed than ever.
Then I’m gasping for air as I feel his hands brush over my nipples that were already hard as pebbles.
“You might just have the most gorgeous tits I’ve ever seen,” he murmurs, pulling the dress off the rest of the way and throwing it to the ground.
I peer through the strands of my messy hair and watch as he cups my breasts before lowering his head and running his lips over the swollen peaks.
“Fuck,” I swear, forgetting how to breathe as every part of my body vibrates from his lips.
“That’s coming,” he says, taking one nipple in his warm mouth with a long hard suck that almost unravels me like a spool of thread, while his hands travel down my bare sides, coasting over my skin, barely touching me and yet I can feel the heat radiating from his palms.
As he continues to bite and suck and lick at my nipples, his mouth wet and warm and messy, he hooks his long fingers around the waistband of my leggings and proceeds to pull them down.
I immediately tense up, enough so that he pulls his mouth away and glances up at me, concern in his hooded eyes. “Am I moving too fast?” he asks, his voice rich and gruff and screaming of sex.
I shake my head and look at the bed. “No. I need to take off my boots before you can get the leggings off.”
“Let me worry about that,” he says.
I take in a deep breath and walk over to the bed, sitting on the edge of it and leaning back on my elbows so that I’m not all pale skin and stomach rolls. Padraig lifts one of my legs and starts to undo my boots, his eyes never leaving mine as his fingers make quick work of the laces.
When he’s done and he’s reaching over me to take my leggings off, I tense up again. I can’t help it. This is a big deal to me.
He raises a brow. “Are you okay?”
I nod quickly. “Yes. No. I just … I should probably tell you something and I don’t know how you’re going to react.” He continues to stare at me, eyes asking me to continue. “I have a lot of scarring on my legs and I’m extremely self-conscious about it.” I close my eyes and take in a deep breath. “I know I shouldn’t be and that it’s not a big deal, but it’s a big deal to me. It always has been. And this is the first time … usually when I get naked with a guy, when I show him the truth, I’ve known him for a bit. And I don’t know you at all.”
He swallows and nods thoughtfully, his body hovering over me, his hands not letting go of the waistband. “It doesn’t make it easier to bare yourself with a stranger?”
I bite my lip, thinking that over. “I wouldn’t have gone home with anyone but you.”
“Valerie, we don’t have to do anything ye don’t want to do.”
“I want to,” I tell him emphatically. “Believe me, I do. I just wanted to warn you.”
“Warn me?” he repeats. “I’m sorry if this sounds crass, but I don’t give a fuck what your legs look like, if they’re scarred or not, or if ye even have them. I just want my cock to be thrusting deep inside ye. I want ye to forget that you ever worried about this.”
Well, okay then.
My eyes are frozen wide at his words, and when he starts to remove my leggings and underwear, I let him, until I’m bare for him to see. Everything ugly and horrible, everything that I was made fun of for most of my life, everything I’ve had to overcome, is staring right back at him.