done. You don’t talk about doing things. You just do them.” She laughed at herself. Then she laughed at the whole situation—turned on and cracking up was not a combination she had experience with, but she liked it. “Is it weird that we’re listing off things we like about each other while we’re naked?”
“Well, I’m naked. You, on the other hand”—his eyes made a slow journey down her body—“should get naked.”
“You wanna help?” It was out before she could think, and she’d said it automatically, like it was the next line in a script. It was what she would have said to Rufus, but hadn’t she just been thinking that undressing a lover was never actually as exciting or sexy as it was supposed to be?
He must have agreed, because he said, “No. I want to watch.”
Well. That was a good answer. An answer that went straight to the knot of tension between her legs and twisted it a little tighter.
She reached for the tie of her dress, which was at her waist. He started toward her from where he’d been standing near the door, but as he passed, he held his arms up in a no-hands sort of gesture, making a show of not touching her as he slid past her and sat on the bed.
She pivoted to face him. He rotated his hand to signal that he wanted her to get on with it.
As she started undoing the knot, he asked, “What kind of dress is that?”
“A wrap dress?” She wasn’t sure why she had answered with a question. She just wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he referring to style? Type of fabric?
“A wrap dress,” he repeated. “So now you’re going to unwrap yourself?”
She was going to try. The dress had holes you fed ties through, and one of the ties was absurdly long when it was undone because it had to go all the way around her waist and through a hole on the other side of the front. It looked like a simple dress from the outside, but it was actually kind of complicated, structurally speaking.
She might have gotten self-conscious as she started pulling the long tie out, but he, Mr. Mute, started performing a monologue. “I gotta tell you, that neckline has been doing a number on me since I saw you up on that stage.”
She paused. “I think it would be racier if I didn’t have such small breasts. I don’t even need a bra. This dress would be a lot sexier if I had perfect, perky breasts like—”
“You are not about to invoke the Intern.”
“Well…”
He lifted a finger. “I swear to God, if you say her name, I will get up and leave.” She made a show of closing her mouth. He shook the still-raised finger at her. “All right, then. Now unwrap yourself.”
She did. She even managed all the ties and holes without feeling too awkward. Which left her standing in front of him in her panties. Black, bikini-style, functional cotton panties, which, although they might not have been her first choice if she’d known Jake Ramsey was going to see them, were at least not as bad as they could have been.
It didn’t seem like he was looking at them anyway. Her nipples started to…buzz? There was a distinct tingling sort of sensation happening in each of them. He was definitely looking at her breasts. In fact, she might say he was leering at her breasts.
“See?” he rasped. “Perky.”
“Yeah, but they’re so small, they can’t help but be perk—”
“And perfect.” The bed was shoved up against a wall, and he scooted back on it until his back hit the wall. Then he curled his index finger at her.
Nora did not have bad self-esteem, generally speaking. But she’d meant what she said when she told him she was skinny but unfit. Yeah, she was petite, but she had jiggly bits.
He curled the finger again, and his eyes sparked in a way that suggested he did not see the jiggly bits the same way she did.
So she went. Crawled across the bed until she was kneeling in front of him.
He reached immediately for the breasts they had just been discussing. In another context she would have used the word groped, except his touch made her jaw go slack. An involuntary moan slipped out.
“Perfect,” he said again just before his mouth made contact with a nipple.
She was kneeling up between his legs, so his head was at nipple level, and he went to