Butter-Glazed Panties
My hairstill wet from the quick early morning shower we’d just shared, I watched from my perch on the bed as Beckett fastened his belt and zipped his fly. I’d never admit it but I loved watching while men did this. Maybe notallmen. Maybe just the one in front of me right now.
I liked a lot about the one in front of me right now.
“I want to take you on a date.”
“I have a meeting this morning,” I said with an outrageously long sigh. “And you haven’t stopped talking about dates since Saturday. Please explain to me why this is so important to you.”
“I want us to go somewhere neither of us have seen the inside of the walk-in or begged the point-of-sale to work,” he continued, turning to knot his tie in the mirror. “Bonus points if the entire population of Friendship isn’t there to listen in on our conversation.”
“What is it with your generation and dates?”
He rounded on me, either end of his tie in his hands. He’d brought a change of clothes with him this time. “Don’t ever say that again. I don’t want to hear it. Not a damn word about generations or the year you graduated high school or how you’re barely old enough to drive. Please, no.”
I shrugged out of my robe. “Hmm. Okay.” I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
“For fuck’s sake, Sunny.” He all but snarled the words as he fisted his hands around the tie.
“What?” I twirled some hair around my finger while Beckett stared at my breasts, his jaw flexing. “I’m not saying anything about it. Just like you asked.”
He dragged his gaze to my face with a low growl. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Something about dates.” I leaned back on the pillows. He dropped a knee to the mattress. “For reasons I still do not understand, you want me to put on clothes and go places with you.”
“Yeah, I’m an idiot,” he rasped. “Complete fool.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Just a minor misstep. I’m sure you won’t do it again.”
He ran his hand over my leg, his gaze fixed on me. “You’re saying you don’t want to be seen in public with me?”
I frowned. How had he lost the thread of this conversation? We were clearly giving each other a hard time here. Like always. “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s more like why should we go out”—I patted the bed—“when we could stay in?”
“Are you thinking about your partners?” he asked. “Especially given that Muffy walked right in here.”
“I really am sorry about that.” I cringed. “But they’ve been on your side since the start.”
“Are you worried about what the villagers will say?”
“The villagers,” I said with a laugh. “That’s funny but no. Shocking as it may be, I’m only concerned with whether the villagers prefer the basil lemonade to the lavender limeade.”
“Are you worried what Lance will say?”
Oof.That one landed hard. Nothing like an older brother to ruin the mood real fast. “I guess that depends on what you want him to know.”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“What I want is for us to stop talking in a maze.” I pulled my robe shut only for Beck to make a wounded noise. “I’ll go on a date with you. Okay? It’s fine. If that’s what you want, I don’t mind.”
He dropped to the mattress and traced the line of my robe from my neck to my breasts. “No,” he said softly. “It’s not fine.”
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip and studied the wall to the side of my bed. I hadn’t finished decorating this room. Several frames leaned against the wall, waiting for me to make decisions about where they’d live. “And why not? Or is this your new way of being impossible? I can’t tell if we’re fake-arguing or not. It’s a lot more confusing when I’m not getting thedon’t fuck with mestare.”
Beck sighed, giving a quick shake of his head. “I want to take you out. I want to look forward to it. I want to obsess a little bit about where we’ll go and whether you’ll like it. Maybe I want to obsess a lot. But I still want to pick you up, bring you flowers, lose my fucking mind because you’re unbelievably gorgeous but we can’t be late so I’ll have to fuck you up against the door later—which you’ll love, I promise. I want to choose a special place to eat that has things you’ll like and I want to talk to you for hours. I want to hear about everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve done, and all the places you want to go and things you want to do. I want to sit across from you knowing that everyone else in the world wants to be near you, wants your attention, and I was the one who got it for these short hours. And I want to bring you home and walk the dogs with you and take you to bed. And I don’t want it to be something you tolerate. I want to do better than that.”
I didn’t respond for a long time. Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t have the words to react to him describing an evening that resembled the opposite of a casual summer fling.
Eventually, I managed, “That sounds really nice.”
