“I want to see you, Dee…and touch you all over.”
His intentions douse the dizzying flames of my desire in a downpour of insecurities. I clasp his wrists, stilling his hands on the next button.
After a soft peck, he pulls back to look at me. The space between his thick eyebrows is drawn together. “Am I rushing you?”
I shake my head and bury my face in his neck, breathing in the familiar scents of soap, tangy aftershave, and warm skin. He’s got it all wrong. I don’t feel rushed. I want him to touch me…I think about it all the time. But that would mean him feeling my fleshy body…God…seeing me naked. Comparing me with all the pretty, skinny girls he’s been with. No. As much as I want to…crave the experience of feeling his hands on my bare skin…I can’t.
“You’re shaking,” he says, his voice edged with concern. “Did I scare you?”
“No.”
His arms go around me. “If I’m not rushing you and you’re not scared, then what is it?”
I don’t know how to explain something so…humiliating.
“Dee?” he urges me, his fingers strumming my back.
“I’m scared…but not of you.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“You seeing what I look like,” I mumble.
“What?...Why?”
Does he really not know? “Because.”
He chuckles softly. “That explains a lot.”
“You know why,” I say, unable to give him any more than that.
“Dee, baby.” With one finger beneath my chin, he tilts my face up to his. “You think I won’t like what I see?”
I nod. If I don’t like my body, how can I expect him to?
“I’m gonna love what I see.”
I wish I could believe that. But it’s as if I have these looped tapes playing in my head that tell me I’m not good enough. Pretty enough. Skinny enough. Lovable enough.
“What if you don’t?” I voice with gripping anxiety. “What if you’re turned off?”
“That’s not possible.”
“Then what if I freeze up?” I ask. “If I can’t do it, you might go to somebody else.”
A deep frown pinches his face. “You think I’d cheat on you?”
“Would you?” I know his reputation. Mick doesn’t have to wait two days, never mind two months, for sex.
“I would never cheat on you, Dee.”
“Promise?” That would hurt me more than anything.
“I promise.” He brings my hand to his mouth and brushes his lips across my fingers, sending shivers up my arm. “I’m done with all that. I don’t want any other girl. I want you. Badly. But I can wait. You don’t have to do anything to keep me from cheating on you. You’re expecting the wrong ending, Dee. I’m never going to hurt you,” he says with such conviction that it cracks my wall of doubt. “You’re more than a body to me. Don’t you know how much I love you?”
I look into his eyes, into the intensity of his gaze. This isn’t a guy feeding me lines. This is Mick, who trusted me with his deepest secret. Who defended me against the likes of J.T. Who writes stories about me being his princess. With my wariness completely overruled, I’m no longer listening to the tapes—or even to reason. In that moment, I don’t care about my childhood rejections. Or what will happen when we part. I care only about now. I take a deep breath and let the words I’ve been hoarding spill out of me: “I love you, too, Mick.”
His face softens into the happiest of smiles. A joy that takes my breath away. “Say it again.”
