Haddie’s shoulders heaved as she tried desperately to suck in a breath.
Without another thought, he pressed a palm to her hip for purchase and yanked on the zipper, but the damned thing wouldn’t budge.
“Try pulling it back up!” she pleaded, and the strain in her voice sent his pulse into overdrive.
He tugged the zipper up, and it moved, but the second he tried to pull it back down, it stopped right in the same spot.
She pressed her arms against the three-way mirror and let her forehead fall against her arm.
“Levi…” she pleaded.
He growled. “I’m going to have to rip it.”
“Then rip the freaking thing! Layla has to take it off and put it back on anyway.” Her knees buckled, and Levi caught her around the waist.
“I got you, Birthday Girl,” he assured her, and with his free hand, he grabbed one side of the partially opened dress and tore.
Haddie gulped in a mouth of air, and then another, and one more after that. Finally, her breathing steadied, and she straightened. But Levi still hadn’t let go.
She pressed a palm over his hand, which lay splayed across her abdomen.
“Can you open the door?” she asked with a shaky breath, tiltingher head up to look at him through the mirror. “It’s getting a little claustrophobic in here.”
That was when he finally noticed the dress was now hanging forward, her bare breasts exposed. Yet her hand hadn’t left his, and her green eyes seemed to flicker with an unexpected heat.
Levi reached behind him and twisted the handle to the fitting room door, but it didn’t move.
“Um…Haddie?”
She suddenly spun to face him. “The pen!” she cried.
“What pen?”
“The one holding open the broken door,” she added.
Levi pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me we are not stuck in here like this.” Since the walls did not go all the way to the ceiling, Levi gripped the tops of the ones on either side of him and hung his head, eyes still closed.
“You’re not wearing a shirt,” Haddie said softly.
He let out an incredulous laugh. “Neither are you.”
Levi heard the unmistakable sound of Haddie licking her lips.
A warm palm pressed against his chest, and Levi swore. “Haddie,” he growled. “What are you doing?” He let out a shaky breath.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “You’re…trembling.”
He squeezed the tops of the walls harder, feeling his knuckles go white. “Because I’ve been trying to hold it together since the second you opened that curtain and told me and Matteo we could come back inside.”
“Levi…” Her hand traveled up to his cheek, and she pressed itagainst his fiery skin. “You saved me from fainting.”
“I know,” he ground out. His heart thrashed against his rib cage, trying to keep the feelings he’d been struggling to ignore at bay.
“And you called me ‘Birthday Girl,’” she added.
“I am also aware of this,” he told her, doing everything in his power not to lean into her touch.
She brushed a thumb across the stubble on his jaw, and Levi was sure if he let go of the walls at his sides, he’d dissolve into a puddle, right there on the spot.
