“No,” I squeaked. My dad and I had a healthy relationship. But I was in a romper. Checking my midsection would require getting down to my underwear. That was awkward.
“I can,” Fallon also suggested.
“No.”
“I’ve seen you in a bathing suit.”
He’d seen me in little board shorts and a one-piece top. I’d always felt a little weird about being mostly naked around my extended family.
“Hardly.”
“What if I got you a change of clothes and you could just pull up the tee a little?” Perish asked.
This was a serious situation.
But did desire spark at the very idea?
Yeah, yeah, it did.
There was no rationalizing with the kind of desire I felt toward Perish.
“Fine.” I said it with a grumble, with a sigh. Like it was a major annoyance and inconvenience. So no one around knew that I was actually excited to be examined.
“Be quick,” Fallon demanded. “I want to know what the fuck is going on.”
With that, Perish finally moved out from behind me just to walk in front of me, expecting me to fall in line.
Everything about him seemed as genuinely frustrated as I was pretending to be. It should have put ice on my desire. It didn’t.
Perish took a turn toward the basement where the club kept changes of clothes of all kinds, and I followed him down.
The silence started to feel heavy, awkward.
But the second I reached the lower step, Perish turned.
And it wasn’t annoyance on his face.
It was something that had my chest doing that popping rock candy thing again.
Then his big hands were raising, pressing to each side of my face. Gentle. Yet somehow a little possessive at the same time.
“Don’t gotta lie to me,” he said.
“I’m not lying,” I assured him. “I’m really okay.”
He tilted my head up, angling my face around. His gaze scanned my face and neck, looking for damage I might have played down.
“It was over in like ten seconds,” I told him, my hand going to his wrist and giving him a squeeze. “I’m not that delicate.”
“Yes, you are,” he objected.
His hands slid down the sides of my neck, resting there for a second, then gliding down to my shoulders to gently push the straps of my romper off.
Without the straps, the thin material drifted downward until it pooled at my feet.
And I felt, oh, I felt everything.
The cool prick of the air washing over me. The goosebumps rising. The way my belly swam and my heart tripped over itself.
