She heard Keith’s breath catch in his throat.
Iris had imagined this moment in a lot of fantasies, but she’d also imagined thenightmareversion of it, like she needed to be prepared for the worst. What if it went badly? What if she stripped down to her underwear in front of a guy and all he could see—all she could think about—was the curve of her stomach or the soft dimpling of her full thighs? What if he was disappointed? That was what she’d expected to worry about in this moment.
But she wasn’t thinking about that at all, and she knew he wasn’t either. She wasn’t worried. All she felt was so turned-on that it was like the whole world was fogged up with the heat between them. She felt sure of herself.
She felt irresistibly sexy.
Then she turned to face him, and suddenly she wasn’t thinking about herself at all. Even the good thoughts evaporated, burned away by thefireof him.
He’d shed his suit jacket, shirt, and undershirt, and he stood bare-chested before her, his dark pants contrasting sharply with his pale golden skin. He had taken off his socks—some small part of her was tenderly amused by the fact that he’d made sure to do that before he’d even undone his belt.
He was so beautiful. She wanted to rub herself against every square inch of his revealed body.
Iris made herself swallow. “I’m showing a lot more skin than you are.”
“One-piece formalwear,” Keith said. A flicker of a smile played around his mouth, gorgeous and lively as a candle flame. “You had an advantage.”
“But now I have my stockings, my bra, and my underwear,” Iris pointed out. “That’s three things. You only have two left. So since I have more underwear to take off and I’mstillmore naked than you are, I say you’re lagging behind.”
“I’ll lose the pants.” He unfastened his belt and let them fall.
His boxers rode low on his narrow hips, and Iris could see the way his muscles v’ed in, making a kind of mouthwatering arrow pointing further down. Without even meaning to, she reached out and traced one side of that gorgeous shape.
Keith made a choked-off sound.
“You’re killing me,” he said.
“I hope not. I want to do this a lot more than once.”
His eyes took on a smoky cast. “As far as I’m concerned, we can do this every hour, on the hour, for the rest of our lives.”
It was an idea that made Iris’s heart pound and her mind race, but before she could even start processing it, Keith said, “Can I take your stockings off?”
Breathless, Iris nodded.
Heat flared up in Keith’s face, like he was more turned on than ever.
Iris made a move to go sit down on the bed, the way she always did whenshewas taking her stockings off, but to her surprise, he knelt down by her feet.
Oh my God.
Keith’s mouth was so close to her. She could feel his breath through the thin fabric of her underwear.
His long fingers spanned her thigh as he unsnapped the little suspenders of her garters, freeing the dark, lacy stocking top first on one side and then the other.
He stroked her where the filmy silk met her skin, making her skin hot and deliciously prickly, and then he looked up at her.
There was a question in his eyes, and she thought she knew what it was. Her dinner dress was made from the finest materials, and it was well-tailored and elegantly cut, but it was also simple, demure, and even a little severe. Unicorn to the core.
Closer to her skin, though, she’d worn this elaborate confection of black lace. This wasn’t something that usually existed in their world. Stockings, yes.Thesestockings, no.
“I bought it in Polis,” she said. She grazed her hand over the midnight blue silk of her panties, her face warming as she felt the dampness at her cleft. “These too. I don’t know why, since no one used to see them but me, but I liked having some secret prettiness.”
He kissed her thigh. “It can stay our secret. Do you mind me knowing?”
“I love you knowing.”
“And I want you to have all the lacy stockings and fancy underwear you want. This is completely unselfish on my part, you understand. I’m not getting anything out of it at all.”
