“Are you nervous about doing this?”
God, he was really good at knowing things. That was the second time he’d guessed stuff about her, despite the fact that people so rarely did. Her first shrink hadn’t realized she didn’t like coffee, until one day he’d discovered her pouring it into the potted plant. And she was pretty sure her second one thought her fake name was Anne.
He’d always paused before saying it, then fumbled the last part.
So how are you feeling today, Arglebargle?
“Maybe just a little, tiny bit.”
“Here. I’ll hold out an arm. Make it easy.”
“I’m sort of afraid I’ll accidentally lop off an ear.”
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere near the ear area.”
“Maybe not, but I could shear off an elbow,” she said, though she took hold of the cuff anyway. She pulled it taut in a good and businesslike fashion, then lined up the scissors ready to cut.No muss no fuss, she thought, despite how mussy and fussy it sort of felt. They were very close together now—much closer than she’d imagined. If he shifted his other arm just a little, this would practically be an embrace.
And he was really looking at her too.
He was looking at her so hard she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. She could feel his eyes stroking over the side of her face before she’d even started.
“Plus this jacket looks really expensive.”
“That’s why it’s going to be soooo satisfying when you snick those blades together,” he said, and he was right too. Itwassatisfying. They made a sound like a too-tight dress splitting up the seams, and she almost let out a relieved breath to hear it. As though the dress had been on her and she’d been wearing it far, far too long.
And then she cut again, and again—always feeling the meat of his arm on one side, always aware that she could cut him if she went too fast or moved too erratically—and after a while he was actually making that sound that she’d imagined. “Ohhhh,” he said, when she got to the elbow. “Oh man that’s so good.”
She understood what he meant. The material was near unbearable. It felt like the pelt of a dead seal peeling away, soaking wet inside and too thickly textured. The whole thing slopped against his upper leg as she eased it off, and forced her to think of weird and unsettling ideas. Would she find a man underneath this second skin?
Maybe he was something else, inside. Something dark and twisted, from a fairy tale she only half-remembered.
“What are you thinking of?”
She wished he hadn’t whispered that. His whisper was even better in person than it was in the movies—sort of husky, with a hint of sensuousness that didn’t really fit this situation. She was just cutting him out of a damn coat, for God’s sake.
Why didn’t it seem as if she was just cutting him out of a coat? She could feel his breath on the side of her face now, as she tried to negotiate his big, bulky shoulder. And all this heat was coming off him in long, slow waves, even though he should have been freezing. The outside of the jacket was freezing.
Maybe he was developing a fever?
“I’m thinking that I’m going to find a weird creature under here.”
“I promise it’s just me,” he said, but he was lying.
He absolutely had to be. Holden Stark wouldn’t get as close as he was currently getting. Something else must have been stirring the strands of hair that curled against her right cheek, because it couldn’t possibly be him. If it was that meant he was nearly touching her, and not with something simple like his fingers.
He was doing it with his mouth. That lush, ripe mouth of his, and he was nearly touching her with it. She could tell he was, without even turning her head. She could make out the near-sulky curl of his lower lip and the pout of the top one...could almostseethem out of the corner of her eye.
Plus, he was breathing on her, oh God he was breathing on her.
Did he realize he was?
She doubted he did. He probably exuded such enormous amounts of raw sex appeal that some of it was always spilling out—even at completely awful times. In fact, wasn’tthisthe worst possible time in the world? He’d just been through a terrible, terrible ordeal and yet all she could feel was the heat rolling off him and the pressure of his big body. Her hands were starting to shake. Her face felt red-hot.
Any second now, and he was going to notice. She had to get herself together, but how to do it without revealing several embarrassing facts? She couldn’t say,I’m not used to a man being this close to me—please go over there. And she definitely couldn’t tell him to stop breathing hot, humid breath on her. It would sound like a complaint, when really it was anything but. The whole thing was a bit like being inside a tea-scented sauna with a lot of naked men—which was nice, in one way. It was very nice, in fact.
It was just also very hard to escape.
She swapped sides and started working on his other sleeve, only to find that this strange pressure had infected everything. It was in his stare, which looked both amused and oddly defiant, whenever she dared to glance up at it. And it was in the slow, steady cuts she was making. She couldn’t help thinking of the wordundressingnow, as she slid the scissors ever upward.
