He couldn’t make her feel weird about that.
“So you like it there, huh?”
Christ, she’d really misjudged what he could make her feel weird about. Not only that, but she’d misjudgedhowweird he could possibly make her feel. She’d imagined a simple answer that maybe veered into a joke, and instead he’d just said something that sounded pretty close to sex talk.
It sounded so close that she found herself flushing from head to foot. Random parts of her tingled too intently the second the words were out, and they carried on for a long while afterward. Too long a while, if she was being honest. She was meant to be answering him, and all she could muster was a noncommittal sound and a lot of scrubbing at his broad back.
Unfortunate really, that the latter only made things worse.
She didn’t intend it to. She went at him like a nun briskly rubbing a pair of underpants against a washboard, full of pure vim and gusto. But no matter how sexless she tried to be, sex kept slipping in there anyway. All the vigorous movements just made her realize how hot she was getting, and how humid this stupid room was, and most embarrassingly...
Her nipples had gone really stiff. She could feel them chafing against her nightshirt every time she stroked over him, and the harder she worked the more it seemed to happen. The material just kept catching on the tips, and every time it did a wave a thick sensation ran right down, down, to the suddenly swollen and very sensitive place between her legs. Everything just felt so big down there, to the point where moving around was kind of a problem. She had to go slower just to stop herself moaning.
Only slowing didn’t help at all.
Now she was practically reveling in washing him. The washcloth was no longer bunched—though she didn’t know how that had happened—and her hand was almost on his skin. She could near feel him through the material, all smooth and slick with soap, muscles bunching and flexing as she worked. It took a monumental effort to keep any sound in under that sort of pressure—though even after she’d succeeded at restraining herself she couldn’t exactly celebrate.
Mainly because he didn’t restrain himselfat all.
“Mmmmm yeah,” he said, in a way thatcouldhave been perceived as innocent. Just like with those words he said—it waspossiblethat there wasn’t any sexual meaning in there. But it was also possible she was pretending that this was the case in order to stop herself from having an orgasm.
She was already fairly close as it was. Hearing him make that husky, breathless sound and accepting that it might be a sex thing was simply a step too far. It was all too much. She had to count to ten and stay very still just to maintain her sanity, but apparently sanity wasn’t intent on giving her a break today.
The moment she slumped against the tub he turned and tilted his head a little, in a way that put his face far too close to her face. She could almost feel his breath against her cheek—which was bad enough on its own. But then he went and asked her a question like this one. “Did my groan of delight accidentally paralyze you?”
After which she just wanted to throw in the towel.
How did he make it sound both suggestiveandconsiderate?
How that was even a thing? That wasn’t a thing.
“No, no, I...I’m just resting here for a second.”
“Really? It doesn’t look like you’re just resting there. It looks much more like you collapsed over the edge of the bathtub.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe my back gave out.”
“Well, thatisa possibility,” he said, but she knew he didn’t think it was a possibility at all. She could tell by the way he touched her hair as he said it—just one little damp curl—with the tips of his enormous fingers.
It was quite possibly the sexiest caress of her entire life, and it wasn’t even skin-to-skin. Christ knew what would happen if it was skin-to-skin.
“Or it could be that I have a rare freezing disorder.”
“I had entertained the notion.”
“And then there’s how close your face is to mine, right now.”
“Is that making it harder to move?”
“It’s making it impossible to move.”
“And you mean that in the bad way.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. What’s the bad way?”
“The bad way is when you’re so terrified by all of this that you can’t escape, as opposed to not really wanting to go anywhere at all.”
“I think I’m both of those things at the same time,” she said, but she didn’t quite understand in what quantities until he turned his head just a little. Barely more than an inch, she thought, but an inch was all it took. One second they were only talking—in a heated way true, but still only words—and the next he was actually moving in for something that made her heart seize up.
