“Oh, be careful,” I tell him.
Tonight, he wears dark navy shorts with a fitted, purposefully rumpled–looking white Oxford with the sleeves rolled up and brown leather sandals. His eyes squeeze shut as he swallows a curse.
“You okay?”
He nods. “Maybe less talking while I’m walking with my eyes shut.”
“Okay, one step forward, and then one step down,” I tell him.
He follows my instructions cautiously.
“And then two steps forward. Follow my voice.”
“Gladly,” he says, and suddenly he’s looming over me, eyes still shut, with a fluffy towel spread out for me.
“I don’t want to get you wet,” I say.
His voice is gravelly. “I won’t melt.”
I hoist myself out of the tub carefully, feeling deeply vulnerable as I stand completely naked before him.
“I’m not looking,” he reminds me as though he can read my thoughts.
I wrap the towel around me, and of course, it barely covers anything, and suddenly I’m wishing for the very large, very luxurious towels at our New York hotel.
But my thudding heart begins to slow, and the queasiness in my stomach isn’t a result of being so nearly naked with him only inches away, but instead at the thought of him leaving.
“You can open your eyes,” I whisper.
He does so, and there’s something immediately heavy about his deep brown eyes as they linger on my wet, bare shoulder and then down the length of my body. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Would it be completely crude of me to say that I love your outfit?” he asks.
I lick my lower lip before biting down on it as heat spreads down my chest and into my abdomen.
He holds a hand out for me as I step out of the tub, but the drop down is higher than I expect and I stumble forward.
In a second decision, I decide to hold my towel rather than break my fall.
“Whoa, there,” Henry says as he catches me by the elbow. “We can’t have two clumsy people in one relationship.”
I let out a breathless laugh. “With a shoe collection like mine, I can’t afford to be clumsy, so I’ll leave that title to you.”
“I’d walk into a brick wall for you,” he tells me. “Fall into a manhole. My accidental tendencies are at your service.”
I look up to him, his broad hands still bracing my forearms. “Was that a pledge of allegiance?” I ask.
He tilts his head farther down as his arms snake around my waist.
I stand on my toes, my towel thankfully staying in place as I wrap my arms around his neck and playfully nip at his lip.
He groans into my mouth, and my entire body melts into his.
“Stay,” I plead.
He devours me with a kiss as he slides one hand down the length of my hip and pulls my thigh up, hooking it around his.
