"You can let me help you with a smile on your face," Rafael says from behind me, "or you can let me help you with a frown, either way, and we will leave in one minute."
I close my eyes for exactly two seconds.
I’m going to fucking murder this man.
He says nothing. He just waits.
I stand there for another moment. My back is open. The zipper is stuck. His cologne is everywhere. I am going to be late to anevent I didn't agree to attend, wearing a dress I didn't choose, and I cannot fasten it myself.
I turn back to the mirror.
"Fine," I say to my own reflection as if I have any choice in the matter.
He hums and steps behind me. I watch it happen in the mirror, his height behind mine, his hands coming up to the fabric at the base of the zipper with the same deliberate care he applies to everything, careful to touch only the dress, not my skin. He finds the catch. Starts to work it upward.
Slowly.
I don't know if he intends it slowly. I suspect he does. The zip travels up my spine one careful inch at a time and I am aware of every millimeter of his hands' proximity, the warmth radiating off his palms without contact, the slight shift of air when his fingers move. My breath has gone shallow. I watch my own chest in the mirror, the give and take of it, trying to keep it even.
His eyes find mine in the reflection.
I don't look away. I can't, somehow.
My anger is diluting into something else entirely.
We just look at each other in the mirror while his hands work the zipper up and the room is completely silent. My heart is going at a speed that is genuinely inappropriate for a woman who is simply getting dressed.
“You’re not breathing,” he says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through the air between us.
“I am!”I am not.
“Breathe, little Gia. Or you’ll faint.” He teases with such a straight face that I have to think about it twice.
I force air into my lungs. It shudders on the way in. The zipper passes the midpoint, the slide of it a slow, sensual invasion. My skin prickles, anticipating a touch that doesn’t come. He’s so careful. So infuriatingly, deliberately careful.
“There,” he murmurs. It glides the last few inches easily. His hands settle at the top, his fingertips so close to the nape of my neck I can feel the warmth of them like a brand. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
His breath is near my hair. I can see his jaw in the mirror, the hard line of it, the muscle working once at the hinge.
Neither of us moves.
The ache between my legs is a steady, insistent throb. I am so wet I can feel it and I am standing in an evening gown in front ofa mirror with this man's hands at my back and his eyes in mine and I have completely run out of useful thoughts.
He leans forward.
His lips touch the side of my neck and I gasp before I can stop myself.
He straightens. Steps back. "You're testing my restraint, little Gia."
I glare at him.
I say nothing.
“Meet me downstairs in a minute.” And then he’s gone, back through the dressing room door, and I stand in front of the mirror in the dress he chose with his kiss still sitting on my neck and my thighs pressed together and my hands finding the edge of the vanity.
My reflection looks back at me. Hair done, dress fastened, cheeks carrying color I didn't put there.
I look like a woman on the verge of doing something she absolutely cannot do.
