She reaches my chair and does a slow circle around it, trailing her fingers across my shoulders as she goes. The touch sends sparks cascading down my spine, pooling somewhere low in my stomach.
“See?” she murmurs near my ear, close enough I can smell her perfume—warm and sweet and definitely new. “I can indeed be sexy.”
“I never said you couldn’t be sexy.”
“Your face said it. When I fell. Your face was very judgy.”
“My face was concerned for your safety. There’s a difference.”
She completes her circle and positions herself in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch her if I let myself. Which I won’t. Probably. The teddy looks even more enticing from this angle, the way the lace stretches across her collarbones, the shadow between her breasts, the ridiculously dainty straps that look like they’d snap if I breathed on them wrong.
“Now for the grand finale,” she announces, with the gravity of someone unveiling a grand work of art.
She whirls around, presenting me with a view of her back—the teddy dips dangerously low, exposing the delicate architecture of her spine, the dimples just above her hips—and attempts what I can only describe as an ambitious controlled descent toward my lap.
It is not controlled.
It is not even close to controlled.
Her knees buckle at an awkward angle. She overcorrects by grabbing the arm of the chair. Her center of gravity shiftscatastrophically to the left. She pinwheels her free arm in a desperate attempt to regain balance, catches a fistful of my shirt, and ends up in a sort of sideways sprawl across my thighs that is approximately zero percent what she was going for.
“Nailed it,” she says, from her position of tangled limbs and wounded dignity. “Exactly as planned.”
I’m shaking. My whole body is shaking with suppressed laughter that I’m trying desperately to contain because she looks so earnest, so committed to pretending this went well, that the kindest thing I can do is play along.
She sits up, but stays cradled in my lap. I secure her, wrapping my arms around her. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Taio Wilkes.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re literally vibrating. I can feel it. The chair is shaking.”
“That’s…enthusiasm. For your performance.” I press my lips together hard. “Very moving. Literally. A lot of movement happened.”
“Was it hot?” She pouts her lips.
“Very hot,” I answer automatically.
“Are you turned on?”
“Extremely.” I try to mask my chuckle with a cough.
“You’re the worst.” Charlie buries her head into the crook between my arm and chest. “Why don’t you want me? It’s maddening.”
“What makes you think I don’t want you?” I tuck my finger under her chin and pull up until her gaze is on mine.
“We were alone last night. You had me all to yourself, and you didn’t even try to make a move. I’m so confused. I don’t know what you want.”
The afternoon light filters through the curtains, catching the gold in her hair, the flush spreading across her cheeks and down her neck, the rapid pulse I can see beating at the base of herthroat. Curled up in my lap, warm and soft, she’s so close I can count the faint freckles scattered across her nose.
I think about how badly I want to kiss her.
And why I didn’t last night…
“Charlie, last night, sleeping next to each other? That was the most intimate thing I’ve done with someone in a long time. It wasn’t sex, but that was my way of telling you how I feel about you. I work in an industry where people try and fail every day to solve their problems with sex. I don’t want to be your problem. And I don’t want sex to be the solution. Because it doesn’t last. Do you really want to be with the son of a felon who scrapes by as an escort? Don’t you care about your reputation? Be honest.”
“Do you really want to be with a broken pop star who’s been so deadlocked on fame and success that she doesn’t know how to function as a person? Because being with me means backtracking and going through all the firsts I missed while my head was in the sand.”
I think about last night, how satisfying it was to hold her and be the reason she could rest.
