And while they weren’t anything Victoria’s Secret would put in a storefront window, they were black and featured lace and they didn’t say “Tuesday” on them.
She was now naked save for them.
His lips curved very, very slightly.
But the heat in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, was making her lightheaded.
“And now...” His voice was husky. “I think you should take off your underwear.”
She waited again, a little smile on her own face.
And she heard his breath catch when she finally moved.
She slid them down exactly as if she was about to step into the shower, maybe with a little less speed, and kicked them from her toes to land lightly on top of her jeans and T-shirt and bra.
She had a peculiar sense of floating over her nude self while the fully clothed Mac smiled like King Henry VIII contemplating a feast.
For a good thirty seconds or so.
She’d never felt more naked or more purely like an animal, willing to do just about anything to get what she wanted, and that meant, in this moment, doing everythinghewanted. And to think she couldn’t even get lazy old Corbin to do it in front of a mirror.
“Now...” His voice was a hypnotist’s voice. Dreamy. “I think you should turn around, put your hands against the wall... and close your eyes.”
She rotated toward the wall with the casement window and pressed her palms against the cool stucco, like a perp about to get frisked for weapons.
And she closed her eyes.
Nothing happened.
There was no sound.
No movement.
Unless one counted her lungs. Her breath shuddered in and out, swiftly. In and out.
In the dark behind her lids, she imagined she could feel his eyes on her, planning what he intended to do to her. And within seconds imagination and anticipation colluded to fire her nerve endings into a state of a sort of raw eagerness as efficiently as a well-applied tongue or a skillful hand.
And it got even better when she imagined him watching her. His own arousal banking by the second as he filled his senses with the sight of her.
Imagined his hand moving to his zipper, sliding it down.
The silence felt acute. Her hearing was suddenly a superpower. Off in the distance a goat bleated.
And then... then there was a faint rustle. She latched on to the sound with a desperate hope.
Suddenly she could smell him, his earthiness and an underlying tang of soap.
Behind her, the inch or so of space between them heated so palpably it was almost as if he was against her skin.
Oh but not quite.
It definitely wasn’t quite the same.
And still... he made her wait.
Seconds more. And a few more after that.
She shuddered and arced like a snapped power line when his fingertips finally landed lightly on her skin, and when they glided from her shoulder blades to her waist, she groaned raggedly and shamelessly.
