Page 85
Her mouth twitches, but she doesn’t retreat.
“I don’t mean you’re better at surgery. Obviously.”
“Devastating clarification.”
“I mean you were more…” She searches for the word. “Real. You were the most real person in that room, and I don’t think any of them knew what to do with you either.”
Her hair has fallen over one shoulder, leaving the other side of her neck bare. I track the soft line of it down to her collarbone, then lower, to where the red dress fits tightly over her breasts.
I want my mouth on her neck. My hands under that dress. I want to find out whether she’s this controlled when she comes or whether she falls apart completely.
My dick hardens against my pants.
“I’m taking a shower,” I say, standing before I do something much less sensible.
I turn the water all the way to cold.
Not cool or refreshing. Fucking freezing.
It hits my skin with a sting, stealing the air from my lungs. I stand beneath it with my hands braced against the tile, jaw locked, waiting for my body to forget the sight of Bea in red silk.
Her bare shoulder, her pouty lips, her intrigue when I offered to share my bed.
My body remembers all of it.
I stay beneath the water until the problem becomes less immediate. Then another minute for insurance.
* * *
When I return, Bea is already in bed.
Her red dress hangs from the bathroom door. She’s wearing an oversized T-shirt beneath the comforter, her phone propped against her knees.
And glasses.
Small, round tortoiseshell frames I’ve never seen before.
I stand in the doorway in my T-shirt, goosebumps still on my arms from the cold, and I look at Bea Walker in her glasses with her hair down and her face clean and the comforter pulled up to her ribs. She looks even more fucking perfect now than earlier tonight. I didn’t even think that was possible.
“Cold shower?” she asks, looking at the goosebumps on my arms.
“Observant.”
“Did it help?”
There’s a glint behind those glasses.
So she knows.
I hold her gaze. “Not as much as I’d hoped.”
Her lips part slightly.
Neither of us say anything else.
I cross to my bed and climb beneath the comforter, keeping my eyes on the ceiling instead of the woman ten feet away.
The ceiling is cream, blank and much less likely to get me into trouble.
