He shook his head, wrong again. It wasn’t comfort he wanted to give her. That implied too much about grief and loss. They should be more about pleasure, life and hope.
He looked out towards her hallway. “I want you to trust me, be comfortable with me.” Somewhere out there was a fish he’d given her because he’d wanted to shake her up. He still wanted that. He wanted to shake her up so much he remade her world. “I want the sex to undo you, unknot me and put us back together again.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” That sure didn’t sound like he meant to simply snore in her bed. Her very round-mouthed exclamation didn’t sound like she believed it either.
She leaned into him. Better that than opening the front door to usher him out. “I don’t get it.”
He put his arm around her and tried again. “Let me sleep beside you, hold you, feel you up over whatever pjs you do own. It’s your call if it goes any further, but I’m happy to be with you if nothing but actual shut-eye happens.” He turned his head and kissed her cheek. “Let’s go to bed.”
16: Beneath
Georgia gripped the edge of the bathroom sink. She’d been in here forever and even accounting for the whole makeup removal, hair, teeth, mystery of being a girl getting ready to go to bed thing, Damon must be thinking she’d fallen in. Or gone out for milk.
With the intention of never co
ming back.
She had one decent slinky nighty and had no idea what happened to it; must’ve stayed crammed in a drawer in London. She wore a washed-out shapeless t-shirt and good underwear. She glared at herself in the mirror. What kind of a moron puts a bra on to go to bed with the sexiest man she’d ever been kissed by?
The kind who let him talk himself out of stripping her naked and having at it.
She opened a drawer and rumbled about. Somewhere in there was an unused toothbrush she’d saved from the plane trip. The least she could do was offer it to him with a fresh towel. Especially since she didn’t have eggs.
She’d known this was likely to happen all week. She’d put fresh sheets on the bed so it’s not like this was a surprise. She’d been as much into being physical with Damon as it was possible to be and remain clothed. She was nothing better than a pricktease. She needed to get her head straight, march into the bedroom, push him back on the bed and kiss him till he forgot to be so overly considerate, till she forgot to overthink this and let go.
Annnd that was about as likely as Fluffy flipping pancakes for them.
Goddamn, she knew how to kiss him, she knew how to touch him in ways he liked and it was obvious he was into her. He was turning pretzel for her. And how bad could it be? Bad sex with Damon had to be better than years of no sex. Easier than sex with Hamish when he’d been angry and frustrated. And if she touched Damon wrongly, if she moved weirdly, he’d forgive her.
The problem was all she knew was how sex worked with Hamish, and after his injury it’d rarely been great for either of them. He’d been her first boyfriend and her last lover.
But there was a multi-award winning voice actor with a to die for body who was willing to simply sleep in her bed across the hall. It couldn’t get slower, less pressured than that, and still she couldn’t leave the bathroom.
“Second thoughts?”
He was standing in the doorway. He was naked except for black briefs. She looked away until she remembered she could gawk at him freely without getting caught out. She gawked with her mouth open. First-class gawking, drool-inducing gawking with no shame or embarrassment.
“Georgia?”
“I was looking for a spare toothbrush for you.” She was looking at the swell of his thighs. Amazing how your brain could function even when the rest of you was in stasis, suspended between I want, and I should run out and get groceries.
“Ah-hah.”
He put a hand to the doorjamb and a cavalcade of muscles in his side and arm shifted, making a bizarrely connected bunch of muscles in her core contract. She turned back to the drawer and rattled her hand around in it. The toothbrush was right on top, but she needed an excuse not to look at him because if she looked at him she was going to need surgery to reconstruct the bones in her legs.
“Georgia.”
She was Lot’s wife times a million. She turned back to him when she knew she shouldn’t. She stared. She was going to turn into a whole salt mine. “You’re, um.”
His other hand went out to clasp the other side of the doorway. He had two ladders of muscle ripping up his abdomen and a ridge of them over each hipbone. She wanted to touch them, trace them to where they disappeared into his briefs. He was not going to need help becoming erect. He was kidding about simply sleeping.
And he could probably make her orgasm if he said a complete sentence.
“What?” He let go the door and brushed a hand idly through his hair then over his chest, down his body to his hip, before dropping it to his side.
She wet her lips. If he made that gesture again, a single phrase could do it.