He lowered his head and licked her collarbone. His wet hair brushed her chin, and for some reason that was the thing that made her nipples stiffen. Not his tongue on her body, damp and unfamiliar, but the light, cold tease of his hair. He could brush her whole body with it, and she’d die happy.
Go ahead and ask him to. “Let’s go in the bedroom, and you can feather your hair over me.” I’m sure that will go over big.
Her hands curled ineffectually at her sides. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was embarrassing herself, and they’d barely even started.
“You don’t need a shower.” He slid one finger under her bra strap and pushed it to the side, and then he kissed her shoulder, right there. “I think you taste good the way you are.” His mouth moved higher, to her neck. Behind her ear. “I’d like to taste a lot more of you.”
She stiffened.
“Right here, for instance,” he said, with another kiss. His hands moved down her shoulders, over her arms, to her wrists. They found her waist. They cupped her breasts. “Here.”
One hand slid to her hip. Along the outside of her leg. It skated across the top to the inside and coaxed her thighs apart. Her mouth opened when his fingers pressed against her through her panties, an invasion she’d fully expected but somehow hadn’t anticipated. “Here.”
“You can’t,” she croaked.
“Can’t I?” The thought didn’t seem to faze him. His hand lingered for a moment, then passed upward to her stomach. Somehow more intimate than having his hand between her legs, because he would feel—
“So soft.”
That. Exactly that. Her soft, imperfect stomach. Should have had salad for dinner, her asshole inner critic whispered.
This was harder than she’d expected. She wished he would kiss her so she could get swept up in it and stop worrying. It was awesome that Ben could walk around in a towel and be totally comfortable with himself, but she wasn’t built that way. She felt rigid as cardboard, her utilitarian body highly functional but not worth fussing over.
She felt faintly embarrassed for him, for doing the fussing.
His head was lowered, tracking the progress of his hand, but she couldn’t watch. She looked away, down the hall. She wondered what the monthly rent was on this apartment. She wondered why she was so bad at this when, in fact, she liked sex. She liked it a lot. If they could skip to the bit where it was dark, and they were under the covers with him buried inside her. The grunting, frantic part—that was the bit she liked.
The tricky thing was how to get there from here.
Kiss me, she thought. Kiss me.
He kissed her neck and stroked her stomach. He kissed her jaw.
She exhaled, and it came out jerky and wrong.
Ben lifted his head.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“No, something is. You’re not into this.”
“I am. I’m just …”
The internal censor piped in to ask, Just what, May? A freak?
But damn it, this wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Ben’s, either. It just was. She didn’t have to beat herself up over it.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted.
“Is it too soon?” He removed his hand. “I heard you talking to your sister.”
When he eased away, the air changed without his skin in it. She felt it as a loss, her whole body pleading for his return.
Huh. Maybe she hadn’t been as not-into-it as she’d thought. A rapid scan told her that her nipples ached, and she was damp between her legs. It was only her head that needed to get with the program. Her head was the freak.
And Ben was getting away, his eyes gone cool and cautious because he’d heard about Dan being in Michigan. Damn it.