I watch him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat, while he does as I instruct. When the room has been darkened, he pulls a seat up in front of me, his sketchbook in his hand.
“Are you ready?” he asks, his voice level. He keeps his eyes on my face.
I shake my head.
“Not yet.”
And then I take off my bra.
Dare clears his throat and opens his sketchbook, the picture of a professional, and I swear I feel ten thousand flames lapping at my body as every inch of me flushes.
I stand up and shove my shorts to the floor.
Dare doesn’t move. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.
His eyes are frozen on me, appreciation flaring to life in them, and then he stares into my eyes, his gaze deep and dark.
“Calla,” he begins again, and he starts to move, to get up.
“Don’t,” I tell him sharply. “Please. I need this. I want to be…distracted.”
His eyes seem guarded now as he studies me, but he still stands up. He walks to his closet and comes back with one of his dress shirts. A white button-up. He hands it to me.
“Put this on,” he tells me. “Leave it unbuttoned.”
My heart pounds as I do what he asks.
He waits, then adjusts the opening of the shirt to fall just right against my skin, so that only the top curves of my breasts show. He buttons one button there, and then pulls the shirt open so that my belly button and hip are exposed.
He settles back into his chair.
“So I’m a distraction, then?” he asks simply, bringing his pencil to the page and drawing a flowing line. The beginning of my hip.
I flush. “You’re far more than a distraction. But today… I need distracted.” I swallow and his eyes meet mine, then he looks away.
“Lay back,” he tells me brusquely. He gets up and comes to me, bending and moving my hair over my shoulder. His hand brushes my skin and a fire erupts, a heat, a raging lava-like liquid, churning in my belly, and I ache for him to lay down with me, to feel him next to me.
But he doesn’t. He stares down at me, studying me.
“Arch your back a bit,” he tells me. So I do. He slides a small pillow behind it.
“Bite your lip,” he tells me. “Not hard. Just enough to look like you’re thinking about something. Fantasizing, maybe.”
Oh God. I can totally do that.
He smiles, just a little, and returns to his seat.
His hands move across the page, quickly, then slowly. He looks up at me, his eyes so so dark, then he returns his attention to the page.
The electricity in this room is charged. It’s real. It’s smothering. It’s exhilarating. I can’t breathe.
Dare meets my gaze.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. “I am now.”
Now that I’m here. Now that you aren’t rejecting me. Now that you see me.