“You look incredible,” I murmur against her skin, feathering her with kisses, dipping lower, toward the neckline of the dress, low enough to reveal just a hint of cleavage—enough to let me know I want more.
She laughs and twines her arms around me, her fingers tracing through my hair. “If I’d known this would be your reaction, I’d wear dresses more often.”
“You should,” I tell her, my hands sliding down her hips, marveling at the smoothness of her curves beneath the stretch of cottony fabric. My hands reach the hemline of the dress, touch bare skin, and start to inch higher, along her thighs.
She squirms a little and glances at the windows of the car. It’s broad daylight outside, after all, and we’re parked right in front of her house. But I don’t care.
“Maybe we should cancel,” I tell her, before I lean in to drag my teeth along the edge of her jawline, nipping her skin just roughly enough to make her gasp and arch up against me. “Go back into your apartment and forget the weekend. We’ll stay here, eat in…” I lean back to catch her eye with a feral grin. “I’ve already got plenty to devour right here.” My hands skate across her thighs, along the flat of her stomach.
She shivers beneath me, and it’s the most delicious feeling, knowing how much I affect her. How easily I can turn her on. A breathy little moan escapes her lips as my hand dips lower, grazing along the edge of her panties—I can feel the fabric of them through the dress, and I press a little harder, until her hips arch up against my hand.
But then she stops. Pulls away from me, with what looks like Herculean effort. “We can’t bail,” she says, though the hitch in her breath and the flush in her cheeks tell me she wants to be saying anything but this. “You said it’s important,” she adds. “Whatever it is.”
My stomach clenches, and my throat seals itself up. I clear it with a growl and turn back toward the road, reaching up to grip the wheel with both hands—the only way I can think of to make them stop touching her. “Bailing might be the wiser move,” I murmur under my breath.
After all, if we bail now, she’ll never need to know. She’ll never have to look at me differently—or worse, decide that this is all too much for her. I wouldn’t blame her, of course, after this. Who knows how it’s going to go? But there’s a tiny, crazy part of me that hopes she’ll stay. Even after she realizes what she’s in for.
“John?” Her hand comes to rest on my wrist, soft and delicate.
I turn my hand around to thread my fingers through hers and bring it up to my lips, kissing each finger, one by one. “Let’s go,” I say, dropping her hand, and she pulls it back to her lap, wrapping her fist around the hem of her skirt, her eyes on me, curious.
But I shake it off and put the car in drive, ignoring her stares as best I can. At least she knows better than to try to pry more details from me. I appreciate it. At this stage, I’m not sure I could stand talking about this. Showing her is better. Like leaping into the deep end of a pool. There’s no time to get cold feet or decide the water’s too unfriendly after all and climb back out. This way, once we get started, there’ll be no going back.
I floor the accelerator, and Mara changes the topic. She talks about work, about the latest project we’ve been putting together. I relax a little, settling into the more familiar, easier topic. We bat around set ideas for a particularly important scene of the play we’re staging. Mara, as usual, has brilliant ones. And better yet, whenever I pitch ideas, she questions them. Pushes me to make them clearer, smarter, better.
It’s just one of the many things I adore about her. She makes me a better version of myself.
So why am I dragging her into this mess? I shake off the doubt as we reach the exit. It’s near Palm Springs, though not quite all the way into the desert yet. I take the familiar exit, wind through the all too memory-filled town, taking smaller streets with every turn until I finally turn up one long, winding driveway, through a manicured lawn that speaks to the fact that, despite recent droughts, whoever lives here has the money to keep up appearances.
Mara’s gaze on my face sharpens. But when I glance over at her, I can practically see her biting her tongue, resisting the urge to question this.
We reach the end of the drive, and the house towers ahead of us. House is the wrong word, really. Mansion would be more appropriate.