Page 34 of Service Included

Instinct prodded her to insert a small, self-deprecating laugh, which happily released a huge chunk of the nerves that had driven her monologue.

“I mean it. I like it.” He raised a hand to rub the back of his neck. “I think, maybe, if you tell me what to do, what you want? Or even talk about Greeks and Romans? That would all be good.” He stopped and looked at her.

In that instant, a feeling she couldn’t name clicked into a spot that she hadn’t known was empty. The good-looking hookup she’d expected to enjoy tonight had morphed unexpectedly into more, and left her incapable of forming any words beyond the ultimately versatile phraseoh fuck, looping and stretching from oh fuck to oh fuuuuuuck to OH-pause-FUCK, but finally settling on a background-level ohfuckohfuckohFUCK. “Um, sure.”

He raised one of his dark eyebrows, and a smile lifted the edge of his mouth, but she knew he couldn’t see the shiny, flat expanse of the blank whiteboard that seemed to have replaced her brain the moment she tried to say something scintillating and/or sexy. He appeared to be waiting. For her to speak.

“I’m kind of dirty. I’d like to take off my shirt—”

Hell yes, he was a dirty man, she was a dirty woman, they were dirty people. Latin declensions ofbellator sordiduscould rise in front of her like Caesar’s legions and she’d want the dirty shirt stripped off each and every filthy warrior.

“—maybe you’ll tell me to do that?” The way he looked directly at her, and then waited for her response, was crazy-sexy, a treat akin to sticking a finger in the icing bowl before there was a finished cake.

She licked her lips, but didn’t have enough saliva left to douse the heat that threatened to char her skin. “Take off your shirt.”

Holy shit, she actually sounded like the woman she wanted to be, a woman who knew what she wanted.

Nico didn’t take his shirt off one arm at a time, none of the fumble-with-the-armhole style of shirt removal, not him. He used that crossed-arm, raise-both-sides-together move that she associated with film scenes and lifted his shirt evenly from the bottom. His elbows and hands rose smoothly, as if the moment was set to music, or maybe that was her fantasy filling in the blanks. The fabric rose to reveal his chest. His stomach was flat, sculpted with the dents and grooves of muscles, as she’d expected. His nipples were brown, the hair around them very dark, matching the flow of hair leading down to circle his navel and point at his waistband. She wanted to stroke her fingertips across all his planes and angles, wanted to study the intricate colors of his tattoo, wanted to taste his skin and fit her lips and tongue into the dips of his stomach and the ridges of his bones. He was perfection, and he was here for her.

Stripped from the waist up, he tossed his shirt on the counter. His gaze dropped, and she knew he knew she’d gone braless. Presumably, he’d known from the moment he’d walked in the room, since her breasts hung differently under the clingy fabric. And now, of course, it outlined her nipples.

“Tell me something.” The timbre of his voice had deepened and slowed until she almost thought she could fall into the stretch of his words and roll around. She nearly trembled as he continued, “Did you ever sneak guys home?”

She shook her head. The table and chairs had already gone, so the space should feel big and empty, not this close, overheated crowding that stuck her shirt to her back and made her thighs prickle with heat.

He was watching her, waiting for more. She was supposed to talk. “No.” She breathed the word.

“So this…” His hands landed on her hips, the weight and heat pressing through her denim shorts. His fingers spread to encompass her curves, his pinkies flirting with the frayed hem and his thumbs reaching to her waist, where they met only a thin layer of shirt fabric. Her body remembered what his fingers could do to her, and she felt the contradictory impulses of arousal sweeping through her. “Is a bit transgressive for you?”

Her lips parted, but she stopped herself before repeatingtransgressive. For a person who had agreed to keep talking, she kept finding herself reduced to echoes.

A crease at the corner of his mouth told her that he was amused. “At Full Service Movers, we like to employ our college board words. Shall I promise to be straightforward?” His hands slid up a few inches. “Uncomplicated?”

Of course, the son of a librarian knew how to string syllables together to get what he wanted. Good that he didn’t require her to answer, because standing upright, despite feeling like Icarus plummeting the moment his wings melted, was her current limit. Coherent speech? That was out of reach.

His lips looked so firm that she felt her nipples peak with need for the promised sensation, but still, he didn’t place his mouth on her. Instead, his hands gathered more fabric, and his knuckles trailed up her ribs as he raised her shirt. He paused when his fingers brushed the undersides of her breasts.

“May I take this off?”

She shaped a yes, but her mouth was dry. Her brain knew that her tongue moved, because she felt it touch the roof of hermouth even though her speaking ability seemed to be displaced by the feel of his hands sliding higher, air on her bare back, his hands brushing the crests of her breasts as he lifted her shirt away. Then her shirt was gone, and her breasts were completely free.

For an instant, she hung suspended between being the woman who had responsibilities and the one who had empty hours stretching in front of her. There was only one way to plunge.

They collided into each other. The wall of his chest, hot and hard and broader than hers, became the limit of her vision. He pulled her tight to his frame, stomach to stomach. Their lips met. Tongues entwined. His stubble was scratchier than it had been at lunchtime. Her skin absorbed the texture of his chest hair, her hands explored the hardness of youth and fitness, her bones pressed into the tough edges of a man of rock. Part of her brain imagined the moment she’d grab his head and rub his chin and cheeks over her sensitive places until he’d stimulated every inch of her skin, even while here and now, she gripped his shoulder blades so tightly, her fingers could feel his muscles flex.

In the dark glass of the wall oven door, she glimpsed their reflections, two semitransparent figures becoming one. She’d wanted to be this close to him from the moment she’d noticed him through her bedroom window. Her hand trailed the length of his spine, a motion repeated by her reflection.

“Upstairs?” He punctuated his question by moving his lips to the skin behind her ear.

She shivered at the touch. He traced her lobe with his tongue. Each time his chest rose, she could hear his breath in her ear and feel his ribs move through her own skin.

“We left the mattress.”

Oh yes, she knew that. “Yes.”

They kissed, stroked heated skin, and tangled their feet and hands as they stumbled through the hallway toward the stairs.At the bottom step, he pulled her against his chest. His mouth burned the hollow of her throat, her bare shoulder, her neck. When his cheek rubbed the upper slope of her breast, she arched backward, seeking more of the promising friction. He guided her to the first step, which positioned her breasts closer to his face.

His mouth besieged one of her nipples, and she felt herself wobble. Every touch loosened her joints as much as it seemed to tighten her skin and nerves, until her body felt almost like an invention, a new contraption roaring to life, about to fly away.

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