Page 47 of Tempt Me

“You always did like clothes, didn’t you?”

I glanced over my shoulder. Jamila peered around the edge of the screen. The yellow blazer and pants were slung over the top of it. Was she naked?

I cleared my throat. “I still love clothes. Let me hang those for you.”

I stepped to the center of the screen to avoid being tempted to peek. After lifting the suit, still warm from her body, I resisted planting my nose in it and inhaling her scent. I stuck a hand over. “Hanger?”

The wood hanger pressed into my palm, and I busied myself arranging the suit.

“Ready.” She emerged from behind the screen, pressing one hand to her chest to keep the dress from sagging off her.

The pencil sheath dress was a rich poppy red with a high front slit. The split boatneck bodice barely clung to her shoulders and revealed a vee of skin between her breasts. Professional yet alluring, the dress would draw every eye in any room Jamila entered. I couldn’t keep mine off her slim silhouette.

She turned. “Zip, please.”

The opening scooped low in the back, below her shoulder blades. The zipper started at her tailbone, giving me a peek of the lacy petal pink waistband of her panties. She hadn’t tried to zip it at all. She also wasn’t wearing a bra.

“You okay there, Nat?” She glanced over her shoulder again and smirked at whatever foolish expression I was making.

“Um, yeah.” I launched myself toward her and tried to keep my sweaty palms off the wool-silk blend. The photographer would fuss if I left a handprint. I pinched the fabric at the bottom of the zipper, and with my other hand, I slowly drew the pull up her back.

“You know,” she said, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were into me.”

My fingers slipped off the zipper. “What—what makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just the way you can’t stop staring at me today. Then there was that kiss the other night when you were drunk, or do you not remember that?”

She was giving me an out. It’d be so easy to claim I didn’t remember. To blame it all on the tequila. But that wasn’t who I was. Maybe I’d conceal the truth for a while, like I’d done with my parents when I’d dropped out of culinary school and when I’d lost my car, but I wasn’t a liar.

“I remember. And I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” She waited until I’d pulled the zipper all the way up, then she rotated as gracefully as a ballerina to face me.

“Yeah. I, uh, didn’t ask first. Plus, I know you’re not into me.”

“You do, huh?” Her eyebrows lifted. “You know that for a fact.”

“I…yes?” How the heck did she expect me to answer that?

“Are you sure you’re into me?” In her beige heels, she towered over me. She parked her hands on her hips. “You’re not just bi-curious?”

I stood as tall and straight as I could, and I still came up only to her chin. “I’m bi for sure. I have some experience.” I’d kissed a girl in college, and in the immortal words of Katy Perry, I’d liked it. So I’d kissed a few more.

“You do?” Her gaze zeroed in on my lips. I licked them. She wore a shiny, kissable burgundy lipstick, and I swayed forward. “Interesting.”

Dropping one hand to her side as the other stayed propped on her hip, she sauntered out of the room, hips swaying.

I stood gaping at the doorway. What the heck had just happened? Did that mean Jamila Jallow was interested in me? Was she teasing me? I replayed the conversation. She’d never actually said she liked me. Or that she wanted to kiss me.

Did she?

Like a zombie, I stumbled out of the changing room and sank into a chair to watch the shoot. Was I reading too much into the fierce stare that occasionally wandered to me? Or the exaggerated swing in her hips as she turned at the photographer’s direction? At the cheeky wink she tossed my way when she caught me staring, open-mouthed?

When the photographer finally released her, she beckoned. I followed her into the ersatz dressing room. She turned her back to me without a word, and I lowered the zipper, pausing at the bottom. I let my index finger hover over the waistband of her panties, wishing I dared to ask if I could touch her.

But I didn’t.

“I think we should celebrate,” she said, stepping back behind the screen.

---