Page 34 of First Impressions of You

Weighing my options, I decide to poke my head out to try to get her attention, but the first thing I see is a pair of eyes looking right at me. And they don’t belong to the seamstress.

“Where’s Adriana?”

“Stepped out,” he replies in a clipped tone.

“Shit,” I murmur.

He arches an eyebrow at me. “Need help with something?”

I consider saying yes, but I’d rather dive headfirst into a pool of needles than ask Winter for help. I hide behind the folding screen again and decide to wait for Adriana.

Surely, she won’t take too long. And she’ll come looking for me.

“Luiza.” Winter’s voice is much closer now. “Do you need help with the dress?”

“I’m fine.”

“Luiza,” he repeats, impatiently.

I turn around, ready to tell him to leave me alone, and gasp when I find him standing right there, looking at me with his eyes narrowed in impatience.

“I could’ve been naked!” I yelp, my hands instinctively going to my chest.

“You’re clearly not,” he points out, eyeing the gown. His eyes lingers on my body a little too long, and I feel like I’m naked under his gaze.

“You didn’t know that.” I tighten my arms in front of me, but with the low neckline of the dress, the movement only pushes my boobs further up. Winter’s eyes drop to my chest for a fraction of a second before he catches himself.

He clears his throat. “You need help,” he states, forgoing the question this time. He steps forward, the distance between us uncomfortably short for two people who despise each other. “What can I do for you?”

“You can leave me alone.”

Why is it that he brings out the worst in me every time? I always feel like a petulant child when I talk to him.

“Why do you always have to be so difficult?”

He closes the distance between us. If I raise my arm, I can touch him. I’m glad he’s put a robe on because I don’t know what would happen to my body if I had to be this close to his shirtless abs. “Turn around.”

He doesn’t give me a chance to argue. He places both hands on my shoulders, turning me on my heels as a yelp escapes my lips.

“Hey,” I complain, but the rest of the words get stuck in my throat once I find his gaze in the mirror and realize he’s looking at my naked back with darkened, lust-filled eyes. I watch as his throat works with a swallow, and he slowly raises his hands to reach for the fabric of the dress. I close my eyes, not sure I can watch any longer without combusting in flames.

The moment his knuckles make contact with my naked skin, I have to stifle a gasp and command my lungs to take full breaths instead of the short ones that do nothing to lower my heartbeat.

Winter adjusts the fabric, pulling both parts closer, and the force of the movement makes me lose my balance and take a step back, right into his hard chest.

He grunts, placing a hand on my waist to steady me and move me away from him.

If goosebumps erupting all over my body at his proximity hadn’t thrown me so out of sorts, I might have taken offense, but I don’t have it in me to read too much into it.

Winter meets my eyes in the mirror.

The hunger that was there has been replaced by a look of pain.

I’m the first to look away.

His right hand finds the zipper again, and when he tugs it upward, it slides smoothly for a second, and then stops.

His left hand leaves my hips, and even through all the layers of fabric, it leaves a burning sensation trailing behind. Pulling the bottom of the zipper down with his left hand, he tries to tug it upward with his right one again. It moves a little more, but it gets stuck around my ribcage.

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