Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [41]
Could she do it?
She trembled at the thought, but she was so shaken by what he’d said that night that she didn’t push the idea away as she would have before. For the first time in her life Dione decided to try to attract a man. It had been so long since she’d cut herself off from sexual contact with anyone that she had no idea if she could do it without looking obvious and silly. She was thirty years old, and she felt as inexperienced and awkward as any young girl just entering her teens. Her brief marriage to Scott didn’t count at all; far from trying to attract Scott, after her wedding night she’d gone out of her way to avoid him. Blake was a mature, sophisticated man, used to having any woman he wanted before the accident had robbed him of the use of his legs. Her only advantage was that she was the only available woman in his life right then.
She just didn’t know how to arouse a man.
That unusual problem, one she’d never thought she’d face, was the reason she was standing hesitantly before the mirror the next morning, long past the time when she usually woke Blake. She hadn’t even dressed; she was staring at herself in the mirror, chewing on her lower lip and frowning. She knew that men usually liked the way she looked, but were looks enough? She wasn’t even blond, as Blake preferred his women to be. Her thick black hair swirled over her shoulders and down her back; she’d been about to braid it out of her way when she’d paused, staring at herself, and she still held the brush in her hand, forgotten, as she intensely surveyed the ripe figure of the woman in the mirror. Her breasts were full and firm, tipped with cherry nipples, but perhaps she was too bosomy for his tastes. Perhaps she was too athletic, too strong; perhaps he liked dainty, ultrafeminine women.
She groaned aloud, twisting around to study herself from the back. So many ifs! Maybe he was a leg man; she had nice legs, long and graceful, smoothly tanned. Or maybe…Her bottom, covered only by wispy, pink silk, was curvy and definitely feminine.
Her clothes were another problem. Her everyday wardrobe consisted mostly of things that were comfortable to work in: jeans, shorts, T-shirts. They were neat and practical, but not enticing. She did have good clothes, but nothing that could be worn while working and be practical, too. Her dresses weren’t sexy, either, and her nightgowns were straight out of a convent, despite Blake’s comment about her “running around in see-through nighties.” She needed new clothes, things that were sexy but not transparently so, and definitely a real see-through nightie.
She was so preoccupied that she hadn’t heard the sounds of Blake in his bedroom; when his rumbling, early-morning voice broke into her thoughts with an ill-tempered, “Lazybones, you overslept this morning!” she whirled to face the door as it swung open and Blake rolled his wheelchair through the doorway.
They both froze. Dione couldn’t even raise her arms to cover her bare breasts; she was stunned by the shock of his entrance, so lost in her thoughts that she was unable to jerk herself back to reality and take any action. Neither did Blake appear capable of moving, though good manners demanded that he leave the room. He didn’t; he sat there with his blue eyes becoming even bluer, a dark, stormy expression heating his gaze as it raked down her almost naked body, then rose to linger over her breasts.
“Good Lord,