Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [56]
The wood floor was cold beneath her bare feet. Dillon obviously didn’t believe in rugs, Jamie thought.
He sat up in the bed, watching her approach, making no move to touch her. He could be making this so much easier—just put his hands on her and take the decision away from her as he had earlier. But he just looked at her.
She took another step. There wasn’t that great a distance between the door and the bed, and it wasn’t going to take long for her to reach it. Maybe she could take smaller steps.
“Where’d you get the dress?” he asked.
She’d forgotten she was wearing it. “In your middle drawer. I was looking for my things.”
“They were in the safe in the garage. Not that that isn’t yours, as well.”
“I know.” Another step. Too damned close, and her heart was slamming against her chest. “Why did you have it?”
“I could tell you Nate had it, and he left it behind. Maybe he carried it with him wherever he went, maybe he had a sick fascination for you.”
She halted, horrified, and he laughed.
“And you might be naive enough to believe me,” he continued. “But the truth is, I stole it from the trash can that your mother stuffed it into. In memory of the most luscious piece of jailbait I’d ever seen.”
“You expect me to believe that? You didn’t even know I was around.”
“I knew. And you look even better now, though I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Stop stalling, Jamie. You’re the one who chose to come in here. Time to find out what you’ve been missing. What we’ve both been missing.”
She took another step and came up against the side of the bed. It was a high, big bed, and the top of the mattress came halfway up her thighs. Her eyes met his, the same eyes that gave nothing away as he watched her. And she climbed up onto the bed, pulling her skirt around her, and sat back on her knees.
She could feel her stomach twist. He reached for the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it on the floor beside the bed.
“Take off your panties.”
She let out a little sound of protest, but he ignored it. “They’re coming off sooner or later, and I know from experience they’re a bitch and a half to rip off no matter how appealing it may sound. Take them off, Jamie.”
She reached under her short skirt and caught the thin bands of lace, sliding them down her hips. Getting out of them was tricky while she was kneeling, and she had no choice but to sit back on the bed and pull the tiny scrap of peach silk over her ankles. She was about to toss them on the far side of the bed when he stopped her, filching the panties out of her hand.
“They’re too small for you,” she said in a caustic voice.
“That’s not what I wanted them for,” he said amiably. “Now the bra.”
“This dress is see-through.”
“That’s the idea.”
She stopped protesting. Instead she turned her back to him, pulling the knit dress down far enough to take off the bra.
“You’re wasting your time trying to be modest,” he said, but she’d already pulled her dress back up over her bare breasts, and she turned back to face him.
“I suppose you want this as a souvenir, too,” she said, dangling the bra from one finger.
He took it from her, tossing it to his side of the bed. The bed, she thought in sudden horror. She was on a bed with Dillon Gaynor, one thin, semitransparent layer away from being naked.
“Now, climb on top of me.”
She couldn’t help it—she looked at his crotch in sudden panic. There was no mistaking the way his erection pressed against his zipper, but he hadn’t even unsnapped the button of his jeans.
“No, we’re not going there yet,” he said, reading her mind. “Since I’m taking the role of your sex therapist you’re going to have to go at my pace and do what I tell you to do.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Then you can leave. I won’t stop you. But if you’re staying you need to climb on top of me.”
Point of no return. She bit her lip and straddled his hips very carefully, arranging her skirt around her. And she looked into his deep blue eyes.
He slid his hands under her skirt, up to her hips, settling her back, so that now she rested against his