“Right? Totally the best. Anyway, it was empty, and I’d just broken up with my agent after my publisher dumped me, so I was writing some saucy smut—”
“Noted, you write sex scenes when you’re depressed.”
“Just some good foreplay. Very titillating stuff. Anyway, she sat down at my table and critiqued what I was writing. She’d been reading over my shoulder, apparently, and I asked her what the hell and that was that. She critiqued my work and then asked if I wanted a job.”
“Five years ago?” he asked, perplexed.
“Yeah.” I tugged on my skirt, and zipped it up in the back. “Why?”
“Because I was—what the hell could you have been writing to attract her?” he asked, though I got the feeling that he wanted to ask something else.
I poked my head out of the bathroom. “Guess.”
“Had to be something off the cuff. Alien barbarian erotica?”
“No, but I’d read that.”
“Omegaverse?”
“Anyway,” I said loudly, pulling my hair back into a bun, and left the bathroom. “She gave me pointers on a confession scene. She said that people usually weren’t overly eloquent, and grand romantic gestures are obtuse and obsolete because they’re too corny. I argued the opposite—that people like grand romantic gestures because they are corny. Because people need more corny in their lives. Like this”—I outstretched my arms to encompass the room, this moment—“is corny. All of it. Right down to how much I want to touch you, and how I can’t.”
“And do tell, how much do you want to touch me?”
“You’re terrible.”
“You brought it up! And I would point out that this scene is not so much corny as rife with romantic tension. If it’s corny, then perhaps you’re writing it wrong.”
“Oh, then tell me, how would you write this scene, maestro?”
“Well, first off,” he began, and turned his dark eyes to me, “I would ask you what you wanted.”
“Ooh, consent. That’s sexy.”
“Very,” he murmured in agreement, his voice low and gravelly. He stood and stepped close to me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “Skip the banter, shelve the soul-searching. It’s morning, and the sunlight is glorious on your hair, and you are exquisitely stubborn. You’d never tell me what you’d want.”
“Ha! Go on.” I tried to keep my voice level. “Then what do I want?”
He came up behind me, outstretching his arms, hovering over my skin as he traced the contour of my hips to my middle. “I have an inkling that you would like me to reach my hand beneath your pretty lace underwear,” he whispered, his lips pressed close to my ear, “and stroke you slow. And while I did, I would kiss your neck and nibble at your ear.”
I felt myself flush, my heart beating in my throat as quick as a rabbit. I held my breath as he bent closer still, closer than he’d ever been, never touching, his fingers painting over me like a sculptor’s, relishing in my design.
“And then?” My voice was tight. Controlled.
I’d written more intense scenes than this. This was nothing.
Then why was this getting me all hot and bothered?
It was the look in his eyes, that dark glimmer. The promise that he would do exactly what he was telling me. For a man who liked his lists, and liked his order—that was powerful.
His mouth hovered beside my ear. “Romance isn’t a sprint, Florence. It’s a marathon. You start slow. With your blouse, one button at a time. You said I was meticulous, but I would show you just how meticulous I could be.” His fingers mimed undoing the buttons of my blouse. “For each button, I’d plant another kiss on your neck, your collarbone, and finally your perfect breasts . . .”