“And the necklace?” His fingers ghost over the chain, and I wonder if he can sense my shiver. When I nod, it takes him a few seconds to unclasp it. He places it on the bureau while I grab my pajama shirt with my right hand, attempting to cover my breasts with my bad arm.
An image from this afternoon pops into my head, unbidden. A laugh bubbles up my throat—I can’t stop it.
“What is it?” he asks, looking pointedly at the window curtains.
“I almost got into the sauna with Torrance completely nude earlier,” I say, and this makes him laugh, too. “I swear I’m not a prude, I just . . . did not expect to see my boss naked today?”
“You really have had a rough day.”
“So trust me. This is a lot less awkward than disrobing in front of Seattle’s favorite meteorologist.”
Except then I have to move the hand on my breasts to get it into the shirtsleeve.
“I’m not looking.” His voice is a low scrape, sounding somehow across the room and right up against my ear all at once. I am no longer laughing. “I swear.”
If I told him he could look all he wanted, I’m not sure I’d want him to admire me first. His fingers could do all the appreciating I needed.
I press my thighs together, let out a shaky breath. Maybe my libido is perfectly fine.
Finally, only my jeans are left. As he unbuttons them, a thumb whispers across the skin just below my navel, that soft touch nearly making me gasp.
“Sorry!” he say, pulling back. “I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I say, trying to reassure him. “You can keep going. I’m just—ticklish, I guess.”
“I can be gentler.” He hooks his thumbs through the belt loops and guides my jeans down my legs, his palms tracing my hips. Gentler, it turns out, is fucking torture.
Then we’re done, and I find myself wishing I’d dressed for an expedition to Antarctica.
“Thank you.” My first instinct is to hug him, but I haven’t figured out how to do that with one arm. So I inch forward, dropping my forehead to rest lightly in the space just above his heart.
As though realizing what I’m attempting to do, he puts his arms around me, uncertain at first. Then he pulls me closer, tucking me against him, and I’m half certain I could fall asleep in this position if I weren’t so wildly turned on. A few fingers skim up my spine, back and forth in a hypnotic motion. My eyes fall shut. With each stroke, I imagine he’s touching me somewhere else. My lower lip. The inside of my wrist. A birthmark on my left hipbone.
I inhale, drawing in his citrus-cedar scent and pure Russell sweetness. “Thank you,” I repeat, stumbling back on unsteady legs.
“Of course.” His face has gone red again, and he’s not making eye contact. “Do you, uh—want your shorts?”
I glance down at my bare legs.
Oh my god. I hugged him in a shirt and panties. Why was abject horniness not listed as a side effect on this medication?
“Excellent idea,” I croak.
That ice bucket is looking more and more appealing. I shimmy into shorts and move back to the bed, trying to control my breathing as he perches on the edge again. So goddamn gingerly.
“Russell. You just took off my clothes. You can lie down on the bed if you want.”
He gives me a half smile before sliding onto the bed next to me and stretching out his legs. He lets out this long breath, like we’ve done something far more aerobic than putting on pajamas. Somebody kill me, because it’s the sexiest sound I’ve heard in months.
I’m exhausted, too, but he’s given me so much tonight. The least I can do is reciprocate.
“My love life has been kind of a mess, too,” I say. “I thought I’d be getting married this year. I’d be deep in wedding planning right now, picking a caterer and a band and a font for our invitations.”
“I get the impression that maybe you’re glad not to be?”
“I really am. We’d barely started planning, and his parents were already putting pressure on us to start having kids.” Of course, not the reason it ended, but it didn’t make anything better.
“Do you think you want them?” he asks. “Kids?”
Normally, it would be such a personal question, one I’ve rolled my eyes at and complained about in the past. Most people don’t even ask—they just assume that of course you will procreate, so they don’t care about the if. Only the when. But I don’t mind him asking at all.
“I do,” I say. “Someday. I spend a lot of time with my brother’s kids, and I love them. But it wasn’t so much about that as it was that I couldn’t picture the wedding itself. I couldn’t make any decisions about it, and I’m pretty sure that’s because it wasn’t right. Not that something being right makes it easy, but . . .”
“It makes those hard parts a lot more manageable.”
I turn to him, propping my head up with my right arm. “Right. Exactly. My ex isn’t a bad guy. He just thought I wasn’t ‘real enough.’？” I say the words like I’m putting them in air quotes, and the ease with which I’m able to share this with Russell catches me off guard. “He told me I was too sunshine. Which, rude, using my own job against me.”
“What does that even mean, too sunshine?”
“That I’m—that I’m pretending with everyone. That I’m hiding real shit because—” I break off, shaking my head. I can’t get into the tidal wave that is my mother. Not when I’m going to see her the day after tomorrow.
We’re too much, I can hear her saying. Usually when my mother crosses my mind, I force a smile and send out a positive affirmation. But not right now. Not when I’m trying to explain to Russell that this was the reason Garrison wanted out.
I’ve locked all this darkness in a room at the end of the hallway and haven’t let anyone inside.
But for him, I crack the door. Just a little. Just for tonight.
“Because it’s harder to deal with,” I finish. A partial truth. It’s all I can give him for now.
“I don’t think you’re like that at all,” Russell says. “You’re the kind of person who makes other people feel good to be around. That’s a great thing.”
“You feel good being around me?” I ask in this paper-thin voice.
His gaze is heavy on mine, and it’s more intimate than when he had his hands on my bra. “All the time.”
It might be the loveliest thing someone’s said about me.
“I—thank you.” I swallow hard, allowing those words to sink in. All the time. I want to ask if he really means it, if he’s talking about the times I’ve let the mask slip around him, too. The times I complained about our bosses and acted like it was all hopeless. But he hasn’t seen me at my worst, on my darkest days.
And he never can.
As badly as I want to linger in his compliment, I have to change the subject. “Maybe I’ll try the whole casual-dating thing TV shows about hot twentysomethings living in the big city make look so easy.”
The spell broken, Russell readjusts on the bed, crossing his legs at the ankles. “I wish I had some great advice to give. But—” He breaks off with a grimace, runs a hand down his face. “Don’t judge me.”