waited until she had a grip on the window before he let go of her foot and stood so he could grip her waist for stability and to give her an extra lift. But Kristine panicked and started slipping, her feet flailing.
“Ack!” she screamed.
“Damn it,” he muttered with a grimace as her heel connected with his groin.
“Sorry,” she said, breathless, scrambling for a purchase on the ledge. But it was a lost cause. Kristine dropped to the floor, stumbling backward into him.
“Okay, we need to rethink our strategy,” he said, readjusting his throbbing cock.
She shot him a dubious look. “Did we have one to start with?”
Sean laughed. “No. Probably not.”
She smiled at him fully and without inhibition for the first time since he had walked into the gallery, and damn, but it was a thing of beauty. Kristine possessed the kind of smile that could make even the surliest old man’s blood quicken a little bit. Kids and old people adored her, and Sean had, too. He’d fallen for that smile, and the reappearance of it made him more determined than ever to take her to bed. To get closure. He needed that.
“This would be a lot easier if I wasn’t wearing a skirt,” she added.
“So take it off,” he suggested.
Hey, if you didn’t ask...
“Yeah, great idea. Then I’ll scrape the heck out of my legs on the window. Then when I drop down to the street, I’ll be in my underwear. No, thank you.”
“You’re going to have to hike your skirt up to your waist anyway to swing your leg over, so you’ll still be flashing. I could give you my pants.”
Her eyebrows shot straight up. “What? So then you will be pants-less?”
The idea made sense to him. “Yes. You put on my pants, which will protect your skin and your modesty, then you come around to the front door, and unlock this door to let me out and I put my pants back on.”
“Won’t your pants get ruined? They look expensive.”
Sean shrugged. “Pants can be replaced.” Other things could not.
Pulling his shirt out of his pants, Sean undid his belt and smiled. “Take your skirt off, gorgeous.”
* * *
UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES, Kristine would have loved that type of command. But this was just...weird. The whole situation was so not what she had expected out of this day, and she was having a hard time keeping up. Sean was daring her—it was obvious. He didn’t think she would do it. Or maybe he did think she would. After all, he knew her fairly well, or he had once upon a time, and she was nothing if not impulsive, and always up for proving she had a certain amount of nerve.
The logic was sound. Wearing his pants would keep her from getting scratched up. They were trapped in this room for at least another sixty minutes or so if she didn’t crawl out the window, and she wasn’t lying: enclosed spaces made her nervous. It wasn’t an elevator, that was true, but the idea of being trapped made her heart beat faster and her palms sweat. Not to mention the front door was unlocked, leaving a very expensive exhibit unmonitored. There was tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of photography out there, and for all she knew, it was being stolen right now while she debated whether or not she could handle taking off her skirt in front of her ex—or almost ex—husband.
If she were playing with fire by stripping to her panties in front of him, well, so be it. Her ass was on the line here, quite literally, and she couldn’t afford to lose this job.
So she reached behind to unzip her skirt. “Close your eyes.”
Sean snorted. “Are you joking?”
It was stupid, but she felt self-conscious. She hadn’t been to the gym lately. Okay, ever. Plus she was wearing granny panties. If she were ever to be in the presence of Sean again in her underwear, and she had pictured it on occasion, she had not imagined it would be in a dusty storage room while she wore cotton panties that basically came up to her armpits. She had also imagined herself younger. “No, I’m not.”
“I’m not closing my eyes, so forget it.” Sean unzipped his pants and shoved them down, before stepping out of them. “Here you go. Take ’em or leave ’em.”
Kristine cleared her throat. Maybe he wasn’t actually the one who needed to close his eyes, because she found herself staring quite steadily as Sean stripped to his boxer briefs. His thighs were rock solid, definitely more substantial than they had been at twenty-one, and while the dress socks looked just a tiny bit silly, what those black briefs contained did not make her laugh. That was an erection, and she was fighting the urge to drool. Afraid of what she would sound like if she spoke, she grabbed the pants out of his hands and stepped into them.
She hauled them over her hips, thank God. Buttoning them, she then unzipped her skirt and tried to shimmy it over the pants. It required a lot of skirt tugging and holding the pants in place with a death grip, but in the end, she managed to get the skirt off while keeping the pants on. Glancing down at herself, she had to smile. The pants were too long, tight in the hips, and saggy in the waist. Her midriff was showing between her sweater set and the pants. “Well, this is quite the look.”
“I have you beat,” Sean said. “I’m wearing a dress shirt, tie and cuff links, but no pants.” He turned sideways and took a Roman pose. “GQ will be calling, I have no doubt.”
For a second, Kristine’s heart squeezed, and she allowed herself to remember what it felt like when she and Sean were together, and the casual fun and intimacy marriage had allowed. That had been the plus side of commitment. She knew every gesture he made, every inch of his body, right down to the scar on his chin, which he’d gotten jumping off his parents’ bed as a toddler.
Yet there was still so much she didn’t know about him, not the least of which was why he had been attracted to her, of all women.
“Rawr,” she said in reaction to his pose, then immediately regretted it. That sounded too personal, too familiar.
But Sean didn’t react like he thought it was strange. He just told her, “Thanks. Now climb that wall and liberate us.”
He didn’t bother to squat this time. He just came up behind her and gripped her around the waist.
“Sean!” Good grief, that was a whole lot of Sean all up in her business. Thighs, hands, pecs and another part that started with p were getting very close and personal with her.
She jerked forward so far she almost smacked her nose on the wall when his penis snuggled up into her backside.
“What? I’m lifting you up. Stop wiggling.”
“You can’t lift me—”
He lifted her.
Okay, she stood corrected. Dangling in the air, Kristine grabbed for the ledge, and pulled herself up onto it. She got her upper half where it needed to be, but then her efforts came to a grinding halt. Uh-oh. Thanks, puberty. “Sean, my boobs are stuck.”
He gave a crack of laughter. “What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, they’re caught beneath me. I need you to lift me up so I can spring them. I can’t go forward until they’re free.” At that moment, she was actually grateful it was Sean she was trapped with, because she didn’t think she could say those words out loud to any other man. A woman? Sure. Her own gender understood the complications of cleavage, but men didn’t understand that what they considered to be their personal playground came with its own setbacks.
“I’m not exactly sure I know what that means, but wrap your legs around my head so you can get a better angle.”
Wrap her legs around his head. Now that brought a pleasant memory or two to mind. “Um...”
“Like