“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I tried,” she lied and fluttered her lashes. “Next time would you like me to be a little more inventive?”
“No.” He scowled, clearly interpreting her question to mean she’d do it in the dirtiest, sexiest way she could envision.
“I meant with a glass of water in your face. What did you think I meant?”
He rolled his eyes. “So this is what roommates do?”
“Yes. Until you want to be something else.”
With that, she flounced out the door to check off the last few items on the list for Tommy Garrett’s party. It was tomorrow night and it was going to be spectacular if she had to sacrifice her Louboutins to the gods of party planning to ensure it.
Leo came downstairs a short while later, actually said goodbye and went to work.
When he strolled into the bedroom that evening, the hooded, watchful gaze he shot her said he’d bided his time all day, primed for the showdown about to play out.
“Busy?” he asked nonchalantly.
Dannie carefully placed the e-reader in her hand on the bedside table and crossed her arms over her tank top. What was it about that look on his face that made her feel as if she’d put on Elise’s red-hot wedding night set? “Not at all. By the way, I picked up your dry cl—”
“Good.” He threw his messenger bag onto the Victorian settee in the corner and raked piercing blue eyes over her, all the way to her toes tucked beneath a layer of Egyptian cotton. They heated, despite the flimsy barrier, and the flush spread upward at an alarming rate to spark at her core.
What had she been talking about?
He shed his gray pin-striped suit jacket and then his tie. “You caught me at a disadvantage last night. I had a few other things on my mind, so I missed a couple of really important points about this new sleeping arrangement.”
Her relocation project had just blown up in her face. He was good and worked up over it.
“Oh? Which ones?” The last syllable squeaked out more like a dolphin mating call than English as he dropped his pants, then slowly unbuttoned his crisp white shirt. What had she done to earn her very own male stripper? Because she’d gladly do it fourteen more times in a row.
“For starters, what happens if I don’t keep my hands to myself?”
The shirt hit the floor and her jaw almost followed. Her husband had quite the physique hidden under his workaholic shell.
So maybe he wasn’t mad. But what was he?
Clad in only a pair of briefs, Leo yanked the covers back and slid into his side of the bed. She peeled her gaze from his well-defined chest and refixed it on his face, which was drawn up in a slight smirk, as if he’d guessed the direction of her thoughts. Her cheeks flamed.
“I’ll scold you?” She swallowed as he casually lounged on his pillow, head propped on his hand as if settling in for a nice, long chat instead of using those hands to do something far more...intimate. “I mean, it wouldn’t be very sporting of you.”
“Noted.” He stretched a little and the covers slipped down his torso. “What happens if you don’t keep your hands to yourself?”
He was toying with her, seeing if he could get her to break her own vow of chastity. In his thoroughly male mind, he’d be in the clear if she made the move. His eyelids dropped to a very sexy half-mast and sizzled her to the core.
“And Daniella? Be sure you spell really well so it’s all very clear for those of us who didn’t barge into someone else’s bed and start slinging rules around.”
Actually, the relocation project might be working better than she’d assumed. At least they were talking. Now to get him to understand this wasn’t a contest. Their relationship was at a crossroads and he had to choose which fork he wanted to take.
“There are no rules,” she corrected. “I don’t have a list of punishments drawn up if you decide you’re not on board with being roommates, whether you want to go back to separate bedrooms or strip me naked right now. You’re calling the shots. You’re the one who shut it down after dinner the other night. Walk away, you said, and I did, but that’s not what either of us wanted.”
“Yeah?” Lazily, he traced the outline of her shoulder against the propped-up pillow at her back, carefully not touching her skin but skating so close the heat from his finger raised every hair on her body. “What would you rather I have told you to do?”
“No games, Leo.” She met his gaze squarely. “I’m giving us an opportunity to develop a friendship. But I also readily admit I want you. I want your mouth on me. Here.” Just as lazily, she traced a line over her breast and circled the nipple, arching a little. “I want it so badly, I can hardly stand it.”
She watched him, and went liquid as his expression darkened sinfully.
“No games?” he asked and cleared the rasp from his throat. “Then what is this?”
“A spelling lesson.” And she obviously had to really lay it out for him. She dropped her hand. “You want me, then come and get me. Be as emotionally naked as you are physically. Strip yourself as bare as your body and let’s see how fantastic it can be between us.”
Stiffening, he closed off, his expression shuttering and his body angling away. “That’s all? You don’t ask for much.”
“Then forget I mentioned it. We don’t have to hold out for a connection that may not ever happen. If either of us becomes uninterested in the hands-to-yourself proposition I laid out, it’s off.” She flung herself back against the pillow, arms splayed wide. “Take me now. I won’t complain. We’ll have sex, it’ll be great and then we’ll go to sleep.”
He didn’t move.
“What’s the matter?” she taunted, glancing at him sideways. “It’s just sex. Surely you’ve had just sex before. No brain required. I have no doubt a man with your obvious, um...talent can make me come in no time at all. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. I’m hot for you, Leo. Don’t make me wait a second longer.”
“That’s not funny. Stop being ridiculous.” Translation: he didn’t like being thoroughly trounced at his own game.
She widened her eyes. “Did you think I was joking? I’m not. We’re married. We’re consenting adults. Both of us have demonstrated a healthy interest in getting the other naked. We’ll eventually go all the way. It’s your choice what sort of experience that will be.”
This had never been about withholding sex. She’d be naked in a heartbeat as soon as he made a move. All the power was in his hands and when that move came, it would be monumental. And he’d be so very, very aware of exactly what it meant.
He shoved both hands through his hair. “Why is it my choice?”
Poor, poor man. If he was too clueless to know she didn’t have a choice, far be it from her to fill him in. This was something he had to figure out on his own. Besides, he was the one with the crisis of conscience that prevented him from making love to her until something he probably couldn’t even articulate happened.
But she knew exactly what he needed—to let himself go. She’d exploit this situation gladly in order to get the marriage she desperately wanted and help him find the affection and affinity he so clearly yearned for.
She smiled. “Because. I’m—” Already emotionally invested. “—generous that way.”
She was going to drag Leo off the sidelines kicking and screaming if that’s what it took to have the love match she sensed in her soul Elise had actually orchestrated.