Stripped (16 page)

“Speakin’ of physical perfection…” He smiled when she snorted. “It’s a bit of struggle for me at times. If my management didn’t have me on a strict workout regimen and high-protein diet, I’d look like a heroin addict from some eighties punk band.” He sat up, the sheet falling to his waist as he scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, expression wry. “The way I was made, I guess. I’m just a skinny loser of a kid from Dublin who wasn’t especially good at anything in life—studies, sport, music, nothin’—until I played Bottom in a school production of
Midsummer
.”
 

She rolled onto her stomach, leaning on her elbows as she looked up at him, amusement tickling the back of her throat. “Bottom, with the donkey ears?” She knew her Shakespeare. Well, the Kevin Kline movie version, anyway. “Is this the line you feed the gossip sites? God, I bet they just gobble that crap down.”

There was a moment of silence, stilted unlike any moment between them before. Her breath stuttered to a halt as she watched his expression, once so open and affectionate, cloud over. “Actually, that was my attempt at sharin’ something of myself with you, like you just did with me. The
line
I always gave the press back home is that I’ve always known I wanted to be an actor, and that no, I don’t have to work hard at all to keep this meat on my bones.”

She swallowed, suddenly floundering. “Declan…”

“One conversation, Fi.” He pushed himself off the bed with a sigh, gloriously, unashamedly naked. The look he gave her carried an edge of sadness to it that tore at something within her heart. “Someday, I want to have one conversation with you that doesn’t end in a quippy retort.”

“I—”

“And for the record, I was a helluva Bottom.” The smile he flashed her seemed forced, but he slapped his ass with saucy irreverence.
Actors Being Actors
, she thought sadly as he strode toward the bathroom.

The sound of water hitting the plastic walls of her shower stall, and the
swish
and
cling
of the curtain moving on its metal hooks, hit her ears moments later. She buried her face in the rumpled sheets, the scent of him clinging to each fiber. Breathing him in, she felt a blush start at the top of her head and spread like wildfire down to her curling toes, every inch of her warm and relaxed. Pinpointing the feeling, Fiona realized she was relieved—relieved that her scars hadn’t scared Declan off, that she’d shared with him the story of what had happened.
 

He could touch her, see her, and she didn’t have to worry about how he would react. He wasn’t judging her. He didn’t find her lacking.
 

At least, not physically. His parting remark aside, she could tell she’d disappointed him just now, with her immediate default into sarcasm. He understood her, she felt certain, but some people—Declan included—were simply more genuine than others. He said what he meant, what he felt, and he expected the same sort of honesty from her. Not some twist of words that deflected her insecurities back on him.
 

Declan deserved better from her.

Her phone chimed with a calendar alert on the bedside table. She reached out a languid hand to snag it, checking the screen, then heaved herself off the bed. One hour, and she had an apology to make first.

Ten seconds later she was whipping aside the shower curtain to join Declan in the narrow stall. Without preamble, she looped her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe to draw his startled face to hers for a long hello of a kiss. It didn’t matter that they’d already conversed, didn’t matter that she’d already tasted his lips this morning. This was a different hello, awake and aware, staking her claim without artifice or prevarication.
 

Hello, please be mine
. That’s what she wanted this kiss to say.
 

When they broke for air, his arms had wrapped around her, the spray of steaming water cascading over his shoulders to cover her torso in streaming droplets. He dropped his forehead to hers. “Hi,” he murmured. One hand skimmed up her spine to palm her nape.

Her smile threatened to split her face. “Hi,” she whispered back.

He dropped a tiny kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Missed you.”

“Loser.” This time, it wasn’t deflection, but a gentle tease. Then she grew serious, even as water began to bead at the tip of her nose. “You’re too patient with me, you know that, right?”

“Oh.” He leaned back suddenly, letting the shower spray hit her full in the face. She sputtered, gasping as she automatically threw up her hands to shield her face. After a good handful of seconds, he blocked the spray again. “I forgot I was supposed to be a complete arse when seducing the woman I want more than anything in the world. My mistake.”

With a mock glare, she wiped water from bleary eyes. “I take it back.”

Arms lifting, he tilted his head back under the stream, rinsing away the stray suds she hadn’t noticed while ogling his biceps. Then he switched their positions, maneuvering her under the spray and grabbing her shampoo bottle. The familiar scent of jasmine hit her nostrils as he began to work the liquid soap into her scalp. She moaned as his fingers massaged her.

Just as she’d braced her hands on the wall in front of her, the impact of his words finally hit her. “What do you mean,
more than anything in the world
?”

“I mean what I said, Fiona.” His fingertips reached around to find her chin, tipping it up until the hot water sluiced through her soapy hair. “At this moment in my life, there’s nothing and no one I want more than you.” He turned her around to face him, as serious as she. “Don’t know if that’ll change or not. Don’t know if I want it to change. But I
do
know you make me smile, really smile. That’s worth a little patience on my part.”

“Well.” She swallowed around the surprising ball of tears knotting her throat. “Thank you. And I’m sorry if I, uh, make it difficult. To be patient, I mean.” Dropping her gaze, she reached for the loofa, drizzling body wash over it and scrubbing vigorously over every exposed inch of her body.
 

Just as she finished rinsing away the lather, her face was caught between two large palms. “You warned me fair and square, darlin’,” he said softly, staring at her mouth briefly before lifting his eyes to hers. “I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was you. So no apologies, ’kay?”

She nodded within his hands. “Okay.”

His kiss might have been patient, but it certainly wasn’t sweet. He coaxed open her lips with nibbling bites, his tongue sliding against hers in a smooth caress that spoke of hunger. Hunger for her. She stepped into him, away from the shower spray starting to cool, and wrapped her arms around his lean waist. She allowed him to steer the kiss, and her with it, into new territory that was both easy and exciting.
 

He reached behind her to shut off the water without breaking the kiss. She was aware of him shoving aside the curtain, pulling her onto the bath mat, slick bodies rubbing together as cool air blasted them. She shivered and hugged him closer, one hand slipping down to grope his ass suggestively, all too aware of the hard thrust of his arousal pressed into her abdomen.

A wiggle of her hips had him groaning. “That’s just mean,” he breathed against her lips as he groped for one of the bath towels neatly folded on the shelf above the toilet. Then she was wrapped in warm cotton terry, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the feel of his mouth on her neck, his tongue sweeping over her wet skin. She sighed when he straightened to use his own towel with brisk efficiency on his hair before tucking it securely around his hips.
 

She stood naked in front of him, without embarrassment or worry over the sight of her scars, and dried her hair before moving her towel over her limbs, finally securing it around her torso, the knotted corner between her breasts.
 

He watched her. Even in the dissipating steam and sans glasses, she could see that he watched her, intent yet casual, as though in no rush to carry her back into the bedroom but with full knowledge that they would end up there again soon.

This time, her shiver wasn’t due to the chill.
 

Moving to the sink, she wiped the condensation from the mirror with one sweep of her hand and picked up a comb from the countertop, jumping only slightly when his arm suddenly appeared over her shoulder to swipe across the mirror, roughly six inches higher than she had. Their eyes met, and he grinned as she began to work through the snarls. “Not used to guests?”

“Not ones who are taller than me.” Not any, really. No girlfriends, no boyfriends, no visiting extended family needing a place to crash. She’d socialized so much and so hard in Vegas that it had been something of a relief to go from the Henderson apartment she shared with three other dancers to this tiny place that was hers and hers alone. She
liked
being alone, but, thankfully, her work—and Wes, and her dad—never allowed her to truly be lonely. Even though she couldn’t wait to scrap apartment living and move onto better, bigger things, these rooms had been her oasis long enough for a bit of sentimentality to kick in when she thought of leaving it behind.

In this apartment, she was safe, and safe was very, very important to Fiona O’Brien.
 

Declan stood behind her as she started brushing her teeth, his smile so unashamedly content that it set butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “Don’t suppose you have a spare toothbrush somewhere?”

More fluttering. “Man, you didn’t come prepared for this one-night stand at all, did you?” she mumbled around her own toothbrush, bending down to dig in one of the drawers of the cabinet until she produced a still-wrapped-from-her-last-dentist-visit brush and tossed it at him. “Suppose I should be grateful you remembered condoms.”

The sound of plastic crinkling, cardboard tearing. “O’ course I remembered condoms. And if you believe this between us is a one-night stand, you’ve got another think comin’, love.”

She spit in the sink before catching his gaze in the foggy-edged mirror. “Noted.”

When he’d finished brushing, casually dropping his new toothbrush into the Rosie the Riveter coffee mug that held hers, he followed her into the bedroom. “So. Breakfast?”

She made the decision just as she dropped her towel. “Dry off and get dressed. I want to show you something.”

“Something that involves leaving the flat?” He sounded disappointed.
 

She drew a pair of black-lace panties over her hips, not a match for the red-and-white-striped cotton bra she donned a moment later, but she didn’t care. “Yes, we have to leave.”

“Leaving your place was not on the agenda for Things I Wanted To Do With Fiona On My Day Off.”
 

Laughing, she snagged an old pair of jeans from the dresser—
not
jeggings, but soft, faded denim that clung comfortably to her legs. “It’ll be fun.” Maybe. “And it won’t take all day.” The idea of lazing away the afternoon in bed with Declan was suddenly the only activity she wanted to do…as soon as she showed him this piece of her, this piece that wasn’t exactly a secret but was still tender and new.
 

Kind of like them.
 

“In that case….” His grin held a hint of wickedness. “Don’t have any clean clothes, but one of your man shirts ought to fit me.”

“They’re not man shirts.”

He raised an eyebrow, arms crossing over his chest, and waited.

“Ugh. Fine.” She waved a careless hand at her open closet doors, presenting him with her back. “Man shirts. Have at ’em.”
 

His chuckle tickled down her spine as she grabbed a plain, sky-blue tee shirt from another dresser drawer, the neckline dipping into the vee of her cleavage and a square boyfriend pocket stitched over her left breast. Slipping her feet into simple leather sandals and letting her damp hair dry in loose waves over her shoulders, she turned to face him, sliding on her glasses as she did so.

And nearly swallowed her tongue.

His feet were bare, belt undone and low-slung jeans unbuttoned over what were obviously naked hips, and a deep navy button-down she knew to be super-soft from repeated washings hung open over his bare torso, the sleeves stretching a bit too tightly across the muscled curves of his upper arms. A few errant water droplets still beaded his chest, and his jaw was shadowed with morning stubble. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, those eyes of his skimming down her body and causing that smile to widen into a full-blown grin full of heat and awareness.

Well, that’s not fair
. “Will that thing button over you?” Because no way in hell was she taking him out in public looking that yummy. Not happening.
 

His nimble fingers fell to the buttons. “Let’s find out together, shall we?” His gaze invited her to stop him…any second now.
 

Also not happening. Fiona grabbed her phone from the rumpled comforter and fled the bedroom with a muttered, “I’ll just…wait for you outside,” ignoring the rumbling sound of his laughter as she stalked away and the flame of desire flickering back to life, low in her belly.

Nope. Not fair at all.

TWELVE

The shirt he’d pinched from Fiona’s closet was a tad tighter than what he normally wore, but judging from the way her gaze kept darting to him—and the taut pull of buttons across his chest—Declan decided he was cool with it.
 

Also, it smelled like her.
He
smelled like her, like jasmine and almond oil and mint toothpaste.

The windows were rolled down in her dark blue Prius, the warm breeze whipping through the car to toy with their hair and buffet the sides of their faces. He had one arm propped out in the sun, sleeve rolled up to his elbow and fingers tapping against the exterior frame of the door. One Direction blasted from the speakers, and a glance at Fiona in the driver’s seat revealed that she was indeed singing lightly along as they entered residential Pasadena.

“…
if you saw what I can seeeee, you’d understand why I want you so desp’ratelyyyy
….”