Page 78 of The Au Pair Affair

Three seconds. Four.

“Don’t you want your massage?”

Burgess bit down on his balled fist to stop himself from groaning. Or ejaculating.

Or both.

She was just following through on her promise.

He wouldn’t hope for more. Not until he knew for sure.

His movements were almost lethargic with lust as he whipped a towel off the rack and wrapped it around his waist, knotting it in a way that hid his affliction. Taking a deep breath, he opened the bathroom door, keeping his erection hidden behind the jamb as a backup plan.

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the bedroom, his flesh started to throb all the harder, so intense he almost couldn’t bear it. There she was, in his room.

In nothing but his sweatshirt.

“Tallulah, tell me exactly what you want,” he said thickly. “What are you here for?”

“Can we please just call it a massage and see what happens?” she whispered.

This was the difference between them. She could come to him without a game plan, carried by a whim or a momentary break from good decision-making. He wasn’t like that. He wanted to have their relationship spelled out. Wanted everything neatly defined, so he could sleep at night, secure in the fact that he had her all to himself.

If they went to bed together, would it be understood they were exclusive, even if she refused to say it out loud? Burgess didn’t have a clue and he wanted to push for clarity, but his discipline was wearing thin as fuck and he wouldn’t survive Tallulah running back to her room behind the locked door, so he bit his tongue.

His strategy wasn’t working. He’d have to try hers for a while.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rusted. “We’ll call it a massage.”

Relief seemed to trickle through Tallulah, her shoulders losing some of their tension. She nodded once, hesitated, then walked to the bed, climbing onto the high king-sized mattress on her hands and knees in a way that made his cock swell. The sweatshirt was so huge on her, he couldn’t see much of her body, but he could imagine the curve of her ass, the lithe flex of her thighs. How her panties would cup her between the legs.Jesus.He swallowed hard at the sight of her kneeling near the edge with her hands folded on her bent knees,in his sweatshirt, obviously waiting for him to come sit down in front of her. It felt like a dream. Only he knew it wasn’t, because of the pain weighing down his balls, the way his heart thunked in his throat.

Do you even know how to play it cool anymore?

God, he didn’t want his relationship with Tallulah to be casual, because nothing he felt for her was remotely fucking casual, he wasn’t going to turn down the chance... for whatever was about to happen here.

When it came to this one woman, he was losing the battle with his willpower.

But if she’d come for casual and he walked in there panting like a dog with his heart on his sleeve, she’d recognize they weren’t on the same page and put on the brakes. And she might never show up in his bedroom again. No, he’d let go of his need for transparency tonight in the hopes that whatever they did on that bed brought her back for more.

Burgess snagged a bottle of lotion from the bathroom vanity, then made his way slowly into the room, thanking God for the darkness that kept his secret. The low bathroom light spread across the bed, illuminating Tallulah partially, enough that he could see her lips part as he approached, her gaze stroking downhis bare chest and stomach, her fingers curling into fists on her bent knees. That proof of her attraction gave Burgess some confidence, but not enough. Not as much as he used to have.

What if there were new ways to hook up that he didn’t even know about?

What if she needed to be touched a certain way, and he couldn’t read the signs?

Had he thought this through properly?

Calm down, man.

It’s a massage.

They were calling it a massage.

With a fist-sized object lodged in his throat, he turned and sat down in front of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life, handing her the bottle of lotion over his shoulder, before realizing that might be presumptuous. “You don’t have to use that...”

“No, I want to. It’ll make it better.”

Her hands were going to be on him. How much better could it get?

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